You bet your boots it can.

Early in the pandemic I read an article where someone claimed that trust could not be built online — that it was one of the rich ingredients of life we were missing with our new, quarantined existence. Meaningful connections, where trust is built and shared, the author claimed, weren’t possible online or at least were much harder. My own experience has been different. I believe there are many ways to nurture trust online.

The Way Things Begin Matters

Creating the conditions where trust can be built requires an intentional, thoughtful approach (not surprisingly the same thing goes for in-person). In the digital spaces we can create the conditions to build trust with an awareness and intentionality with just about everything.

For example, who creates the meeting invite? Does the more powerful person assume the less powerful person will? Who chooses the platform? How is the meeting communicated? Perhaps it’s automated through an invitation, appearing on the calendar out of the blue? or is it discussed first? Who is the “Owner/Host/Organizer” of the call? (and what additional features do they have)? How long is the meeting?

Power, you see, is everywhere — yes, even in simple tasks on computers. Who shows up first? It isn’t even a real room, it’s just a Zoom or Teams room, but time is our most valuable resource — you communicate what you care about with what you make time for. Who allows distractions? phone, email, text, package deliveries… Whose timezone is used (for whom is the timing more convenient)?

What about Brave Spaces?

I first heard the distinction between ‘safe spaces’ and ‘brave spaces’ years ago. A colleague and friend of mine in the Open Education world, Lyn Trudeau, explained something like the following to a roomful of well-intentioned colleagues: “You can’t guarantee me a safe space. The best you can do is help nurture brave spaces for voices to speak and be heard.” Lyn’s message hit me hard — we were sitting on land that had been forcibly and brutally taken from her ancestors. This would not be safe space. We fight our way to have standing, status, relevance in all the spaces. We all see it, know it, but don’t say it. Saying it requires a brave space…

Putting This into Conversations

When I’m beginning something, I try to think about all the ways that inequity, power and privilege are communicated. Most of us can feel it when we’re in the room with people — e.g., who sits in the power chair? Who takes notes during the meeting? Who speaks first? Who speaks the most? Who speaks the loudest and with the most confidence? Who speaks flippantly?

When I work with a team I’m usually brought in as an outsider. The hope is that I’ll be able to lend a perspective that will eventually help the team move forward in some way — solve gnarly problems. Getting an outsider’s perspective can be really helpful especially when working toward a more inclusive culture or incorporating inclusive design into their processes and practices. To do that work, I need to have a kind of baseline. I need to understand what the culture is now. And the best way to do that is to have conversations across the organization. So, with the team, we assemble a list of people who represent diversity on all fronts: racial, time with the company, age, experience, focus area, gender, and every other form of human difference. And so it begins… with each decision, we’re designing how this work will happen.

The people on the list are contacted, usually first by their colleagues. The questions begin: how were they contacted? How was this work introduced? explained? How was I introduced? Was the conversation presented as optional? Does the person already feel like a token? Does the person think this is SPAM and ignore it? All of the above have happened, not theoretically, actually. A time is chosen, a meeting invitation is sent. A video conferencing platform is specified in the invitation.

The playing field is already not level in so many ways.

Initial Approach

These are not scientific or scripted interviews. These are conversations with people and all their complexities. No two conversations begin the same. After a quick hello I explain to each conversationalist that my first commitment in this work is to their comfort and privacy. I communicate my appreciation for them choosing to specifically dedicate time to talking about inclusion and accessibility. And they have done just that to get to this point. The meeting has been scheduled for 90 minutes — gasp! — a notable length in a culture of 60 minute (or fewer) standard length meetings.

I then explain what we’re doing and why we’re doing it the way we are. I want to know more about their individual experience. Each conversation was planned for 1.5 hours to enable more depth in the conversation. I explain that scheduling a meeting for one hour is a design choice and my expectation is not that this conversation needed to last longer, but that if it naturally did, we’d have already accounted for that and therefore would be relaxed about time.

I also explain that another motivation for designing the meetings to last 1.5 hours is because when we talk about inclusion the conversations can be difficult, can be heavy, and can bring up memories of difficult experiences they might have had themselves. Since their comfort and privacy are my focus, extra time will also allow them to recalibrate before entering their next meeting. In Inclusive Design circles and beyond, the recounting of difficult, exclusionary, biased, and discriminatory events can be retraumatizing.

Every single conversation goes past the 1.5 hours allotted. Each participant expresses how shocked they are when they finally do look at the time. They reflect on their comfort and express disbelief that we talked that long. “It doesn’t feel like two hours!” I often hear. Each participant wanted to continue the interaction and the space was given to do just that. There was no arbitrary time limit put on them by me. There were no subtle hints that we needed to end. They were tuned in or not to their own thoughts and time. This is a particularly important point because this work takes time and travels at the speed of trust.

Building Trust

To give more than just verbal reassurances that my focus is on privacy and comfort, I explain who specifically will have access to any notes taken. I mention who will have access by name. I explain where those notes will live — on our servers. I state we will not ever directly quote without express permission and will use care to share information in ways that will not lead to the identification of the participants. I state that I will share anything I write with the participant.

I go further to explain that if they see me looking down or hear me typing it is because I want to capture their exact words and thoughts as accurately as possible. The very notion of someone typing your exact words in a conversation can be quite intimidating, so my hope is that knowing in advance that I’ll be sharing everything I write will help. Each of these points is communicated explicitly in hopes of building a brave space where participants can speak freely and can begin building trust with me. At every point, the choice is always, still theirs.

I explain to each participant that they were under absolutely no obligation to participate in the conversation and if at any point they want to end or postpone the conversation or pass on the question, they should just let me know.

I explain as best I can how the things I learn from our conversations will be aggregated and put into a report so that the organization can begin to incorporate inclusion into process and culture. The aggregated information, then, is used to help plan an approach and strategy for inclusive design.

Each participant is told they will have an opportunity to review all notes that were taken during their conversation and can correct or add to the conversation with other details at that time. They might think of something else after the conversation… that is natural. They will always have time to add to or adjust what they said. I don’t want them, within the context of the conversation or immediately afterwards, to worry about the way they choose to articulate things. This, more than anything perhaps, loosens the conversation up.

These specific steps are all taken to build a foundation that supports the development of a brave space where participants can freely speak without fear of retribution or betrayal of private, sensitive, or difficult thoughts.

Every participant expresses a thankfulness and surprise at the intentional steps taken to protect and honour their privacy and individual thoughts. They express feeling safe, seen, and heard. They mention that this is unlike any conversation they’ve had.

The way things begin matters.

People want to be seen and heard.

During the conversation

I usually begin the conversations with a question that communicates just how unscripted these conversations are. “Who the heck are you,” is a great way to start. “Where are you right now and how did you get there,” is also a great way to start. I am open to answering these questions if asked, but this is not about me and I am only sometimes asked. Building trust is a bi-directional activity.

For many, these questions are enough to kick off a conversation about where someone is “from” — a conversation that is important to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) conversations. “From-ness” comes from a feeling of belonging, origin stories, and the complexities that we carry from our ancestors and families.

By asking this question, I am able to connect on a deeply human level. I feel this is core to the work of inclusive design — humanizing all the experiences, spaces, and interactions around us. Beginning the conversation focusing on a deeply humanized conversation gives me a chance to start the conversation on a foot that is individual and personal. The focus is entirely on the individual’s experience. Each participant is encouraged to speak for themselves and not feel any burden to speak for anyone else in the organization.

My hope ultimately is that participants understand that their individual experience matters so much, it is exactly what I want to hear about. And that is only the beginning of the conversation…