Appendix: Tools for Enlarging the Conversation
Two tools help groups move through challenging aspects of sustained dialogue processes. The Intent/ Impact Tool helps analyze a past incident. The Environmental Scan helps parties collectively analyze an ongoing situation.
Intent/Impact Tool
This tool helps people who have different experiences of the same event. It is particularly useful for understanding a situation where one of the parties feels that the other has acted in a way that was offensive, rude, or otherwise inappropriate. A facilitator can follow these steps to use this tool:
1. If possible, tell a brief story that illustrates that there can be positive intent from one person, but a negative impact on the other person.
2. Describe these two patterns of response:
a. If someone’s actions have frustrated, hurt, or angered us, we tend to focus on the negative impact of the action on us, and often assume negative intent by the other person/group.
b. If we receive feedback that our actions have frustrated, hurt, or angered someone, we tend to focus on the positive intent we had, and often minimize the negative impact on the other person/group.
3. Ask participants to review a situation where there was a gap between intent and impact, and have them discuss their intentions as well as the impacts experienced at various points.
By helping each party see that they and the other party can both hold a piece of the truth, this tool helps people move people toward a larger picture of the situation they both are facing.
Environmental Scan
The Environmental Scan is a tool to help stakeholders analyze positive and negative aspects of the past, present, and future within a 2x2 matrix. [16]
| Past/Present | Future | |
| Positive | ||
| Negative |
The squares can be defined as follows: Past/Present and Positive are aspects of the situation that people want to maintain as Points of Pride. Past/Present and Negative are aspects of the situation that foster frustration or Complaints among stakeholders. Future and Positive represent Aspirations that people hope to create or enhance. Finally, Future and Negative represent the Feared New Problems that people hope never come into existence.
| Past/Present | Future | |
| Positive | Points of Pride | Aspirations |
| Negative | Complaints | Feared New Problems |
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Stakeholders who want change (referred to here as ‘change advocates’) focus their attention on Complaints and Aspirations. Conversely, stakeholders who do not want change (referred to here as “continuity advocates”) focus their attention on Points of Pride and Feared New Problems. The conflict between change advocates and continuity advocates often poses an obstacle in dialogues, even though both sides may be making accurate, though incomplete, assessments of the system. The purpose of the tool is to help participants see the system in its full context, including their own perspectives on the system that they may overlook.
The essential steps to using this tool are as follows:
1. Frame the dialogue as an effort to examine all aspects of the system. Some stakeholders may benefit from a preliminary explanation of the 2x2 matrix. In other circumstances, it is sufficient to frame the conversation more simply. For example, the conversation can be framed as an attempt to “examine what we like, what we don’t like, and how we want it to be in the future.”
2. Solicit perceptions from all stakeholders by sequentially advancing through the matrix. The sequence should be Points of Pride, Complaints, Aspirations, and Feared New Problems. It is most useful if all parties contribute at least 1-2 videos to each quadrant.
For groups of 10 to 60, have them sit in clusters of 5-8 people. People can go through the matrix one quadrant at a time, with each person adding ideas on an index card or post-it. Have each person write down 3-5 ideas, spending two minutes on each quadrant. The clusters can group their ideas by themes, and then each cluster can put its ideas on a large matrix. At the end of this process, the contributions of all the clusters will include a very broad view of how the people in the system view it.
Savvy use of the scan can help dialogue in three ways:
1. It can lessen the intensity of the conflict by giving participants a unified framework that helps them see their own truth in relation to others with different perspectives.
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2. Often advocates of change as well as continuity can agree on the substance of the points made in each quadrant. The matrix helps stakeholders move toward a question they can work on together: How can we keep our Points of Pride, address Complaints, achieve our Aspirations, and avoid New Problems?
3. The themes from each quadrant often help the participants see issues that need more discussion. For instance, if one idea appears in Points of Pride as well as in Complaints, it will be clear to all stakeholders that they need to discuss further and define that idea.
Endnotes
1. See Deborah Tannen, The Argument Culture: Moving from Debate to Dialogue (New York: Random House, 1998).
2. Hope in the Cities, an international organization, began dialogues on race, economics, and jurisdiction issues in cities in North America and Europe in the early 1990s. See www.iofc.org/en/programmes/hic
3.Dialogue facilitated by Schirch, September 22-24,2001 in Suva, Fiji.
4. Dialogue series facilitated by Campt from March to May, 2006 for the Alexandria, Virginia, public schools.
5. This dialogue skills capacity-building was part of a cultural competence training for the Inland Empire Health Program, in Riverside, California. The multi-session training took place between March and May, 2001.
6. The AmericaSpeaks 21st Century Town meeting places people in tables of 8-10 with each table having a trained facilitator and a laptop computer on a wireless network. The primary themes from the dialogue are transmitted on a wireless network to a “theme team” who distill the main points of consenses among the participants. These themes are fed back to the entire group on large video screens, and each individual person uses a keypad to vote on which of the themes or options for action are most important to them. See www.americaspeaks.org
7. This meeting took place on July 20, 2002; the primary sponsor was the Civic Alliance to Rebuild Downtown New York.
8. The Neighbor-to-Neighbor dialogue program lasted from November 2001 to March 2002. The program involved 45 meetings, 139 host organizations, and a total of 1,838 participants.
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9. See Harold Saunders, A Public Peace Process: Sustained Dialogue to Transform Racial and Ethnic Conflict (New York: Palgrave, 1999).
10. For more detail on the symbolic role of space in dialogue processes, see Lisa Schirch, Ritual and Symbol in Peacebuilding (Connecticut: Kumarian Press, 2005).
11. The Memphis meeting on youth obesity was one of a series of regional meetings convened by Shaping America’s Youth. This meeting included nearly 1,000 participants.
12. See Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (New York: Little, Brown, and Company, 2002).
13. See Mary B. Anderson et al., Reflecting on Peace Practice Handbook (Massachusetts: Collaborative for Development Action, 2004).
14. Ibid.
15. See Richard Bilder, “The Role of Apology in International Law and Diplomacy,” Virginia Journal of International Law 46 (Spring 2006).
16. The Environmental Scan was developed by Dr. Barry Johnson. His work is available at www.polaritymanagement.com
Recommended Reading
Books
Abu-Nimer, Mohammed. Dialogue, Conflict Resolution, and Change: Arab-Jewish Encounters in Israel (New York: State University of New York, 1999).
Issacs, Walter. Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together: A Pioneering Approach to Communicating in Business and in Life (New York: Random House, 1999).
Kegan, Robert and Lisa Laskow Lahey. How We Talk Can Change the Way We Work: Seven Languages for Transformation (San Fransisco: Jossey-Bass, 2001).
Saunders, Harold. A Public Peace Process: Sustained Dialogue to Transform Racial and Ethnic Conflict (New York: Palgrave,1999).
Yankelovich, Daniel. The Magic of Dialogue: Transforming Conflict into Cooperation (New York: Touchstone, 1999).
The following books in the Little Books of Justice and Peacebuilding series may be helpful as you plan and facilitate dialogues:
The Little Book of Circle Processes by Kay Pranis describes how to use Circle methodology for dialogue and decision-making. It contains helpful information about the process of setting guidelines and values. (Intercourse, PA: Good Books, 2005.)
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The Little Book of Cool Tools for Hot Topics by Ron Kraybill and Evelyn Wright provides a toolkit of techniques that are useful for facilitating. (Intercourse, PA: Good Books, 2006.)
Web Resources
Several organizations in the United States publish dialogue guides on specific topics such as urban planning, education, and cultural and racial diversity. The websites of these organizations offer many additional free resources on how to organize and facilitate dialogue.
Public Conversations Project
www.publicconversations.org
The aim of the Public Conversations Project is to foster modes of communicating that lead to mutual understanding, respect, and trust. PCP convenes, designs, and facilitates dialogues, meetings, and conferences, and provides both customized and packaged training in related skills.
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