What's Your Name?
What's Your Name?
How we introduce ourselves can divide us…or it can unite us.
When we're introducing ourselves to a group full of new people, especially if it's a group that came together to resolve conflict (ex. at work) or full of people who might be different from us but who we want to connect with (ex. a depolarization conference), we'll often lead with our name and what we see as a salient part of our identity.
"Hi! I'm Mark, I have an MBA from Harvard."
Or:
"I'm Lisa, I'm representing the union (or management) in these negotiations."
Or:
"I'm John, I'm a Democrat/Republican/Christian/Hindu/Muslim/etc."
But pastor Jamie Winship, an expert on conflict resolution who's worked with everyone from Congress to Muslim extremists, says that he thinks this is a disaster.
Why? Because it's divisive. None of us intend intend it as such, but by describing ourselves this way we immediately divide the room. If I introduce myself as a Harvard MBA (I'm not, for the record), then I immediately divide the room into people with a Harvard MBA and people without. In the current political climate, I might even open up another front of the culture war; dividing the room into people who think Harvard is a great place of learning and higher education, versus those who think it epitomizes everything wrong with the coastal elite.
Describing ourselves this way can accidentally send the message to some people that we're better than them. If I tell the room I have a Harvard MBA, that carries a certain weight. The flip side of the coin is that it can lead some people to think that we're worse than me. A few years ago, I was applying to rent a house with two friends. The realtor asked what we all did. I said that I was in marketing, and one friend said that he was an engineer. My other friend, who was working at Jimmy John's at the time, slumped and said that he was working part-time. You could practically feel the embarrassment rolling off of him. There's nothing wrong with working at Jimmy John's; it's noble work and it's part of the infrastructure that keeps society rolling. But my engineer friend and I introduced ourselves in a way that invited a measuring stick. In that environment, it was perhaps inevitable that someone in the room would feel that they didn't measure up.
It's even worse when we describe ourselves (as I have, on many occasions) according to the characteristic in the room that divides us. I've walked into inter-political-tribe meetings and described myself as, "Julian Adorney, libertarian." I've had friends walk into interfaith meetings and describe themselves as Christian.
To be fair, there's a certain honesty here, which feels important. After all, if we're walking into a depolarization conference, shouldn't we identify where we stand to start? The conventional wisdom is that we need to know where the divides are so that we can cross them. Plus, it's acknowledging the elephant in the room and our own biases. If where you stand depends on where you sit, then it feels important to acknowledge up-front where we sit.
But there's a danger here too, and Winship argues that the danger is big enough to outweigh the benefits I just described. In The Way Out, psychology professor Peter T. Coleman describes what's known as the "butterfly effect": the first moments of a new venture have a profound impact on its direction. As he puts it, "how new encounters, conversations, relationships, groups, businesses, or communities are initiated (or are intentionally reset) often has profound implications for differences in the paths they follow."
How we introduce ourselves can have a profound impact on the direction that an individual conversation or even a group conversation takes. When we introduce ourselves by what box we fit in in the group, we can reify our beliefs into our identity. We move a little bit away from "Julian Adorney, human" and a little bit towards "Julian Adorney, libertarian (or Christian)." We become more attached to these boxes, which makes us less able to truly hear from people outside of those boxes.
Let's put it another way. As humans, we have so much in common. We all love, we all fear, we all want the best for our kids. We all want to live in safe neighborhoods and provide for our families. So why do we let ourselves lead with what makes us different? Especially in a group that's focused on conflict resolution or on breaking down barriers, Winship suggests that that's unwise.
So what's a better solution? Winship recommends that when we introduce ourselves, we state our name and our greatest fear.
Why does this work? One reason is that fear is universal. We all have it, and anyone who says otherwise either has brain damage or doesn't feel safe enough to open up. By introducing ourselves with our fear, we are leading with one of the universal truths of being human. We are humanizing ourselves (and each other), at the same time as we are reminding ourselves of what we all have in common.
Fear can also unite us. I talk to people across the country who differ radically in their politics. But one thing I hear from almost everyone: "I'm worried about the future of our country. I'm worried that we're going to come apart at the seams." Red or Blue, communist or libertarian, social justice warrior or member of the alt-right…that fear unites us.
I think another reason this works is that stating our fear to a room full of strangers makes us vulnerable. We take off our armor and bare our soul to our fellow human. If we're trying to connect with a room full of strangers, including strangers who may see the world very differently than us and fit themselves into different boxes than we fit ourselves into, this strikes me as a powerful first step.
So here's my introduction to our community of practice. My name's Julian Adorney, and my greatest fear is that my wife will leave me. There's no real justification for this fear; we've been together for over three years, we just got married, and our relationship is amazing. But my parents divorced, my relationships with women were fairly broken when I was younger, and there's something inside of me that insists that what my wife and I have now is too good to last.
So now it's your turn. What's your name, and what's your greatest fear?
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