By Chris Satullo
The horrors that have been unfolding in Israel and Gaza are raising emotions and spawning rough conversations on American campuses and in American workplaces. People are discovering that classmates, co-workers, even friends and relatives, hold views on these events that they find hard to understand, difficult to accept. When the stakes and emotions get this high, it gets that much harder to stay civil.
But it’s never more important.
No, civility is not required when dealing with terrorists or oppressors. But your co-workers, classmates or relatives are not those things. They are people whom you may care about – or with whom you must at least maintain a workable relationship.
For nearly three decades, I’ve worked with my longtime friend and colleague Harris Sokoloff to help people carry out civil dialogues on issues they really care about, often with people with whom they really disagree. Having had some successes and a few disasters, having led dialogues that crashed and burned and others that soared, we’ve learned a few things.
At the PA Project for Civic Engagement, we’ve distilled those lessons into six guiding principles, tied to nine ground rules that can uphold the principles in a given conversation. We hope it might be helpful in this wounded moment to share them with you:
PRINCIPLE 1: Design talk to lead to action.
Have a clear purpose to a conversation, one that goes beyond venting emotion or asserting that your view is the only right one. That outcome might just be a handshake and an agreement not to discuss a topic further. That’s fine. Whatever the purpose, ponder ahead of time what words or behaviors by you will further that purpose, and which will undermine it.
PRINCIPLE 2: Seek a brave space, not a safe one.
Safe spaces have a place in therapy, in communications meant to be private. But in civic and democratic spaces, the public spheres where a diverse community or nation tries to decide what to do, you will necessarily encounter people who don’t see the world just as you do. A “safe space” expectation – that you will never hear anything that upsets you and that no one will be allowed to criticize what you say – is both unreasonable and unproductive in the civic sphere. There, you need to be brave, to understand that hearing differing views is not some toxic experience that will harm you, but a learning experience that will make you stronger.
PRINCIPLE 3: If you want to hear a different conversation, you have to hold a different conversation.
Lousy conversations fall into patterns. So break the pattern. If you never seem to get anywhere discussing things on Twitter/X or via text, then give your fingers a rest and try actually talking to a person. Try setting some ground rules and follow them. Try meeting in a public spot. Anything to change the routine.
PRINCIPLE 4: Redefine the Win
We are a competitive people, we Americans, but we get into a lot of trouble acting as if democratic dialogue were NFL football. If our goal in a conversation is just to win, to crush or own the other person(s), then things will not go well. Even the cliche “let’s have a good debate” is flawed, a prescription for failure. In a debate, there are only two diametrically opposed viewpoints, one of which must win, the other lose. In trying to win at debate, you are taught to ignore the weaknesses in your own position, and the valid points in the other one. You don’t try to learn; you don’t try collaboratively to reach a new insight, to glimpse a fresh solution. You just re-enact a tired, wounding duel. Instead, try this redefinition of the win: If I leave the conversation understanding a bit more about your views and the values/experiences that led you to them, and you do the same about me – and we’re both willing to keep talking – then that’s the real win, a huge one.
PRINCIPLE 5: Listen in the same way you hope to be heard.
Actual, active listening is a skill, one that doesn’t come naturally to we humans. If it did, we wouldn’t be in this mess. Since it’s a skill, it can be learned, and practiced; you can get better at it. We all want people to listen to what we have to say with attention, patience, respect, responsiveness, even empathy and appreciation. Why should anyone else offer such things to us if we don’t offer them in return?
PRINCIPLE 6: Begin with story, not position.
Positions are inert, predictable, unyielding. They are stone. If all you know about a person is their position on a controversy, and all they know about you is yours, you’ll never get anywhere. By contrast, stories are fluid, surprising, revealing. They are flesh and blood. Stories open doors to small insights, surprising connections, glimpses of previously unseen common ground. So don’t just ask for someone’s position. First, ask for a story that led them to that position. And don’t just state your position; tell a story that illustrates how your position connects to your life.
So, those are the principles. Here are the nine ground rules we use to activate the principles in a given dialogue. Our “Can We Talk?” ground rules are only one example of dialogue guidelines you can adopt to fashion a “container” around an emotional discussion, so that people can be brave, not anxious, defensive and eager to silence others. You can find many other good sets of ground rules online. Ours, I will say, are a) based on 30 years of (sometimes painful) testing in the real world and b) specifically designed to foster that “brave space.”
RULE 1: Listen. It’s as important as talking.
In sharing this rule, we like to quote this line from the poet Mark Nepo: “To listen is to lean in softly, with a willingness to be changed by what you hear.” Changed in small ways, not necessarily big ones. For example, saying to oneself: “Hmmm, never thought of it that way.”
RULE 2: Everyone participates; no one dominates.
Don’t be “that guy” who sucks all the air out of the room. Leave space for the introverts to find their way into the dialogue.
RULE 3 (A KEY ONE): Disagreement is fine; it’s fruitful. When it arises, don’t seek to win it or paper it over. Explore it.
If two people always agree, clearly one of them is superfluous. Contrary to what you may have been taught, you won’t be “harmed” and fall into pieces if you hear a viewpoint you’ve never heard before, or that you disagree with.
RULE 4: BUILD ON WHAT OTHERS SAY.
Understand: This doesn’t mean you must pretend to agree with what was just said. Just don’t ignore it. First, show that you heard what was said, then connect your point to it.
RULE 5: ASK CLARIFYING QUESTIONS. NOT TO REBUT OR DISMISS, BUT TO UNDERSTAND.
Rules 3 to 5 clearly intertwine. “Help me understand…” “I get what you’re saying, but this is one part that I’m struggling with…” Those are good openings to clarifying questions. “How could you possibly believe that…” “How could anyone be so stupid to think that…” Not so good. Again, it’s fine to disagree. It’s how you express your disagreement that makes all the difference.
RULE 6: CONSIDER THE POSSIBILITY THAT, ON ANY GIVEN ISSUE, YOUR INFORMATION MAY BE INCOMPLETE.
The intellectual humility ground rule. Accept that other people may know stuff that you don’t or may have had pertinent experiences that you haven’t had.
RULE 7: NOTICE WHO’S NOT IN THE ROOM, AND TRY TO IMAGINE FAIRLY WHAT THEY’D SAY IF THEY WERE.
Discussions of immigration strictly by people who were born in the U.S., or gun issues by people who’ve never hunted, or of abortion by a bunch of men – all these run a considerable risk of being flawed. Someone in that room, though, might have spoken with or read something by a stakeholder in the issue who’s not present. Bringing that voice into the room might fill in some of the gaps.
RULE 8: BE HONEST, BUT NEVER MEAN
Contrary to misconceptions, civil dialogue doesn’t mean pretending to agree for the sake of keeping the peace.We want you to bring your values, your passion, your insights to the table. We just want you to express them in ways that don’t demean on insult others, that stop the dialogue in its tracks.
RULE 9: SAME AS THE FIRST – LISTEN. AND PAUSE BEFORE SPEAKING.
We’ve all done or said unwise things in that first, biological flush of hormones after we hear something that made us upset or angry. (Raises hand; shakes head ruefully.) That pause, even if it’s only for a microsecond, can allow you to remind yourself to redefine the win and follow the ground rules. And that can do wonders.
So, there you have them: Six principles and nine ground rules for promoting civil discourse in your life and in our society. I hope you find them in some way helpful. Especially now.
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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