Had a great time listening in to NCDD’s confab call this month on liberal-conservative dialogue. Unfortunately I had to jump off a little early, but there was still plenty of great conversation to be had. Here are some takeaways and other thoughts from the call:

• So much of cross-ideology participation has to do with how conversations and issues are framed. Folks from both sides have a tendency to incorporate their own viewpoints when advertising a discussion, or encouraging others to come in (IE: Everyone can participation in conversations about “social justice,” but some are turned off by the mere mention of the term “social justice.”). How can we be more open with how we discuss discussions?
• Just like we must consider the language we use in trying to be inclusive of those with other views, we must also consider who is moderating as well. If a trusted emissary brings the group together, the conversation will likely be more robust than if the conveners are one-sided in their stances. Here is a timeline of major liberal-conservative collaborations, via NCDD.
• People can spend at least some of their lives sheltered from others who share different viewpoints. When folks start to interact and have conversations with people who have seemingly opposing views, people find out that they actually like eachother. This is huge, and it prevents people from thinking that others are the essence of pure evil.
• Living Room Conversations is one model that allows people to have these sort of cross-ideology talks.
• The two speakers on the call, Jacob Hess and Phil Neisser collaborated on a book discussing their, at one time, unlikely friendship — You’re Not as Crazy as I Thought (But You’re Still Wrong)
• Check out NCDD’s hackpad for the confab, which contains questions, thoughts, and links to other resources discussed on the call.
• Keep an eye on NCDD’s news page for other media from today’s confab as well

We’ve been discussing civility in many contexts, not just “red-blue” dialogue between regular folks, but also with regard to race and the media (such as the use of the “I-word”), and how a lack of civility inhibits the work of Congress. This sort of cross-ideological conversation needs to happen in order for us to have a strong democracy, because as everyone remains in their own silos, no discussion actually happens.

A HUGE thank you goes out to NCDD to making this conversation happen! We’re looking forward to thinking and talking and acting on this further.

See the original post at http://strongerdemocracy.org/2013/05/15/thoughts-on-liberal-conservative-dialogue/ and learn more about the Campaign for Stronger Democracy at www.strongerdemocracy.org.

Like first brush strokes on a canvas, first thoughts provide a starting place for more refined thoughts, for subsequent brush strokes. First thoughts, like initial brush strokes, are rarely worth sharing. In fact, sharing first thoughts can be deeply counter-productive to good group decisions.

Practical Tip: Just because I think something, doesn’t mean I have to say it or act on it. When we share first thoughts we run a substantial risk of offending others, saying things we will regret, and requiring the group to spend time on issues that turn out to be a waste of time.

Best to sit with our thoughts until a clear picture emerges of what we want to say.

Hello friends,

I have important results to share with everyone!

The National Dialogue Network (NDN) conducted a survey in April 2013. A total of 415 people participated (including both self-selected and random panel responses). Each participant ranked their top five choices from a provided list of twenty-two issue titles to identify the top issue for our inaugural 2013 national conversations that will take place in communities across the U.S. in September. The top ranked issue title selected was “Poverty/Wealth in America.”

The NDN is a volunteer working group that received a Catalyst Award from the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation (NCDD) to model a social and technical infrastructure to support “a national conversation on a common issue of importance in communities across the county.” The NDN working group and advisors confirmed the 2013 topic in early May. Broad public participation is requested to help NDN prepare nonpartisan core materials and a national survey that will be available to all this September.

To prepare for this, the public is again invited to help “frame and focus” the national conversation further by answering a quick survey on specific aspects of “Poverty/Wealth in America.” What should concern our communities as we struggle together under challenging economic circumstances?

Submissions received by June 30 will be reviewed by the NDN volunteer working group in a publicly transparent process to identify and prepare core materials and resources that touch on regional, urban, and rural concerns and questions. These materials will be used online and also offered to local hosts across the country to conduct their own conversations beginning Monday, September 2, 2013 until mid October (date still to be determined).

To submit one or more ideas to help frame and focus the national conversation on the topic of “Poverty/Wealth in America,” visit this link: http://tinyurl.com/NDN-Cycle2-2013

The formal PDF report from our NDN working group with summary, graphs, and rankings is available through this link: http://surveygizmolibrary.s3.amazonaws.com/library/95644/2013Cycle1report.pdf

To stay up to date on this topic, please subscribe to our NDN listserv that is hosted for us by NCDD:
http://tinyurl.com/ndn-listserv

And if you have any comments or other feedback then please leave us a message below. Thank you!

Voice messages for the NDN can be left on their info line: 800-369-2342; Email can be sent to info@NationalDialogueNetwork.org. Local collaborating organizers are being sought for a September rollout.

At times I feel like a mad scientist  bringing together people with diverse views to have conversations about challenging issues. In unstructured social circumstances, I would be concerned about potential blow-ups. What awes me again and again — the container that Living Room Conversations creates enables meaningful connections to form and defuses the explosive elements. It is such a joy to see the best in people as we learn from each other and discover our commonalities.

Living Room Conversations are a little startup right now, but as we connect with partners working on criminal justice reform, Wall St. reform, immigration, energy, eliminating corruption and more, the potential for empowering communities becomes clear. If this simple formula can help people connect and find common ground on a broad set of issues, just perhaps, we can change our civil and political culture.

How do we enable this simple open source project to go viral? We’ve created a sharable short video and even submitted it for the MacArthur Looking@Democracy competition.  Check it out, vote, and share it if you think of an organization or individual that might have ideas for how to use them!

Andy Fluke, NCDD’s creative director and co-founder, created a timeline for us to take a look at during this popular confab call (over 120 people have signed up so far!), to help us think about the trajectory of red-blue (or transpartisan, or political bridge-building) dialogue since NCDD’s early days.

Take a look at what we’ve featured on the timeline, and then add a comment about what you think is missing!  We know there have been many, many more red-blue dialogue efforts over the years besides the ones listed here.  Please add comments about the ones that have meant the most to you.

Also, looking over this timeline, feel free to add your thoughts and opinions on what has been tried in the past, and how we might do better going forward!  Wednesday’s Confab call with Jacob Hess and Phil Neisser is designed to get us talking about how we might work together to expand this area of dialogue and deliberation further, so your ideas are most welcome!!

And register for the call today if you haven’t already!

There are $100,000 in prizes altogether (first prize is $25,000), and these funds and exposure could really make a difference to our colleagues’ work.  I looked at a bunch of the videos that have been submitted, and I think some of our colleagues have a GREAT chance of winning prizes.

Let’s show our support by voting for their videos, adding supportive comments, liking your favorite videos on Facebook and Twitter, and forwarding this email to others!  If a video on dialogue, deliberation, or public engagement wins one of the top prizes, the exposure will benefit all of us.  Please note that voting ends this Thursday at 3pm Eastern.

Here are our colleagues’ entries that I’m aware of…

Living Room Conversations:

• Video1: http://lookingatdemocracy.org/submissions/15125-living-room-conversations-open-your-ears-open-your-mind-open-your-home
• Video2: http://lookingatdemocracy.org/submissions/15075-living-room-conversations-building-a-healthier-democracy

Re-Inventing Democracy Through Participatory Budgeting

• http://lookingatdemocracy.org/submissions/15201-re-inventing-democracy-through-participatory-budgeting

Evelyn Messinger’s DigitalCitizen.tv

(this video mentions the winning Catalyst Award for political bridge-building, as Evelyn is a key team member)

• Us? Work Together? http://lookingatdemocracy.org/submissions/14896-us-work-together

Jeffrey Abelson’s two videos

(Jeffrey is the one who created all the videos from our 2012 conference which are up at http://tinyurl.com/bneoz9s)

• Video1: http://lookingatdemocracy.org/submissions/15177-era-of-the-serious-citizen (a revised version of his 60-second “Song Of A Citizen” teaser video)
• Video2: http://lookingatdemocracy.org/submissions/15179-the-only-way-to-fix-broken-government (new video that calls for more active citizens and specifies deliberation as the “how-to”)

Purple Couples on Red/Blue Union from PurpleStates.tv / Cynthia Farrar:

• http://lookingatdemocracy.org/submissions/14838-purple-couples-on-red-blue-union

Ele Munjeli’s proposal for Civitas ARG, an augmented reality game and transmedia story

• http://lookingatdemocracy.org/submissions/14971-civitas-arg (and see the larger proposal at http://civitasarg.org/civitasarg.pdf)

The GeoDeliberation Project at Penn State:

• http://lookingatdemocracy.org/submissions/15202-the-geodeliberation-project

David Grant (who’s not an NCDD member) asked me to support his videos.  He has 3 up, including:

• Towards a Two-Legged Democracy: http://lookingatdemocracy.org/submissions/14994-towards-a-two-legged-democracy

Also, Ines Sommer, an independent filmmaker I just met in Chicago at the PB conference (also not an NCDD member – yet), has a great submission in:

• YOUR DATE WITH DEMOCRACY – Participatory Budgeting in Chicago: http://lookingatdemocracy.org/submissions/15001-your-date-with-democracy-participatory-budgeting-in-chicago

I hope we can show our collective support for our colleagues’ hard work and important messages by voting for their projects, adding supportive comments, and sharing the videos on Facebook and Twitter.

Looking@Democracy is a national competition to bring attention to ideas, perspectives and stories that are not currently featured in our mainstream political conversation. It’s a project of the Illinois Humanities Council, with support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The best place to learn more about the project is http://lookingatdemocracy.org/details/faq.

Rush Limbaugh taught me, in my teenage years, that liberals were trying to destroy America. And I believed him.

They were the enemy. And I was a combatant in a desperate culture war against them for the soul of America…

Like many of my conservative community, I felt I had little reason to believe otherwise….

Then I made a decision to actually spend time with ‘liberals’ – going to school with them, breaking bread with them and talking deeply with them.

And in ten years of looking, what I found was astounding: not once did I encounter a liberal out to destroy America. What were they doing instead? Trying to figure out ways to make the world a better place – something strangely familiar to what I believed as a religious, building-the-kingdom kid from Utah.

I began co-facilitating liberal-conservative dialogue courses at the University of Illinois. I began interviewing liberal and conservative citizens to understand subtle distinctions in contrasting narratives. I fell in love with the Public Conversations Project, Living Room Conversations and an adorable liberal named Phil.

And with each step forward, some things kept growing inside me: Anger – anger that I had been lied to – convinced for so much of my life that “those liberals” were something they were not. Sorrow – sadness that the majority of my friends, family and conservative community still lived with boiling political resentments and fear. And delight – a thrill that I had found another way – a way of conversing that had dissipated these fears and resentments entirely – filling me, instead, with new insights, discoveries and the sweetness that comes from seeing loveable people as they really are.

I am not an anomaly. When I share my experience with conservative friends and family, I almost universally see hunger in them for similar experiences – this, alongside bone-deep weariness of all the animosity, all the hostility and all the relentless political sound bytes about “those idiots on the other side.”

I am reaching out to my NCDD colleagues today because I often feel isolated and a bit lonely in my work. I’m eager to connect more formally and more regularly with others who also sense the enormous possibility of transpartisan and liberal-conservative work – and who share my ache to make it more popular than Rush Limbaugh.

In advance of a confab call Phil and I are doing next Wednesday, there are 3 questions we would love to ask anyone in NCDD – especially those with a particular interest in the socio-political divide. I’ll post them below in the comments, and I hope you will respond.

In a nutshell, the three questions are:

1. Could you tell us a little about your experience with red-blue or political dialogue?
2. Do you have ideas on how we can secure trust and buy-in from different sides, or how we can expand transpartisan work in the future?
3. What current dialogue efforts or initiatives do you believe hold real potential for the future of red-blue dialogue work?

If there is anything else you’d like to raise or share – please do. We’re all ears – and will share all ideas that come up in our written report to the group.

Thank you for your attention, NCDD. It means a lot…You have my promise as a qualitative researcher: We will report back key themes of everything you share!

This week I am going to Newtown, CT, where I’ve been asked to help design and facilitate the decision-making process on the future of the Sandy Hook Elementary School, where the tragic shooting of 20 students and 6 educators took place nearly four months ago. I decided to take on this assignment for two reasons.

Since the day of the tragedy, the Sandy Hook Elementary School has been closed. Its students were moved to a vacant school building elsewhere in the Newtown community to finish out the school year. At issue for the community now is how to move forward. Do they remodel the existing Sandy Hook School, build a new school on the existing site, or start fresh on an entirely different property. These issues involve both technical and deeply emotional questions.

The request for me to work with Newtown came at a time when I have been (and will be) continually on the road for The Work of Hope national tour, when our national alliances are growing (a new one with American Library Association is just underway), when we launched our first ever Beacon Community in Battle Creek, MI, and when we are strengthening our own internal capacities and operations.

Despite this ongoing work, I felt compelled – perhaps called – to work with Newtown.

First, I see it as a way to make a contribution to the community as it seeks to move forward after this horrific tragedy. I believe this is important work to do. I want to contribute in any way I can.

Second, Newtown now holds within the nation a special place in our hearts and minds. Here is a community that has experienced the unthinkable; and yet, here also is a community that is finding a path forward, amid its grief and pain and sorrow. What I know from talking in-depth with Americans from all walks of life is that we as a nation need to restore belief in ourselves that we can get things done together.

Newtown is helping to lead the way – demonstrating through the Sandy Hook Elementary School decision-making process, and on countless other concerns, what it means for a community to come together and engage on tough issues. And to do it as best they can with a sense of hope and grace.

I will keep you posted.

In the meantime, I know our thoughts and prayers are with the good people of Newtown.

- Rich Harwood

We had a fascinating experience last week that challenged us in the use of our model. We were invited in by the Center for Excellence in Public Leadership at George Washington University to facilitate the majority of the 3rd day of a 4 day leadership capstone that they were conducting for the Natural Resources Conservation Service (part of U.S. Department of Agriculture).

The Capstone brought together three leadership cohorts from the agency to synthesize, practice and apply the skills and competencies about leadership towards a real-world problem: drafting a new framework from which to develop and launch new landscape conservation initiatives for the agency to consider using going forward.

What was the key challenge for AmericaSpeaks? We typically develop the design for our town meetings and summits well in advance of a big meeting, ideally beginning that process 8-10 weeks before the meeting convenes. In this case, although we came in with some notions of what we might do for day 3, we didn’t begin the design process until we were onsite on day 2 at the same time as the cohorts were participating in a number of intensive learning and evaluation exercises, even in the same room!

We worked with capstone faculty for about 4.5 hours that afternoon and then finalized all of our materials that evening. The next morning, we conducted all our necessary briefings and trainings and then ran our town meeting process for a four hour afternoon session and a 90 minute evening session. It was exhausting and exhilarating!

The result? The full group of 70 participants came to agreement on the key components of a new framework that would guide future landscape initiatives. The following morning, three presenters, one from each cohort, presented to a leadership team of nearly a dozen agency leaders. The presentation went so well that the leadership team has asked to the group to provide a more in-depth report shortly to allow this proposed framework to move forward to implementation in 2013.

The whole experience was rewarding because of the critical nature of many of the landscape initiatives the agency is currently leading, including saving the habitat of the sage grouse in the western U.S. and saving the longleaf pine forests in the southern U.S. Hopefully this new framework will lead to even more successful, public-private landscape conservation initiatives in the future.

Getting people involved is one of the most powerful approaches we can take to build team and build skills. However, often we choose whether or not to involve others, it’s based on an “I” decision. For instance, “Do I need support in making this decision?” Or, “Do I need new and better ideas?” Another way to look at it is to judge how this opportunity can help build something that the organization or team may need. For instance, “How can my team benefit from sharing in this decision-making process?” Here are some reasons why you might (or might not) choose to involve others:

• If you want to build critical thinking skills, consider involving people in a participatory decision-making process.
• If you want to increase the innovation capability of your organization, consider involving people in collaborative problem solving and solution development.
• If you want to build a cohesive team and a strong culture, consider doing both – involving people in a mix of participatory decision-making and collaboration.
• If you need to move fast to manage a crisis – consider bringing together a small group of trusted advisors to help you think through your options and choose how to make your decision

As your organization develops greater critical thinking skills, innovation capability, deeper relationships, stronger bonds of trust and increased buy-in and ownership, you become better poised to tackle big challenges and strategic opportunities.

To read the full blog, visit http://mmbdconsulting.com/team-building/.