Belonging Geoffrey Cohen Quotes

Affirm: I don't mean dole out vapid praise or flatter ourselves in the mirror, which research shows to be counterproductive. I mean that we should create opportunities, even small ones, for people to express who they are and what they value, and to feel valued. Contrary to popular wisdom, many self-affirmations take the form not of "I am good, or smart, or well liked" but "Here is what I am committed to and why," which "firms up" the self. We miss far too many opportunities to affirm people, which, ironically, is the most important when they may seem least worthy of affirmation: when they're threatened, stressed, or defensive.

Perhaps we are by nature no more Hobbesian brute than caring altruist. As Erving Goffman once quipped, “Universal human nature is not a very human thing.” I propose this variation: Uniform human nature is not a very human thing. Our nature is different in different situations. What is universal is our vast potential to behave in such diverse ways. As the anthropologist Clifford

We far too often fail to account for how situations in real life have also been crafted, intentionally or not, to confer advantages on some and disadvantages on others. This tendency contributes to beliefs that students from difficult homes are less motivated or less capable because of who they are, rather than what their home situation is.

The overwhelming conclusion across a large body of studies is that personality matters less than we think while the situation matters more than we think.

The impact of personality was overridden by whether the employees at the company perceived social norms that favored speaking up. If a company were interested in getting people to speak up, they'd be better off putting their energy into cultivating new norms rather than selecting gregarious employees.

It may seem unrealistic to expect that teachers should love their students, but the more I delve into the research on teaching, the more it seems to converge on the importance of love--not the type between parents and their children, surely, but love in the sense that Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela meant it, a faith we choose to have in the inherent worth and dignity of another human being.

The students on campuses with such a [Confederate] statue had higher levels of implicit racial bias. This finding speaks to the haunting effects of historical expressions of racism. Not only do these statues cause pain for many black students and faculty; they may help to sustain implicit anti-black bias.

Another way to foster a sense of belonging for employees is to form teams that are encouraged to engage in collective problem-solving. This affords regular opportunities for all members of the teams to express their views and contribute their talents. But leaders of these teams should establish the norm that colleagues treat each other with respect, making room for everyone in discussions and listening thoughtfully to one another. As we saw with high-status students leading the way in establishing an antibullying norm in schools, managers, as the highest-status member of a team, can set powerful norms. A key goal is foster what leadership scholar Amy Edmonson calls psychological safety, which she describes as "the belief that the environment is safe for interpersonal risk taking. People feel able to speak up when needed--with relevant ideas, questions, or concerns--without being shut down in a gratuitous way. Psychological safety is present when colleagues trust and respect each other and feel able, even obligated, to be candid." No matter how ingenious or talented individual team members are, if the climate does not foster the psychological safety people need to express themselves, they are likely to hold back on valuable input.

When people reflect on harsh events in their lives, it's important that they write or talk and not just think. Thinking doesn't provide the narrative closure that writing or talking does, and it often leads people to sink into ruminative loops that prolong their anguish.