Having difficult conversations about … is a series of workshop processes that help participants co-create guidelines for a culture of constructive dialogue – whether dealing with conflict resolution, knowledge production, innovation or just trying to make sense of what is going on.
- Are we willing to reflect on and question our assumptions, considering all the available evidence before jumping to conclusions?
- Are we willing to ensure inclusion in safe enough spaces even if that takes a little more time to listen deeply to the stories of those who are being excluded or harmed?
- Are we willing to maintain the dialogue long enough to co-create the best explanations, solutions and transactions we can?
Dialogue cannot exist without humility.
Paulo Freire
The skills required to create a shared culture of dialogue don’t necessarily come naturally. They have to be learnt through trial and error in a shared space that allows for that. With a little insight into process, guidelines for dialogue that are both inclusive and generative can be co-created and practiced together.
Our willingness to be vulnerable and collaborate with those who disagree with us can grow when we show a genuine interest in each other’s experience. In order to produce actionable knowledge out of this, the process also needs to be supported by some agreement on the criteria for mutually beneficial disagreements.
When disagreements are not seen as opportunities to collaborate and learn from each other, the conversation can quickly degenerate into an antagonistic binary. Questions or alternative points of view are experienced as threats and attacks on identity. Dialogue then ceases to be a tool for truth seeking, sense making or power sharing.
The workshop process of Having difficult conversations about … shows how a co-created culture of dialogue can hold together processes that identify errors in thinking as well as processes that ensure dignity and social justice. It can then be used grapple with any topic: race, gender, sexuality, inequality, climate change, migration, vaccinations, etc. The workshops can be customised for schools, communities, corporates and public sector institutions.
Having difficult conversations about … helps participants experience how collective truth seeking, sense making and power sharing is possible.