Transparency Statements That Diffuse Distrust During Moments of Genuine Connection (MGCs)

Dear colleagues,

This school year, our students will be motivated by the degree to which their hearts hold Five Key Beliefs. This is the fundamental argument of The Will to Learn. And at the core of a solid Five Key Beliefs approach in any setting is a simple, systematic approach to relationship building that I call Tracking Attempted Moments of Genuine Connection (MGCs), which you can read all about here.

The thing is, these brief (30- to 90-second) encounters with students can often be awkward and sometimes even threatening to students. That's why I appreciated this article about how transparency statements helped police officers diffuse distrust when interacting with people in their communities.

Researchers found that the first 45 words in an encounter between a community member and a police officer were highly predictive of the tenor and quality of the whole encounter. And the move that made a difference was a transparency statement — basically, why am I pulling you aside to chat today?

Here's an example applied to a classroom MGC:

Hi, Destiny, how’s it going? I’m pulling students aside this week, just trying to get to know each of you better so I can give you a good experience this year. Is it okay if I talk to you for a minute?”

In the police officers studied by the researchers, this indication of positive intent and transparency was much more effective at producing a positive interaction than simply jumping right in to a conversation.

Researchers found that four criteria were important in creating effective transparency statements:

• Timing: The statement comes right at the beginning, setting the tone for the interaction.
• Benevolence: Conveying an honest, positive rationale for the interaction (e.g., I want to be a good teacher and provide a good experience in my classroom).
• Genuine: Obviously, I can't agree with this one more, given that MGCs are meant to be real, authentic signals to students that we value, know, and respect them.
• Personal and addressing the situation at hand, in the first person: “I want to be a good teacher for you.” Versus institutional, “Our school has a new initiative to get to know students.”

This might help me this year to create even better MGCs, so I wanted to share it with you in case you're interested.

Teaching right beside you,

DSJR

P.S. Thank you to Kim Marshall again for sharing the Boston Globe article via his memo.