Welcome to Wherever You Are

Theresa, Johanna, Kaitlin

If this is your first visit to Examining Competence, welcome! The series will make more sense chronologically, but enjoy it however you prefer.

When I started traveling to attend martial arts seminars and visit other schools, in some schools I found something. Many places I went, there was a sense of what I’ll call “noticing.” You’ll find it in a lot of contexts, this isn’t unique to a martial arts setting. That’s just where I (sorry) noticed it. When you visit another school, even in the same style, you always find some things different from what you’re used to. Most schools are welcoming of guests, that’s not it. It’s just difference.

Etiquette is huge in martial arts. Respect of course, but also traditions. Little details about how a particular school operates are things you as a guest want very much to not step on. Out of respect, wanting to be a good ambassador for your own school, for endless reasons we try to catch those nuances and engage them correctly without breaches of etiquette. 

For example, even though classes in my main art in every school start with reciting a specific set of phrases, every school does it a little differently. People line up differently. The phrasing, pace, even occasionally a word or two will be different. At my home school, we lined up in rank order and the highest ranked person in class led the ritual opening class. 

At one school I visited, thinking it was the same everywhere, I was caught flat-footed. Their tradition was to ask guests to lead class, not the highest ranked student, which I very much wasn’t. It was intended to to honor a guest. But they didn’t say things quite the same way, they had an older version of the phrases. So it sounded as if I didn’t know the creed when everyone else said words differently! They were all nice, possibly only I noticed (doubtful) but the experience was a bit painful. I felt wrong-footed right from the start, until I could shake it off, and until some students there made me feel welcome in other ways.

That art has a few “second-cousins” that derive authority from a different branch from the same very senior practitioner. The first time I planned to visit one of those more distant cousin schools, I was given the advice not to wear our usual belts. Instead they said to bring a lower-ranked unmarked belt with me. That other lineage tends to take longer to award belts, so showing up with one of ours would seem like bragging. In knowledge and skill I belonged with people whose belts were “lower” in rank. Unless someone tells you the first time, you’d have no way of guessing that your belt isn’t your belt everywhere. Sometimes it is, but sometimes it isn’t. Martial arts etiquette is wondrously complex, and the only way to learn is to be taught, or to take it in the teeth (literally maybe) if you have to hash it out for yourself.

Back out to the real world: every group and organization has a culture. Some are more transparent than others.  In-group people make assumptions, act in ways they don’t even notice. Habits. Phrases. Things to wear. Stories. Preferences. Humor. Even the most welcoming group can feel a little awkward to visitors or new members.

We don’t often think about our group cultures. We just swim in them. Once we’re in, it’s easy to forget we once weren’t. 

Companies do “onboarding.” HR wants for new people to learn the culture efficiently. People who study business know it makes a huge difference for people to feel welcomed, to understand their place and role, to know what to expect. When employees aren’t “onboarded” well, they often don’t stay. Or they never quite “click” or maybe new people step in it so hard that they inadvertently change the culture in ways that are bad for everyone. It can be hard to recover from that failure, and it starts the very moment of someone’s first interaction with a group. 

Martial arts schools live on a knife-edge. Most don’t survive to five year anniversaries. Few manage to keep going long-term. Student attrition is enormous in any school and style. Even a single student staying or leaving can be the difference between another year in business and packing it in.

Observing the MA industry for decades, I can say with certainty that how well and easily a new person can learn a school’s culture is a significant predictor of how robust the school will be. And yet, in most schools it’s haphazard or worse. Mostly that’s by ignoring it or giving it the tiniest possible gloss. But not always.

I’ve been to places that try so hard to make onboarding smooth and repeatable that they blow it in another direction, by creating something so cookie-cutter it’s patently fake. No more real than putting someone in a room with a unicorns-and-rainbows video about company culture.

Many places doing it well (companies, schools, organizations) provide a warm, knowledgeable mentor who knows all about the place and can tell you anything you need to know and all the things you didn’t know to ask. That’s a traditional, healthy, effective way to onboard. It takes effort though, and you’re relying a whole lot on mentors who may have a mixed-bag of skills in this area. It works best when they’re other students (in a school) or co-workers (in a company). It works badly when it’s HR, a supervisor, or an instructor. It’s also a rare technique in a martial arts school. At least officially.

When someone walks in the door of a place where people wear weird pajamas, yell, wrassle, grab each other in all sorts of embarassing places, punch each other in the face, probably say words in a language you don’t know, and where people have evident close friendships with each other…that’s intimidating. It takes more than a quick tour of the building, pointing at a changing room, and showing someone where to stand in the first class to make people feel comfortable. (Aside, the first time I wore a gi I tied it backward, and no one showed me how to tie a belt. I found out when someone laughingly asked me if I was going to my own funeral. Referring to a Japanese funerary tradition I’d never heard of. For a shy introvert trying something wildly outside of their comfort zone, actual instruction would have been more welcomed.)

Consider not just onboarding, but what people are being brought into. There are phenomenally wrong ways to do culture. If you think about kids as models of culture, they can be “cliquey.” That’s a way to create a group and feel belonging. Sadly, making an “out” group is one way of feeling like an “in” person, which is usually what we mean by “clique.” A group with hard walls to keep people out. Intentional or not. It works that way in lots of organizations.

Kids also test limits. They’ll push new people hard to see what they’re made of. They’ll try to build their own social capital by getting new people to like or respect them. (Watch everyone from peers to Instructors when a new person is on the mat for the first time. You’ll see a smorgasboard of behaviors, but mostly you’ll see showing off.)

Those are a couple of examples, but you can think of all sorts. The degree to which a group uses humor to hide harder things, or allows difference or enforces sameness. We might not even agree about what’s “healthy” in a culture. But we would probably agree that in a culture like a martial arts school, people of all sorts feeling as if they belong is a good sign.

When culture isn’t healthy, and onboarding doesn’t happen, it can be what people sometimes like to call “toxic.” There are plenty of ways to make toxic culture. Even if something works for every current person in a group, it can be toxic to someone new. Some grappling arts ease the discomfort of rolling around wrapped around another person on a sweaty floor wearing compression gear and not much else, by having robust humor. When I started that sort of training, it was a whole lot of homophobic humor. Many schools have learned better by now (many also have not), but picture a school that had only cis folk training and routinely saying “it’s not gay if you don’t make eye contact.” The first non-cis person in the door…toxic.

That example isn’t ok anywhere, but maybe there are less blatant forms of “toxic” that could be fine if you’re not a business, or a martial arts school, or any group relying on new people feeling comfortable to be successful.

The skill I’d like to tell you about today (I promise, there is one) addresses those problems. It’s essential, and mostly invisible. 

Any successful organization has people who tend the culture. These people reinforce cultural hygiene with their peers (“uncool Fred, make a different joke”) and they bring new people in. Anywhere you’ve felt welcome, wanted, and at ease, those people have been doing their work. If you know who to go to when there’s an ethics problem (and you’d feel safe doing it), it’s probably one of these people. If you fumble something, embarrass yourself, slip up, these are the ones who smile and tell a story about when they goofed, and laugh about it.

People with this trait notice. Notice that you’re new. That you don’t know where to stand. That you don’t know how to tie your gi. That you might need a whisper before class to know you’ll be asked to lead the opening and offer a quick run-through of the words. Some people notice before things happen. You might call it anticipation rather than “noticing,” but I think of it as “noticing that something is needed.” Whether that’s before it’s a problem (ideal) or cleaning up after (necessary).

Anywhere you’ve felt “out,” awkward, unsure of your place, or outright mistreated, those noticers  are missing or maybe badly overborne by culture problems. But even in a group with terrible culture, you might find them working quietly behind the scenes. 

Whenever I traveled to another school, I watched those people. Not unlike Mr. Rogers’ “Look for the helpers.” Noticers realize something is needed, whether they handle it themselves or not. These folks are among my favorite subjects. I know they exist, and how to find their traces in a group. I think this ability is not just a keystone of “big-C” Competence, but is a gem of a skill even on its own. Cultivate it if you can!

I’ve got three noticers to tell you about today. For the third article in a row I’ll be telling you about some senior women martial artists. I promise it’s not about gender, there are others who notice well and manage culture too. It’s also not about martial arts, that’s just where we are in my timeline and the setting makes it easy to describe. One reason the setting makes it easy to describe is that this skill is too-often dismissed in traditionally-male settings. Making people feel “comfortable” in a martial arts setting may seem almost contradictory. But ask any successful leader in the harshest and most demanding settings, military for example, whether people need to feel as if they belong, and I think you’ll hear why this matters. Organizations dismiss it to their detriment.

Let me tell you about three people. Theresa, Johanna, and Kaitlin.

Theresa is a quite-senior instructor and co-owner of an excellent school. One of the most striking things about Theresa to me is that she’s so experienced in our shared art, and other martial arts, that she palpably exudes “nothing to prove.” That’s a state most of us strive for, to be unconcerned by what others think. All the while pursuing learning as if it’s her first day on the mat. Nothing to prove, and everything to learn.

Part of noticing, paradoxically, may be not noticing. Making others comfortable can be done skillfully by showing what comfortable looks like. Theresa is not what you would call “touchy-feely.” She’s got her own boundaries, and she respects yours. It can be embarassing to have someone observe your embarassments. Some of the deftest etiquette is making others comfortable by conveying what they need to know without making a big ‘ol deal about it. When Theresa trains, she likes to train seriously. She likes it when others can train seriously too, without lost time and overhead caused by unnecessary obstacles. Her culture hygiene comes in many forms, but most of what I’ve seen her do has been subtle.

I attended seminars occasionally, and would drop in to Theresa’s school whenever I visited that city. I would also see her at our art’s annual events. We were rarely partners on the mat, her rank is substantially higher than mine and I noticed that we were more likely to be seeking out the same big brutish guys for our partners than we were to end up as partners ourselves. But on more than one occasion, though I was just one of a crowd, she would pause to put a word in my ear, correct a technique frustrating me, or just nod and make a connection. From my first time sharing a mat with her, and for many years after, I had the impression that she knew I was there. She noticed. She also didn’t make a big “yay, women in martial arts!” thing about it. She was there with good advice, encouragement, and most importantly as a model of what’s possible. “You can look and behave like this, and that’s going to be ok.” Modeling good culture without fanfare is a great skill. But modeling it where it needs to be shown, where showing it will shore up or convey the culture, takes noticing.

One of the hard things for many women who try martial arts can be managing our own expectations for how to look and act. For many folks “sweaty, rumpled, loud, and violent” isn’t our default. Senior women showing that it’s ok to just be awesome, and it’s ok to not be touchy-feely-huggy-friendly, and it’s ok to consider function over form, that creates a huge culture improvement. Focusing on training rather than getting stuck in our own heads is a hard skill to learn. Easier when it’s demonstrated. Theresa’s is a style of culture-creation that makes people feel ok to let out the little girl who always wanted to kick and yell and roll on the floor.

Noticing is the key, and Theresa notices. Usually while no one is noticing her. I’m not a bird watcher, but if you think of a small bird you wouldn’t look twice at, but if you hear it you pause and enjoy its song, that’s Theresa. (To make this an apt metaphor it would have to be some sort of sci-fi assassin bird that could take down an army, but you get the idea.) You won’t even know she’s there (unless she happens to throw you across a room, that’s hard to miss) but you’ll appreciate the effect when she is there.

The next woman I’ll tell you about is Johanna. She started quite a bit later than I did, and I knew immediately when I met her, early on in her training, that she would be a star. If Theresa is the bird you don’t see, only hear, Johanna is a red-shouldered hawk. Or maybe in sci-fi, a Klingon Bird of Prey. You know she’s around. But when you hear her, it’s already too late for you.

This skill isn’t about personality. Creating culture, noticing, bringing new people in can be done well by a comfortable grandmother, an exceptional Drill Sergeant, an understanding peer, or a whirlwind of efficiency. Theresa shows what things look like, notices when you need something, wastes not an instant on nonsense, she just leads the way, trusting you’ll follow. Johanna operates differently.

Johanna is another school co-owner. She’s a powerhouse. Energy, brightness, everywhere at once, eyes-in-back-of-head, next-level “noticing.” That’s Johanna.

Before she had her own school, I spotted her, nowhere near a black-belt, performing culture maintenance. She was manifestly helping people acclimate to the school she was in. No one left a mat she was on feeling worse than they came onto it. She put the “courage” in “Encouragement.” If I had to guess, I’d wager that she climbs her own self-doubt by hauling others up steep slopes. You can’t slide if others are relying on you to hold them up.

One thing about Johanna is that she has a rare talent for cultural troubleshooting. I recall an occasion when something was going on with another woman at her previous school, and that person wasn’t getting any official help. Johanna was there with the same reassurance others were, but she also had ideas. If one wasn’t going to work, she had more. Moreover, she used other Competence skills to make those ideas work.

Johanna is overt, she’ll swoop in and take charge of a culture problem. She’ll create space and make people welcome with clear and forthright information. Johanna doesn’t hide the ball. (She could, she’s fully subtle enough to hide one of those super-sized beach-balls in an empty room if she wants to. But to Johanna, healthy relationships, healthy group culture, those are the responsibility of adults who shouldn’t be playing games getting it done.)

Johanna came in to training already with a strong interest in what makes healthy relationships. She made it her business to pursue certification in a curriculum for sexual assault prevention, and has since taken on teaching it. (Aside, Theresa actually built an assault-prevention curriculum. Noticing is something people can learn, and it takes all sorts of forms. These two excellent teachers have the trait, and know how to teach it.)

Johanna is a leadership-oriented rockstar in the mostly-male profession of martial arts. She’s not at all unaware of the obstacles, pitfalls, unsaid-things, glass ceilings, and general grossness many people experience in martial arts. Not in her school. Healthy boundaries, healthy etiquette, respect, and openness, along with plenty of encouragement and support make for one of the lowest-barrier schools I’m aware of. Given a couple of decades it wouldn’t surprise me at all to see her expand that influence greatly.

My third example today is Kaitlin. Who has a different style of noticing altogether. Kaitlin is newer yet, though she’s already the second in an excellent school, and quite senior “for a woman” (which means she’s out-seniored men twice her age and experience in great numbers).

Throughout this series when I’ve described Competence skills, I’ve said that I believe they’re learnable. That people can acquire them. The very first step in learning one is to know you need it.

I’ve known Kaitlin for quite a few years, and think highly of her. She’s an excellent martial artist, and her students think highly of her. But recently she asked for some time with me, and performed an excellent interrogation. She wasn’t aware of this series of articles, and I haven’t trained with her on the mat in more than five years, and rarely even then. But she came hunting me down, and asked me pointed questions about how to be better at a whole lot of these skills we’re discussing. I may need to add “interrogation” to the list.

Kaitlin’s primary focus of inquiry was making women feel welcome in her school. She noticed that prior to the pandemic, the first couple of years of its operation, the school seemed to have a healthy number of women trying it, staying, and feeling comfortable. Then that number dropped precipitously. Disproportionately. With things opening back up, she wanted to be sure that she was on top of every possible thing she could be doing to encourage new and retain existing women students. She wanted to know how to make them feel welcome.

The first step in learning a skill is knowing it exists.

In too many schools, businesses, churches, clubs, teams, this “how do we make new people welcome” question isn’t asked openly. There’s no plan. Or if there is a plan, it’s about handing new folks a one-sheet when they sign up, or putting some stuff on the Web site. No shame, those are good things to do, it shows someone asked the question. But a sheet of information (that may never get updated and woefully won’t match reality) isn’t the same as teaching new people what to expect, how to behave, where to stand, what’s expected of them. That’s the easy, check-a-box way. “Ok, onboarding handled! I never need to think of it again!”

That’s why this skill is hard. To most people, even thinking about culture is a challenge. For those who think about it, engaging directly with other humans may feel awkward. It’s always easier not to do it. It’s easier to think of reasons it’s not needed. “People who don’t like it here are just a bad fit.” Not “maybe something could be different.” Even easy things like mentoring take time and intention. It can seem like a waste, and the results are usually invisible. People leave martial arts schools all the time, but it’s rare to hunt them down for an exit interview. Even when asked, these are problems it’s hard to put a finger on. “It just wasn’t for me” could mean “I never quite felt comfortable, as if I belonged.” That could have been avoided on the first day.

Kaitlin asks the questions. Bringing “instinctive” into “intentional” and honing her skills at culture hygeine is almost “noticing that noticing is needed.” She’s got plenty of engagement skills to bring to bear on problems, or more importantly to exploit opportunities once she knows they exist.

Kaitlin shows a whole lot of these Competence skills actually. Some of them nascent, others full-bore. In this discussion I watched her gears turning on how what I offered might (or might not!) work in her context. I might be her senior (or at least considerably older), but she wasn’t taking anything at face value. She was there to get information, and she got some. For her own use.

Even though the school isn’t hers, she feels personal responsibility to handle something she is in the best position to handle. I saw her chewing on team-building, on handling egos, on spotting obstacles and red-flags. She was thinking as a businessperson, and as a person. She was trying to understand the needs of people coming from quite different perspectives than her own, but all needing to learn the culture of the school. She put her own uncompensated time and effort into making the school a place people could belong. That level of understanding is something to seek out.

Because it would bother me, and some other literature-loving folks I know who read this, I’ll finish the set of Sci-Fi birds. Kaitlin would be the android bird, with no call of its own, who comes in and learns by watching and listening, asking innocent questions, and eventually becoming more natural than all of the other birds. Able to use the calls she’s learned to be flexible and effective in all sorts of situations. Kaitlin spotted the risk of failing to effectively bring new people in (especially women, who have a steep hill to climb when they start martial arts) and made it her business to figure out how to do what was needed, and didn’t waste time or risk loss by trying to figure it out herself from scratch. It’s always better to start with information. I’m guessing she didn’t stop with one interrogation.

The thread between these very different people, with their very different styles, is that Competent People Notice Culture. I’ve emphasized noticing group culture, noticing people and their relation to it. Noticing isn’t enough though. Other Competence skills impel action, or they’ll just be noticing people walk out the door.

Pay attention to any group you’re happy to be in, figure out who made that happen and how they did it. This one isn’t easy to spot. Maybe your “birds” behave differently but achieve that same results. Welcome. Belonging. How they go about it may surprise you!