In this solo episode, Trisha examines a shadow she left out of three episodes on music and connection: the same doors music opens for connection can just as easily be used to draw a line around who belongs.

What happens when the belonging a crowd creates turns on you mid-song? And what do you actually do when you're standing inside a circle that starts singing something you can't join? Trisha also revisits a decision to launch a series on sport, after the World Cup made clear that sport carries the same two faces as music, working through the same mechanisms.

Trisha wants your voice for the new series. Send her a voice note telling her about a sporting moment that shifted you, or a moment sport told you that you didn't belong. Either one. Both, if you've got them.

Referenced in this episode:

• Episode 84: Music Is Universal, Music Is Particular - the Listener Voices episode that prompted this reflection.

Make sure you join Trisha in this journey of growth and discovery throughout the year via Substack or LinkedIn.

I would like to acknowledge the Dharawal people, the Aboriginal people of Australia, whose country I live and work on. I would like to pay my respects to their elders, past, present, and emerging, and thank them for sharing their cultural knowledge and awareness with us.

Hi there, everyone. I'm Trisha Carter, an organizational psychologist and an explorer of cultural intelligence. I'm on a quest to discover what enables us to see things from different perspectives, especially different cultural perspectives, and why sometimes it's easier than others to experience those moments of awareness, the shifts in our thinking.

Today's episode is, is a shorter one. It's me thinking about my thinking out loud. And for those of you who may not be aware of cultural intelligence, that is a part of cultural intelligence. It's the CQ, which stands for cultural intelligence strategy, and that is where we spend most of our time on this podcast, looking at how we can increase CQ strategy.

And because I've been thinking about my thinking, one of my best techniques is to share that thinking with you and then end up with lots of other great thinking, as part of that process. So last episode,

Episode 84, Music is Universal, Music is Particular. I asked you to hold onto something. It was a bit of a moment in Lucy Butters' voice note. You'll remember Lucy if you listen to the episode. She's from Scotland. She's a very experienced cultural intelligence facilitator, and she's the author of Cultural Intelligence in Practice, which is a great book.

Anyway, she'd been telling us about her granny's piano, about how bagpipes need to be outside. She'd reminded us about the importance of context for music, and she spoke about Strange Fruit. And if you haven't heard that song, that's a really interesting one to listen to. And then almost in passing, she said She spoke about the fact that I asked where you don't feel you belong with music, and she instantly thought of sport.

Being in a group, hearing the songs they're singing and thinking, "I'm in the wrong place." I've been thinking about that a bit because notice Lucy wasn't saying she was among strangers. She was at the sport she'd chosen, in the crowd she'd joined. In my imagination, she's with her people, or so the jersey would say, but the songs told her otherwise.

And I think that's almost the hardest version of not belonging that there is. Not standing outside the circle looking in, but standing inside the circle when it starts to sing something and you just can't join in with it

Now hold on to that for a minute, but I have a confession. For a while, I've been planning our next series of discussions, and I want to have a series about sport. Sport and connection, sport and the shifts it can create in us, and the learning it can teach us. I've been collecting a few stories and lining up some conversations and starting to look at some of the research.

And honestly, dear listeners, I was quite excited, and I still am, but a few things stopped me. The first was Lucy's voice note, and the second was about the World Cup. There were some things that happened during the World Cup that weren't all positivity and connection. One of those was after the semifinal in Atlanta, after Argentina's win over England.

Argentina players celebrated on the pitch with a banner that had been handed to them by their fans. It read, "Las Malvinas son Argentinas." The Malvinas, or the Falkland Islands, depending on where you live, are Argentine. Within a day, the UK government was calling for an investigation, FIFA's disciplinary committee was assessing the match reports, and official statements on every side were repeating the same sentence: politics should be kept out of sport.

And that's a phrase I've heard many times This reminded me that I couldn't plan a series about how sport can shift us together and uplift us while I ignore history, the examples of division and hate, and of course, the history of painful protests that are also a part of sport. It's almost like the shadow side, so to speak.

And then I realized something a bit uncomfortable. I'd done exactly that with music. Three episodes on music and connection, the doorways that open us up to shifts, the kama muta that I learned about, that warm feeling that music gives you, and the wonderful voices where people spoke from around the world in last episodes.

And in all that discussion, I didn't raise what also needs to be said, that music has a shadow Hate music exists. I haven't listened to it, but it's real, and it works. And here's the awful thing really, it works through the very same doors that we've been celebrating. The beat that entrains bodies until they move as one.

The being moved feeling that swells the chest The lyrics too The circle that every song draws. You're a part of us. If you take those aspects and you point them at a target, music can become a weapon There is a well-documented music scene

That white supremacist movements have used for decades deliberately as a recruitment tool and a fundraiser. Bonding music weaponized. And at its most terrible, when I looked at the research, there was Rwanda in 1994. Songs were broadcast on the radio alongside the propaganda as the genocide unfolded. One of the country's most popular singers was later put on trial before an international tribunal, where the music itself was examined as part of the case

A court of law asked whether songs had helped to incite a genocide. Survivors described how perpetrators carried a machete in one hand and a transistor radio in the other

A horrible part of me thought perhaps it's easier to commit atrocities while a familiar soundtrack is playing

I'm not gonna talk about the bands or the music that white supremacists use because that music is designed to recruit and airtime is oxygen. So we're definitely not creating a playlist for this episode. Some circles we choose not to widen. And also, here's the thing, you've already met someone who knows both faces. Hanlie van Wyk, who told us last episode about vinyl shops and the connection between brain and body. Well, Hanlie has spent much of her working life studying hate.

We're presenting together tonight at the International Conference of Applied Psychology in Florence Speaking about the intersection between hate and cultural intelligence and how cultural intelligence can be an antidote towards the hate crimes.

So Hanlie, the person who taught us about music as connection, her PhD is about what happened when not belonging turns dangerous. She has probably never needed reminding that the two sides of music exist and live side by side.

I did need that reminder. So let's go back for a moment and stand where I imagine Lucy stood. The crowd around you starts to sing or to chant, and the words are racist or cruel or aimed at belittling someone. What do you actually do? Well, the first thing I want to say is keep yourself safe. A crowd in full voice is not the moment for a lecture And nothing here is an instruction to confront anyone.

But there are some things possible for you. Your body gets the first vote. You do not have to sing. Silence in a singing crowd is not nothing, it's an action. Standing still, not clapping, not smiling. Visible non-participation is the quietest form of CQ action there is, and it does count. Second, notice what's happening inside you.

This is a shift moment, and your body will tell you before your mind does. The sensations, the surge of intense emotion, the clash of frames. These are my people, I can't join in. Name it to yourself. That pause between the feeling and your next move, that's CQ strategy doing its job And third, the moment afterwards matters even more than the moment.

You could check on anyone who was targeted, even with a look or a kind word on the way out. You can tell someone you trust what you heard, and you can use the channels. I know here in Australia at least, sports clubs and codes have reporting lines, some of which are even flashed up on the screens during an event.

People can act on those reporting channels. And let's be honest about the cost. The hardest version isn't strangers. It's when the people chanting are your people, your crowd, your family, your team. Choosing not to join has a real price, and the price is belonging, and that's exactly what makes it a choice worth making carefully, but also just worth making, as I'm sure Lucy would attest

So dear listeners, here's where I've landed. I still want to make that series about sport. If anything, I want it even more, not less, because sport may be one of the most powerful shift machines we have, and it may touch people who will never be touched by other mechanisms. It's that whole, you know, bodies alongside bodies, whether you're in the stand or on the field, strangers with one scarf, one color between them.

The World Cup we've just lived through will stay in many of our memories for years, its wonder and its warnings. And the Commonwealth Games, known as the Friendly Games, are just beginning in Glasgow. For people from the 74 countries and territories associated with the former British Empire, this will be a focus But as I look at sport, I want to do so honestly.

There's a body of research going back some seventy years now, beginning with a psychologist named Gordon Allport, about what happens when different groups come into contact with each other And the finding, like so many, is not straightforward. Contact doesn't automatically build connection. Allport never claimed it did. It builds connection under conditions, and the conditions, dear listeners, are the whole story, and we'll be diving into that work more deeply as the series unfolds. So here's my commitment to you.

We acknowledged, eventually, music's two faces, the uniting and the excluding, the same doors working both ways. We'll hold sport's two faces the same way. Sport connects and sport excludes through the very same mechanisms, and I won't only tell the uniting story. And that's where you come in because the Listener Voices episodes have become some of my favorites, and I suspect some of yours.

I'd love you to send me a voice note. Two questions this time. First, tell me about a sporting moment that shifted you. And when I say sporting, I'm holding the term loosely. It could be playing, it could be participating in some way, it could be just watching in the stands or volunteering You're there, you're standing in the crowd or you're jogging along, and one moment sport opens something in you And the second ask is just as important: tell me about a moment that sport told you you didn't belong.

Maybe like Lucy, it was the song you couldn't sing, or it was the sidelines where you weren't welcome. The game wasn't for people like you. I want both faces, dear listeners. That's the practice. And if there's someone that you think I should be talking to for this series, or a question about sport and culture that you'd like unpacked, tell me that too.

Connect on LinkedIn if we're not already, and send me a message. My details are in the show notes. Thank you, everyone, for being a part of The Shift today. Cultural intelligence is something we develop together, and these conversations are part of our shared learning journey. If this episode resonated, please share it with someone, maybe someone you've stood next to in a crowd or ran alongside in an attempt to break your personal best.

Make sure you've pressed follow or subscribe in the podcast app of your choice, and I look forward to meeting with you again on the next episode of The Shift