A Further Discussion of Dialogue
Newsletter 156 - September 12, 2023
From Beyond Intractability's Co-Directors
Heidi Burgess and Guy Burgess
In early August, in Newsletter 143, we started a series of posts on communication problems and solutions. Newsletter 143 looked at how our cognitive biases make us particularly vulnerable to media bias, and how to avoid that. Newsletter 147 discussed how (and why) to talk with and more importantly, listen to, people on the other side. We continued this topic in Newsletter 148, which discussed two of the primary ways of doing that: empathic listening (also called active listening or reflective listening) and I-messages. We are ending this communication series with this post, on dialogue. I should note that we also talked about dialogue in the mid-July Newsletter 134. But that one didn't cover "the basics" or the material on scaling up dialogue that we include here. So we thought one more post on dialogue was in order.
What is Dialogue in the Conflict Resolution Sense?
In "normal" language and literature, "dialogue" simply means people talking to each other, particularly in a novel or other written work. In the world of conflict resolution, however, "dialogue" is a special kind of conversation. In their engaging article on managing strong emotions in dialogue, published in 2022 in the Journal of Deliberative Democracy, Robert (Bob) Stains and John Sarrouf quote dialogue scholar Lauren Barthold, who then cites Diana Eck:
Dialogue utilizes narratives based in first-person experience, encourages genuine questions of curiosity to promote deeper reflection and expose gray areas, and aims at mutual understanding. Diana Eck, who developed the Pluralism Project at Harvard, explains the essence of dialogue this way: ‘Dialogue is the process of connection.... Dialogue is premised not on unanimity, but on difference. Dialogue does not aim at consensus, but understanding. Dialogue does not create agreements, but it creates relationships’ (Eck 2005, 28).
While dialogue, in the conflict resolution context, typically takes place across identity or ideological divides, the goal is not persuasion of one or the other side, nor is the goal resolution, as it is in other conflict resolution processes such as mediation or arbitration. Rather the goal of dialogue is informing and learning, and indeed, as Eck said, creating, repairing, or building relationships.
The Public Conversations Project (now called Essential Partners or here, EP) first became well known when they convened a multi-year dialogue between pro-choice and pro-life leaders in Boston, shortly after the killing of a doctor who performed abortions. This dialogue was the focus of the documentary The Abortion Talks that we discussed in Newsletter 134. PCP/Essential Partners has continued to do dialogues about abortion and many other "hot topics" all these years.
Founder, Laura Chasin, came to one of our initial Beyond Intractability conferences, and I vividly remember a conversation with her about one of their early dialogues. She reported that a year or two after the dialogue was over, she got a call from one of the participants, asking for contact information for the other participants. The caller, it turned out, had gotten pregnant (when she wasn't expecting or wanting) to, and she was trying to decide what to do. The first people she wanted to talk to, she said, were the people "on the other side" of the abortion conflict from her point of view. She had developed such strong admiration and respect for them, that she thought they could give her valuable advice as she pondered this very difficult decision. Laura's point was that while people don't usually change their views on the topic from dialogues, they do profoundly change their views of "the other."
That makes dialogues extremely powerful tools in conflict transformation.
How are Dialogues Conducted?
There are many different approaches to dialogue, but one common approach is to ask participants to explain what life experiences they have had in their past that have shaped the way the view the issue being discussed. These stories tend to humanize the speakers and draw in the listeners. While one might get in an argumentative mood if people start out by explaining their political views in terms of standard political rhetoric, that doesn't happen when people start telling personal stories about their own lives. Further questions to draw people out include asking about doubts they have or "gray areas" they see regarding the issue, ways in which they feel "out of step" from their own group, ways or places in which they have seen the issue dealt with constructively, and ways or places they have seen in which there was need for improvement or change. (See examples of sample questions along these lines in the download "Sample Questions for Divisive Issues" from EP.
Another aspect of the way PCP/EP does dialogues is that there is a lot of preparation that goes on before the actual event. The facilitators meet with the participants individually beforehand, explain the process, listen to the aspirations and concerns of the participants and allow them to help design the process in a way that will meet their needs. So the participants have "bought in" to the process before they even get there. They also, at times, have within-group conversations before the across-group conversations, in part to help the participants "practice" dialogic conversations, and also to address any fears participants have. This process is described in detail in the Stains/Saroff article we quoted earlier.
As Bob and John1 emphasize in that article, emotions are a big part of dialogue—they are not shied away from or reframed as they sometimes are in mediation. Rather, they are encouraged, because they facilitate what Bob and John call "resonance."
We are touched by others’ stories when told from the heart–when emotions are allowed to be expressed. So perhaps a better word [rather than empathy] for this way of connection and repair–is ‘resonance:’ heart-resonance that sparks genuine interest in the other’s life and world. Like when the strings of one instrument vibrate in response to the plucking of another instrument, so too are people moved in resonance with others who are expressing something meaningful and moving to themselves. Emotions facilitate this resonance. Hearts that have been untouched by emotion are rarely resonant. Inviting and expecting emotion–even strong emotion- in dialogue is the critical energy that moves people to resonance and then to curiosity and then to caring.
But, they advise:
We must also be cautious. We want resonance, not wildfire, within and between people. Emotions can be incendiary. They can be destructive. They can traumatize both speakers and listeners. ... To get the benefits of honest emotion, participants must be able to regulate its experience and expression, neither being overwhelmed nor overwhelming others. According to Perry (2004–2019), ‘you can’t relate until you can regulate.’ This capacity for self-regulation comes both from the inside and the outside: emotion management skills along with support from others and the context.
PCP and now EP is very careful to create a safe context and give support to the dialogue participants to help them so regulate. Again in the words of Bob and John,
Several practices support dialogue participants’ enhanced sense of safety, connection and self-regulated expression and experience of strong emotion: facilitator connection to participants, co-creating communication agreements, focusing on purpose, predicting and preparing for challenges, providing a highly-structured, predictable format and connected, compassionate, boundaried facilitation. The Reflective, Structured Dialogue approach created by the Public Conversations Project and carried forward by Essential Partners is a good example. An extensive and practical field manual of RSD practices (Chasin & Herzig 2006) is available at: www.whatisessential.org.2
Scaling Up Dialogue
The main downside or limitation of dialogue is that it is usually only done with 10-20 people at a time along with a trained facilitator. That makes it very difficult to scale up to have society-wide influence. although it can be done, as the six-year long abortion dialogue run by Public Conversations Project demonstrated.
Sustained Dialogue
Harold Sauders' "Sustained Dialogues" were another example of an attempt to utilize a dialogue process to address society-wide or international conflicts. As explained by Saunders
Sustained Dialogue has its roots in the Arab-Israeli-Palestinian peace process of the 1970s from which three lessons emerged: the power of a continuous political process to change relationships; the importance of addressing the human, social, political roots of conflict; and the possibility of thinking in terms of relationships between whole groups or countries. Sustained Dialogue grew in semi-annual dialogues organized by the Dartmouth Conference Regional Conflicts Task Force in the 1980s where regular meetings over a nine year period created four opportunities. The opportunities are as follows,(1) creating a cumulative agenda which means that questions left unanswered after a given meeting shape the agenda for the next meeting; (2) learning to talk analytically rather than polemically; (3) generating a common body of knowledge and reason; and lastly, (4) learning to work together.
Saunders explained that Sustained Dialogue differs from most other change processes in two ways. First, it focuses on relationships, rather than issues. Second, since relationships take a long time to change, Sustained Dialogue brought together the same group of people repeatedly over many years. Saunders explained the relationships had five elements or "arenas of interaction." There were identity, interests, power, perceptions, and patterns of interaction—all of which needed to be understood, worked through, and modified during the course of the long-running process.
Saunders ran sustained dialogues with Israelis and Palestinians and with Americans and Soviets back before the Soviet Union broke up. It seemed a promising approach at the time, and perhaps, still does. But the changes never did make a lasting difference in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, and it's hard to say whether they did in the US/Soviet conflict or not, as so much changed in that situation that was independent of those talks.
Even if such sustained, multi-year dialogues do improve relationships, there have been very few examples of that being done. It is no wonder. It is very hard to get people committed to such a long process with unknown outcomes, and it is hard to get such efforts funded for the same reason.
The Massively Parallel Approach
Another approach to scaling up is closer to our massively parallel peacebuilding idea--to get lots of different people and different organizations, all doing dialogues on different topics in different communities, roughly at the same time. For instance, the Listen First Project has formed a coalition of 500 organizations which, they say are "combating toxic division by bringing Americans together." Living Room Conversations is another organization which promotes and provides materials for "regular people" to hold dialogues in their own living rooms, but they also partner with many other organizations which are doing similar things.
These two organizations, and many others, have also formed the "Bridging Movement Alignment Council" which is a community of about 100 top bridging leaders who are working to strengthen the bridge-building field. Although each of these organizations has a slightly different process, most are doing some version of what we would call "dialogue"--they are getting people together across lines of conflict to talk constructively and to improve relationships. . The Bridging Movement Alignment Council has a "three-layer theory of change." First, they are working to strengthen the bridge-building field by coordinating their efforts, by increasing the number of people and organizations involved in bridging building, increasing the diversity of the "bridge-building staff such that it becomes fully reflective of the demography of the United States in terms of ideology, race, income, education, and age," measuring and publicizing effectiveness, and increasing funding for the field. Second, they are working to engage in a large-scale mobilization process to get different sectors and audiences on board. Current areas of emphasis are higher education, faith communities, businesses and workplaces, and federal, state, and local legislatures. They are also seeking to increase the geographic spread of their efforts so that they can reach and ever-larger percentage of the American population. Third, they are working to shift social norms to diminish affective polarization (in other words the distrust and hatred groups feel for "the other,") increase cohesion and collaboration (by which they seek to "increase the share of Americans who describe the country as united versus divided" and increase the adoption of collaboration as a societal and institutional norm for solving national, state, and local problems." Similarly, they seek to reduce political and "hate-fueled violence" and increase American's feeling of agency and belonging.
Online Dialogues
Yet as another approach to scaling up, some organizations have begun to run dialogues online. For instance Soliya has been doing online dialogues since 2003. They report on their website that they
"bring together 15,000 young adults each year in small, diverse groups and over the period of several weeks for dialogues on identity and in the context of current events. Everyone’s story deserves to be told — and heard. That is why we connect people in conversation, enabling them to share their personal journeys and engage with and across difference. We are here to eliminate the idea of ‘the other’ so that we can thrive in this 21st Century society — together." -- https://soliya.net/about
“At Soliya, with the use of video technologies, we are able to provide young people with early exposure to difference; allowing for mass but ‘human’ and cross-cultural contact on an individual level, lots of opportunities to practice the kind of skills and attitudes that will help them approach these challenges from a place of awareness and understanding. We are not only building trust at scale, we are also honing their abilities to listen and collaborate which will ensure they are equipped to compete and thrive in the 21st Century workplace." https://soliya.net/news/soliya-will-connect-young-people-across-regions-with-support-from-the-j-christopher-stevens-virtual-exchange-initiative
15,000 participants a year is great, but it still isn't enough to really reach the number of people we need to reach to transform society-wide conflicts. But it is a good start. Done together with many others doing similar programs, as those being done by members of the Bridging Movement Alignment Council and programs on other aspects of massively-parallel peacebuilding, they can, in theory at least, begin to make a substantial difference.
Dialogue Guides for Public Use
Living Room Conversations, The National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation, and EP. all have well-stocked resource pages on their websites that are full of freely-downloadable "how-to guides" for holding dialogues on a variety of divisive topics in a wide variety of settings--from families to workplaces, community centers, houses of worship, schools and universities, and others. For example, Essential Partners has put out "Countering Political Polarization: A Conversation for Trust and Understanding, which is designed to be used in one-on-one or small group conversations and a Dialogue Guide about "Race in America," along with many other guides to help people who are inexperienced with dialogue conduct one (or many) successfully. Living Room Conversations has put out "Home for the Holidays: Dialogue Across Divides Among Family and Friends". and has a host of resources including a "Friends and Family Tip Sheet" and a "Host Toolkit".
Where Do We Go from Here?
All of these efforts sound wonderful, and we are extremely encouraged to know this much effort is being put into dialogue, aka bridge-building. But we wonder if it can really have a long-term impact — can it really shift societal norms? Process evaluations consistently show that dialogue participants usually leave dialogues with changed attitudes — they have improved relationships with the people, at least, who were in the room. But will they change their attitudes about and relationships with other people in the "out group," or will they decide that the people in the room were "outliers" who were more reasonable than most people in "that group" (and, especially, the extremists that they are most worried about).
And even if they do extend their changed attitudes more widely, will these changed attitudes last when participants go home and start being bombarded by all the same hateful social media feeds, the same negative messaging from family, colleagues, and friends? Will they be willing to stand up against their own "in-group" and say, "no, you are wrong, they aren't like that"? That is very hard to do. It takes a lot of guts.
Nevertheless, we are really pleased to see how much cross-party dialogue is happening. Certainly we are better off than we would be if that weren't the case. But we hope that members of the Bridging Movement Alignment Council will work on long-term evaluations of their processes and try to figure out what can be done to make these interventions have a stronger and broader long-term impact.
As they do and we look at these evaluations, however, it is important to place this work in the broader context of American (or another) society where the work is being done. One shouldn't expect relatively small scale dialogue efforts to, on their own, be able to overcome the many divisive forces that are tearing our communities apart. After all, dialogue organizers are one of the few groups that are making a major effort to transform our destructive politics. The real problem is that the rest of us are not engaged in comparable efforts to limit destructive hyper-polarization.
To be truly successful, dialogue efforts need a much more supportive environment. And, to create that, we all need to become involved. We should make efforts to change the way we talk to and talk about people on the other side. We should bring people from the other side into our problem analysis and problem-solving efforts whenever possible. And, Guy suggests, we should think about ways in which we might be able to use mass communication technologies to scale up such efforts.
It is going to take everyone to change the social environment in which we live. But it will improve the lives of almost all of us if we can do so. So we thank all the many people and organizations who are undertaking such efforts, and call on all of our readers to join them—not, necessarily, by holding or participating in dialogues, but just by figuring out where in the massively parallel peacebuilding puzzle you can make a difference, and then start working on that.
--------------------------------
1 We know both Bob Stains and John Saroff, so it seems awkward to continue to refer to them by their last names.
2 Sometime in October, 2023, we hope to talk to Essential Partners Co-Executive Director Katie Hyten about the ways in which EP is addressing the scale-up problem. So we look forward to sharing that conversation later in October or early November.
3 That statement doesn't count Harold Saunders' "sustained dialogues" which he did with Israelis and Palestinians, as well as Americans and Soviets (back in the days of the USSR), which also lasted years.
Please Contribute Your Ideas To This Discussion!
In order to prevent bots, spammers, and other malicious content, we are asking contributors to send their contributions to us directly. If your idea is short, with simple formatting, you can put it directly in the contact box. However, the contact form does not allow attachments. So if you are contributing a longer article, with formatting beyond simple paragraphs, just send us a note using the contact box, and we'll respond via an email to which you can reply with your attachment. This is a bit of a hassle, we know, but it has kept our site (and our inbox) clean. And if you are wondering, we do publish essays that disagree with or are critical of us. We want a robust exchange of views.
About the MBI Newsletters
Once a week or so, we, the BI Directors, share some thoughts, along with new posts from the Hyper-polarization Blog and and useful links from other sources. We used to put this all together in one newsletter which went out once or twice a week. We are now experimenting with breaking the Newsletter up into several shorter newsletters. Each Newsletter will be posted on BI, and sent out by email through Substack to subscribers. You can sign up to receive your copy here and find the latest newsletter here or on our BI Newsletter page, which also provides access to all the past newsletters, going back to 2017.
NOTE! If you signed up for this Newsletter and don't see it in your inbox, it might be going to one of your other emails folder (such as promotions, social, or spam). Check there or search for beyondintractability@substack.com and if you still can't find it, first go to our Substack help page, and if that doesn't help, please contact us.
If you like what you read here, please…