By Chris Satullo
Second of two parts (Here’s part one)
In the last year, I’ve had a chance to spend a lot of time around college students. Many are admirably thoughtful, intentional and consistent in how they live their lives to be part of the solution on climate change. Throughout each day, they try to make careful choices about what and where they eat, what they wear and where it comes from, what light bulbs they buy and where they get power, where they live and how they move about – taking myriad steps big and small to reduce their carbon footprint.
They maintain a stubborn, hopeful sense of personal agency about a problem so vast, complex and catastrophic that it paralyzes many of us.
Today, America’s civic atmosphere needs such TLC just as much as Earth’s physical atmosphere does. It is just as dangerously fouled.
Social media and partisan voices flood our public spaces with toxins – lies, big and small; corrosive attacks on the honest brokers who flag the lies; sneering narratives about huge cohorts of fellow citizens; metastasizing conspiracy theories; howling Twitter mobs and self-righteous caliphs of cancel culture.
Respectful dialogue – the lifeblood of democracy – can barely draw a breath.
Many good people lament this toxicity but glimpse no way to combat it. Decades into our nation’s “Big Sort,” they despair of finding anyone on the Other Side to engage with, let alone someone willing to do so productively.
The skepticism is understandable. Shared spaces where dialogue can shelter from the toxins are scarce, as are media examples of dialogue done right.
Finally, it takes will, skill and courage to go first in reaching a hand across the chasm, even after all the lies, insults and hurt.
Yet, as I suggested here last week, it is our patriotic duty. If we want America’s civic air to be cleansed, and its huge problems addressed, we must be the change we seek. (Wasn’t there some skinny guy with big ears who used to say that?)
It will, no doubt, be frustrating work.
I’m here to help. With some great colleagues, I’ve been designing and leading civic dialogues for 25 years. In that time, I’ve been part of some flops and fiascos. But I’ve also witnessed moments of grace and connection that bordered on miracle. A couple examples:
- A group of Tea Party faithful hanging out in the parking lot for an hour after the formal dialogue ended, eager to keep their conversation going with a clutch of NPR liberals.
- Suburban conservatives and city liberals keeping at it for three hours to come up with a definition of urban school reform they could all embrace.
Over the years, we at the PA Project for Civic Engagement have developed five core principles for attempting dialogue, buttressed by eight ground rules to make the principles come alive in any setting, from a one-on-one with a relative or co-worker, to public events involving hundreds. (If you want more advice on how to deploy them in your personal, civic or work life, feel encouraged to contact me at csatullo@gmail.com).
Here they are, in brief:
Principle 1 – Design talk to lead to action.
Critics of what we do often sniff, “It’s just talk for talk’s sake.” The sneer, alas, has sometimes been accurate. So in our work we now try to be clear what the point, the deliverable, of a conversation will be. If we invite people to engage with a difficult public issue, we try to make sure some decision-maker is ready to receive and respond to the input. Even if leaders’ response is a No, we ask them to show that they’ve heard the input and explain why they’re going another way.
In a one-on-one conversation, the goal might be simply to calm a hurt, or even to get an emotional issue tabled so that some other activity – a family event or a regular tennis game – can still happen. Point is, talking just to vent your spleen is not productive.
Principle 2 – If you want to hear a different conversation, you have to hold a different conversation.
It’s amazing how often people in the workaday world complain that some regular meeting is a waste of time – without it ever dawning that they should try something different: a new goal, room, setup, format, different people in different roles. Settings, seating arrangements, speaking orders – they can all drive a group down a Pavlovian path to a familiar, unhappy result.
One on one, let’s say you notice that, when you talk with some person on Twitter or text or email, things always fall apart. So give that medium a rest. Try another way. Pick up the phone, even. (God willing, face to face will someday return as an option.)
Principle 3 – Redefine the win.
Liberal friends say to me all the time, “What’s the point of talking to a Trump voter? Nothing I say will get them to change their mind.” You know, they’re right. No single conversation ever gets anyone (including you) to flip a deeply felt position. Defining the win as “I changed their mind” is a doomed proposition.
So is the idea of “winning on points” before some mythical set of judges. We have become addicted to the flawed “debate model” of political conversation – where one side has to “win” and the other “lose.” This leads each side to feel justified in using whatever shading of the facts or sophistic tricks it takes to “win” (in your own head, at least).
Instead, redefine the win. In a democracy whose very existence is now threatened by the toxic idea that I hold of you and the equally toxic idea you hold of me, we must choose to define the win like this: I leave the conversation with a richer understanding of why you see things the way you do, and you do the same about me – and we remain willing to keep talking, because we’ve realized neither of us has horns, hooves and a pitchfork.
The win comes not in “changing their mind”; it means opening both your mind and theirs, if even just a tiny bit, to a fresh thought, a gram of doubt, a different perspective.
Yes, those people are imperfect and often annoying. Well, sometimes, so are we. Try a little intellectual humility every once in a while.
Principle 4 – Listen in the same way you hope to be heard.
Listening is not merely waiting patiently for your turn to speak. Active listening is a skill that must be learned and practiced. It takes work to follow all the twists of a normal person’s speech; it takes practice to convey by gesture and expression that you’re actually doing this work. Active listening also means pausing a moment before responding, waiting for your first-blush emotional reaction to clear, so you can find a reply that expands and deepens the conversation, not shuts it down.
We like to quote the poet-philosopher Mark Nepo on this: “Listening…is the act of leaning in softly, with a willingness to be changed by what you hear.” Changed not in dramatic ways, but in small yet meaningful ones.
Principle 5 – Begin with story, not position.
If my opening bid is a flat statement of position, then I risk invoking the tired, toxic template of the CNN shoutfest. The other person is likely to respond in kind; soon we’ll be angrily talking past one another just like so many TV talking heads. Most people’s positions are the product more of feeling and personal experience than mounds of fact or sober analysis. So, ask first for a story about someone’s personal experience and how that shapes her views. You’ll be less likely to hear a canned position borrowed from a talk show host. You could also learn something interesting about their lives and values that you can respond to in a genuine way, preparing firmer ground for discussing hard topics. You might even find in the story something that connects to your own life – a useful slice of common ground.
To put these principles into practice, here are the ground rules we set for our dialogues:
Rule 1 – Listen. It’s as important as talking.
Rule 2 – Make room for all to participate. No one dominates.
Don’t be that guy who seems to think the meeting was called so that everyone could listen to him drone on. Note: “No one dominates” applies to the boss as well. Sometimes, when the usual suspects shut up, you may get dazzled by the wisdom you never knew the introverts in the group possessed.
Rule 3 – Disagreement is fine. We want it to arise. When it does, don’t try to “win” it or to paper it over. Explore it, to understand it.
One of the canards about civil dialogue is that it neuters candor and passion for the sake of “keeping things polite.” No. No! No!!! We want you to put your passion and your values out there – just please do it in a way that expands and deepens the dialogue, not shuts it down.
Rule 4 – Build on what others say.
You know how it feels when you offer something you think is insightful and the next guy (and it usually is a guy) ignores it and goes off on a tangent. Don’t ever make anyone feel that way.
Rule 5 – Ask questions to clarify, not to rebut or dismiss.
“Help me understand…” or “I hear what you’re saying, but it leaves me wondering how…” are possible lead-ins to a good clarifying question. “Who could believe that?” or “How could you be so ignorant and racist as to vote for X?” are…not.
Rule 6 – Consider the possibility that your information is incomplete.
No one knows everything. You’d be surprised how much you learn when you listen with some intellectual humility.
Rule 7 – Be honest but never mean.
It’s possible to uphold your values without resorting to insult, cancellation or ad hominem attack.
Rule 8 – Same as the first: Listen. And pause before responding.
That’s it. A distilled version of what we’ve learned in 25 years of helping people hold productive conversations about difficult matters.
You can try these out anytime, in small moments as well as tense ones. Each attempt clears a bit of poison from our civic air.
Don’t tackle the hard case first – for example, the MAGA fan who somehow got to be an all-too-voluble Facebook “friend,” or the intensely woke progressive who’s always telling everyone how “-ist” this or “-ist” that they are. Begin perhaps with the good friend who always assumes you share one of his views when you actually don’t. Or that co-worker you like but with whom you sometimes tangle on the weekly Zoom.
Start with just one tiny, patriotic effort to clear up our sadly polluted civic skies. Let me know how it goes.
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Chris Satullo, a civic engagement consultant, is a former editorial page editor/columnist at The Philadelphia Inquirer, and a former vice president/news at WHYY public media in Philadelphia