Meet Trystan Reese

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Trystan Reese a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Trystan, so great to have you on the platform and excited to have you share your wisdom with our community today. Communication skills often play a powerful role in our ability to be effective and so we’d love to hear about how you developed your communication skills.

In 2008, I was working on the ground on the No on Proposition 8 campaign, organizing hundreds of volunteers to defend gay marriage in California. Despite millions raised in grassroots dollars and an infrastructure beyond anything that had been assembled for a ballot measure before, we lost that campaign.

We didn’t just lose the right for LGBTQ+ couples to get married in California by a few votes… we lost by millions of votes.

I had to wake up the next morning and go to the grocery store knowing that at least half of the people in line with me had likely voted, just the day before, to take away my freedom to marry the person I love. It was not a good day. Nor was the day after that, when we started doing our debriefs and analysis to figure out how this had happened. I mean, we had run a great campaign! We followed the data, talked to hundreds of thousands of voters, and turnout had been amazing because of the presidential election.

But what we learned is that none of that mattered. There simply weren’t enough people who believed that marriage should be for two people of any gender; even voters who knew and loved LGBTQ+ people turned up at the polls and voted to shut their friends and neighbors out of the marriage arena.

So the LGBTQ+ movement had to reorient ourselves almost completely. We had been so focused on coming out, believing that sheer openness and visibility would be enough to turn the cultural tides in our direction. We didn’t know that people would simply cut a small hole in their homophobia, big enough for one or two people to slip through but not big enough to allow the entire community in. Unfortunately for us, this revelation meant that we would have to pivot to the hardest type of organizing there is– persuasion.

Organizers will do ANYTHING to avoid persuasion. We’ll identify our likely supporters and drag them, kicking and screaming, to the polls. We’ll register people to vote, educate people on their doorsteps, and mobilize coalitions to support our cause. But the actual work of changing someone’s mind on a heated topic– one that connects to ethics, morals, religion, tradition, and a core sense of what just FEELS right or wrong– that work is often thought to be impossible.

Or is it?

After the loss of 2008, I was recruited to join a team of organizers who learned what it meant to change hearts and minds… literally. We went door to door in areas likely to house unsupportive voters: people who told us, to our faces on their doorsteps, that they did not believe in gay marriage, non-discrimination protections for transgender people, or any other LGBTQ+ equality issue. And we learned to talk to them.

More importantly, we learned to listen to them. We learned how to manage our own defensiveness and protective mechanisms so when they said things that were hurtful, we leaned into that disagreement instead of pulling away from it. We learned to ask questions rooted in genuine curiosity, instead of burying others under a pile of debate points. And we learned, through these conversations, how incredibly similar we were to these voters who seemed, at the surface, to be very different from us.

Later study would find these types of conversations, now called Deep Canvassing or Deep Persuasion, to be the single most effective strategy in shifting even deeply held beliefs of homophobia and transphobia. The researchers who have looked at this work have found it to be the “stickiest” of all political or cultural change strategies, which means that the change is profound and radical, and lasts for years beyond even one doorstep conversation.

Make no mistake– these conversations are HARD. It’s hard to hear someone tell you that their religion prevents them from wanting you to have a happy life. It’s hard to stay connected when someone parrots harmful words and phrases that have been used to hurt you for decades. It’s hard not to withdraw, to armor up, to attack and defend in those moments. But when you model interest and openness, curiosity and humility– when you lean in and listen for understanding and points of commonality, you don’t just end up changing the minds of other people. YOU end up changing as well.

And as long as you’re open to changing and being changed… you’ll be an effective communicator.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

Trystan Reese teaches individuals, teams, and organizations how to adapt across lines of difference so they can stay relevant for many years to come. He does his work through Collaborate Consulting, Inc., based out of Portland, Oregon. He is a transgender dad and author whose memoir, How We Do Family, is available now wherever books are sold.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

Knowledge of self is critical– knowing who you are and where you come from ensures that you are never rattled by the identities, values, or differences of others.

Knowledge of others is next– being open and curious about difference, rather than judging it or shying away from it, ensures that you’ll be able to adapt authentically when working with those whose orientations to the world are radically divergent from your own.

Adaptive skills– figuring out what you can do to lean across difference while still being yourself helps invite others to lean into you, so you’re both able to create a new space that embodies the best of both of you… while also being something entirely new!

Before we go, maybe you can tell us a bit about your parents and what you feel was the most impactful thing they did for you?

When I was 12 years old, I was told by my 7th-grade biology teacher that I would have to dissect a frog or risk failing the class. I didn’t feel comfortable doing so, but I also didn’t want to get an F! I researched student rights and learned that no student in the state of California could be forced into completing an assignment that was against their beliefs; teachers were to provide an alternative assignment that would be graded on the same curve as the original one. Even when confronted with this law, my biology teacher doubled down and insisted that I dissect a frog with the rest of my class.

When no amount of conversation worked, I decided to stage a protest in front of my middle school when I knew it would cause the most trouble– at morning drop-off. My parents didn’t exactly understand my refusal to dissect a frog (my father was a physician who probably dissected more than a few frogs in his day), but they supported my decision to empower myself against my teacher and the school administration. They took me to Michaels to get poster board and paint pens, and helped me find the phone numbers for the local newspaper and television station.

Though some of my friends agreed to march with me, they all backed out at the last minute out of fear of reprisal from the school. So I marched alone with my signs that early morning and greeted the journalists who responded to my calls for media coverage. Then, the principal came out of his office and asked me to join him and the school superintendent for a meeting.

I had won. The superintendent told me I would not be required to dissect a frog, nor would anyone who wanted to receive an alternative assignment, provided that I told the media to go home. Which I happily did.

I will never forget what it felt like to be sad and scared, but certain that what I was doing was right. To have my parents backing me up, telling me that my voice mattered (even though I was only 12 years old), was everything to me. I try to do the same with my children now, ensuring that they know how powerful they are and how much change they can make– even against great and powerful odds.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.trystanreese.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trystanreese/