facilitation

DCI Fellow Shares Impact of Deliberation

February 4, 2022 by Carla Cole Leave a Comment

By Carla Cole, DCI Coordinator

Cadie McNaboe, 2020-2021 Deliberative Citizenship Initiative Fellow and Co-Convener and Davison ‘22 political science major, shares the impact deliberation has had on her life in the Davidson Journal Magazine article, “Moving From the Loudest Voice to Listener, From Debate to Deliberation.” Cadie discusses how her training and experiences as a Fellow with the DCI helped her in her classes and personal relationships. Cadie notes the importance of active listening and how her use of conversation maps helped her to become more engaged in her classes and other conversations.

Regarding her experience facilitating DCI discussions for forums and D Teams, Cadie states, “As a facilitator in the deliberations, my role wasn’t to amplify my own thoughts. Instead my goal was to create space for all participants to share, and then guide them in seeing how their different perspectives overlapped. Going from a mindset that highlights the importance of your opinion to a model where all voices are meant to be equal, was a fundamental shift.”

Cadie embraced this shift and implemented it into various aspects of her life, including family dinners where potentially divisive conversations took place. Cadie was able to facilitate a family conversation about contentious political issues and find areas of common ground rather than chaos. Cadie says she isn’t sure whether deliberation can transform our democracy, but says, “what I do know for certain is that deliberation has fundamentally transformed me.” You can read the full article here.

Listening to Validate: A Small but Critical Facilitation Move

August 3, 2021 by Steve Kaliski Leave a Comment

By Steve Kaliski, DCI Fellow

Teachers probably recognize the moment: you’re leading class discussion on a particularly ripe or personal topic. You’ve asked your students to abide by some system of mutual respect as they tiptoe into sharing vulnerable, fraught insight. Now, the floor is open, and one by one, the group is starting to participate. You must guide the ensemble from one speaker to the next, inserting yourself where necessary but basically staying out of the way. You’re here to listen.

The topic itself has your heart racing a bit, too. How will you bookend the conversation with commentary that exudes expertise yet humility? How will you make sure you don’t slip up and say the wrong thing? Who raised their hand first? Do you have enough time to go over the next assignment in the last five minutes of class? Do you have scallions for the stir fry tonight? Do you need to swing by Teeter after work? Do the Hornets still have a shot at the sixth seed?

Disparate thoughts race around, and you give yourself permission to chase these thoughts because, after all, this conversation is not about you. You’re just here to listen.

But then the tricky moment happens. A student finishes a comment, and you snap out of your thought spiral to sense that this comment packed a particular punch. You need to validate it somehow. This student needs to feel appreciated. But as you were off wondering about whether tomorrow’s reading was behind a paywall or not, you forgot to do the one thing you were here to do. You forgot to listen.

So how do you respond? Let’s say Jessica just spoke.

JESSICA: …and yeah, that’s pretty much why my family is passionate about this.

(pause)

YOU: Thanks, Jessica. Anyone want to go next?

This might seem like a perfectly fine response for a discussion facilitator, and oftentimes, it works well enough, or at least it does no harm. However, as I’ve learned during my time facilitating D Teams this year, in moments of “daring sharing,” your participants need a bit more from you than “thanks, next.” And if your attention has wandered under the false assumption that listening is inherently passive and thus less work (it happens to all of us!), you might need to close the excess tabs in your brain and really focus on the people in the room with you.

What would be a good response here, one that’s validating but does not center you over your conversation participants (in this context, they are your students, but they might also be your staff, your family, or your team)? The key is to make sure your speaker feels heard. This is especially vital on Zoom, where the normal approving signals of body language are difficult to perceive.

But it’s hard to make someone feel heard while you as the facilitator want to remain de-centered.

I try to listen for the “one thing” that I can repeat or rephrase back to the speaker as a signal of my connection to their words. If Jessica spoke at length about her family’s involvement in the topic, and at some point she mentioned a “love of the outdoors” as a major part of that, the dialogue might now be:

JESSICA: …and yeah, that’s pretty much why my family is passionate about this.

YOU: Thanks, Jessica. Yes, that makes a lot of sense, especially the huge importance of the outdoors. Yeah. That connects. (introspective pause) Thanks again. Anyone want to go next? Or maybe build off of what Jessica said?

It’s not an earth-shattering facilitation move, but it’s important. Listen closely, and echo something, anything. Your participants will feel like they’ve said something that landed, that they’ve added to the discourse.

These are particular tools of the weaver approach to facilitation. I speak more about different approaches to facilitation and some tips for facilitators in the demo video I created for the Verna Miller Case Symposium. Feel free to watch it here: https://deliberativecitizenship.org/demonstration-of-facilitation-styles/.

Communication is Key

January 28, 2021 by Camryn Ellis Leave a Comment

image of keys in a door lock

By Camryn Ellis, DCI Fellow

I applied to become a fellow for the Deliberative Citizenship Initiative at Davidson College because it seemed to be an interesting and productive program. It being a space that encourages people to engage in deliberation on social issues that are hard to talk about and are usually only met with controversy was what caught my attention. Usually when I discuss political and social issues, I find that people are not really interested in changing their perspective. It’s always them ranting about all the reasons their beliefs are right and when I question them, the critique is taken personally and then it’s just a whole mess.

I’m not going to lie though, I, too, sometimes don’t always take critiques of my beliefs too well, either. I have recently realized that I sometimes think I’m more open to different ways of thinking than I actually am. I was interested in becoming a DCI Fellow because I want to challenge myself to learn how to listen better to people who feel differently than I do and to have and facilitate conversations that may be filled with controversy.

The DCI displayed itself to be a place where I could engage with people who have different perspectives and come together to productively and respectively deliberate on important social issues. I was excited to see the diversity of lived experiences I hoped to encounter. But after the first day, I knew that racial diversity would not really be in the cards for us this semester given that no one else in the cohort of fellows (except me) was Black.

This was disappointing and honestly not what I was expecting. Then when we received the topics that the cohort had suggested and ranked highest and we would be deliberating on, I was even more confused and unsure about how I felt about this program. While I think they are important social issues to discuss, the topics of Davidson’s history of enslavement and police brutality felt very overwhelming to me, especially since I would be the only Black person who would be participating in these cohort discussions.

I decided to talk to my DCI co-facilitator about this issue and she was so understanding and validating of my experience. She always reached out to see how I was feeling throughout the semester, especially when the week’s social issue was heavily influenced by racism. We were able to work out a solution where I would not serve as a facilitator during those weeks but would play a more active role in other weeks. As our DCI facilitator training emphasized, we may not always be able or ready to facilitate conversations on any and every topic, and that is okay.

In any case, as the weeks went by, the relationship between my co-facilitator and I made me feel that I was not so alone. And from our time together as DCI co-facilitators, we not only worked together, but also became friends.

From my experience, I have learned how important it is to truly listen to others, regardless of whether or not you share similar social identities and perspectives. Whether one is listening to a friend in need or is having a discussion about the current social and political realities of America, good communication is key. I have learned that the first step to good communication isn’t to make sure you are the loudest one in the room or that you use a great deal of jargon, but to instead listen to others, validate their lived experiences, and try to emphasize the ways that you can relate to one another, rather than highlighting all the ways that you don’t.

The Taijitu of Conversation and Activism

November 20, 2020 by Heidi North Leave a Comment

By Heidi North, DCI Fellow

“…and that visibility which makes us the most vulnerable is that which also is the source of our greatest strength.” -Audre Lorde

This quote, from a legendary poet and activist for queer and civil rights, perfectly encompasses the spirit of deliberative practice and its goal in helping us to realize that civil conversations between differing perspectives, and the solutions that may arise from those, are the strength of true democracy.

I approach the art of deliberative citizenship from my identity as a queer woman, which is the lens through which I view the world. Not just queer sexuality, but queer as in an identity that runs counter to what we accept as ideal and normal in Western society. Much of my research and work within the DCI has been focused on the art of civil conversation, and the potential it has to heal the rifts in our country and end the polarization that dehumanizes the Other. I do this alongside grassroots activism within Davidson College where discussion, paired with action, is done civilly, yet with intention.

Audre Lorde embodied this dynamic — discussion paired with aggressive action. So did Martin Luther King, Jr. This relationship between conversation and activism is a taijitu; one cannot exist without the other, and neither is effective alone; it is also a core pillar of deliberation. Both require vulnerability, especially if you hold a marginalized identity and are routinely denied a place at the table, but in very different ways. Discussion allows us to peel away the layers of ourselves and our culture and understand why we are the way we are; activism confronts those realizations with action that cultivates, and sometimes forces, change.

In my D-Teams and in my DCI groups, we’ve had discussions about this balance — that we cannot just discuss these contentious issues; we have a responsibility to act and to inspire action. We have a responsibility to share resources and to make education and learning as accessible as possible. However, we also cannot act without first educating ourselves, and committing to understanding our culture and the many points of view that comprise our communities. I’ve been a student of queer theory for the past 4 years, and this is the first time that I’ve been able to see and nurture this balance in real life.

It’s interesting to see the way obstacles — whether personal, political, or social — present themselves and threaten this work being done, and the flexibility we must have to allow for those obstacles while still insisting on the crucial importance of this work and holding ourselves accountable to it. The deliberative process makes us intensely vulnerable, and can be uncomfortable at times, but we cannot be truly strong as individuals, as a nation, or as a species, until we truly and authentically participate in it.

On Mistakes

October 29, 2020 by Steve Kaliski Leave a Comment

By Steve Kaliski, DCI Fellow

Theatre is a laboratory of risks, mistakes, and accidents.

Though this might sound like a strange way to describe an art form that, at least from the audience’s point of view, depends on meticulously repeating the exact same product night after night, risks, mistakes and accidents really point to what is indispensable about theatre in both civic and academic contexts.

Consider the hyper-competitive, high-achieving ethos of a place like Davidson College. Extremely smart people work very, very hard to be as utterly on point as often as possible. But how about this, students? Take a class in Cunningham, and you can let down your perfectionist guards! Here, we don’t want you to do it the right way, at least not for a while. We want you to mess up, to fail, to test all the wrong ways first. We want you to explore the edges of the cliffside, not stand stock still in the middle of a vast field, wrongfully assuming that you’re already about to fall.

That’s all pretty romantic. What does it actually mean? And how does it connect to deliberation?

I teach theatre at Davidson and am also an actor, director, playwright, and public speaking coach. All of these roles feature moments of crisis in which I have to make a choice about which of two lists to center: the list of things I can’t do, or the list of things I can do.

The list of things I can’t do is vast: I can’t say “like” or “um;” I can’t look awkward with my arms; I can’t say “I don’t know” (I’m an expert, after all); I can’t look like an idiot on stage; I can’t forget my lines; I can’t bore my audience.

But the list of things I can do is vaster: my voice is an instrument, and I can do anything with it (speed up, slow down, take pauses, chuckle, make funny noises, emphasize the delicious phrase that brings it all together); I can make my scene partner see how much I care (amazing how I’m not thinking about my hands anymore); I can speak with passion about a topic that has affected me personally; I can ask questions to which I truly don’t know the answers.

Much of performance training empowers the artist with a sense of what can be done. This is tremendously freeing, and it can lead to many happy, productive accidents. In a scene between a mother and daughter, the daughter might decide she wants to get her mother to listen to her. Her tactic is “to bounce off the walls.” The actor decides to literally try this, playing the whole scene as a sprint from one studio wall to another, with an emphatic bounce at each point of impact. She even says “boing” out loud.

Is this the right choice for the final performance? No. It’s ridiculous.

But in being willing to explore anything, perhaps the actor discovers that 10% of this is, believe it or not, useful. And that 10% makes it into opening night. The clumsy stuff unmasked the real stuff.

Reflecting on our early semester deliberations, I am struck by the fear and caution that stifles our discourse about major civic issues. “I don’t know a thing about healthcare policy, so I won’t say anything, or I’ll politely defer to the consensus.” This feels like a distinctly Davidsonian pressure to be right, to be a premature expert, to not say the wrong thing, although I suspect it affects others elsewhere as well. I hope as we all rehearse our deliberative encounters that we can learn from the theatre and be more open to risks, mistakes, and accidents. If we center the positive–what we can do, what we can ask–we might messily make our way toward some productive civic action.

P.S. The only times I’ve ever forgotten my lines were when I told myself I couldn’t forget my lines.