One day on my way to work, I am telling my Uber driver about my experience thus far as a student success coach. Her response is so profound that she causes me to stumble upon a convention that I realize God has been pushing me to adopt. She says, “my mother has always told me, you’ve gotta meet people where they’re at”.

It wasn’t the first time I had heard of the maxim. As my Corps members and I received training before entering into schools, it was deeply ingrained into the way we were encouraged to approach our impact. The phrase had even come up during countless conversations with friends. I later realized that during this season of my life I was finally fully comprehending what it means to meet people where they are at. This aha moment expanded my view of seeing relationship building as a soft skill. 

Just last night, I was watching season four episode three of the critically acclaimed heart-wrenching show, ‘This Is Us’ and again this idea resurfaced on screen. New parents, Kate and Toby, move into a new home and are approached by what appears to be a disgruntled new neighbor. We all know and have experienced those. He adamantly requests that Toby stops parking on the sidewalk between their two homes and instead parks down the street. From Kate’s perspective, her new neighbor just seems like a difficult, complicated middle-aged guy (a common assumption we all could easily make). She later learns that he recently suffered from a stroke and his recovery process includes re-learning how to do basic cognitive tasks. He goes for daily walks and circles around the neighborhood block in hopes of one day getting 100% back to himself, but when her husband parks beside the curb he can’t complete his walk.

We’d all like to think we are open-minded, but how many of us can say that we consciously make an effort to embrace those who are most different from us?

My idea of meeting people where they are at begins with discovering where they are currently by getting to know them, understanding why they are positioned where they’re at, and sometimes requires you to meet them further over on their side of the fence. Relationship building is hard work but if we approach new connections by putting our preconceptions aside, we might find that that “difficult” coworker or neighbor is not so difficult or hard to be around at all. 

In undergrad, I’ve had to work with some people that I thought I would just neverrrr get along with! In the earlier part of my college years, my experience serving on boards should have been intentionally led by making more of a conscious effort to meet people where they’re at. I spent so many days frustrated by the thoughts and actions of some of my peers. But, had I really taken the time to get to know them or had my assumptions blocked any chance of building bridges? Definitely the latter. As I learned this, my latter role as a student manager flowed a lot more seamlessly. My intentions as a leader to create an inclusive, growth-focused, and open-minded environment were easier met due to my conscious effort to understand why members of my team approached their role in whatever way they did. This has informed how I work with students and I hope it informs my entire life’s work. 

At the end of the This Is Us episode, Kate decides to join her ‘difficult’ neighbor on his daily walks. She literally meets him where he is at by joining alongside him on his strolls. In a divisive world, I truly believe this is a practice we need to perform more of. Doctors will be more successful in treating patients by meeting them where they’re at. Parents will find themselves connecting deeper with their children by meeting them where they’re at. And in a society that posits English as the dominant language, non-native English speakers will feel less isolated if we made more of a conscious effort to meet them where they’re at. 

As I continuously work on putting this soft skill into practice, my biggest hope is that this encourages you to intentionally do the same.