It has now been a year since Ron and I first contacted the Republican Party of Dane County to find conservatives we could talk to. That little email led to a year more adventuresome than we could possibly have imagined! It began with a series of dinners and dialogues with Scott and Carol and led to Reach Out Wisconsin, which the four of us founded to bring our dialogue to more public spaces.
I’ve been reflecting on what I’ve learned this year about dialogue. I’m not by any means a dialogue expert—I’m just now discovering a world of books, radio programs, and people who are much more experienced than me.
But still, I have learned a lot! So this post is a list of my tips so far, to provide insight to others and also to reinforce these practices in my own life. I still have much more to learn.
1. Listen with an open mind.
Thich Nhat Hanh says that “In true dialogue, both sides are willing to change.” True dialogue involves curiosity—the sincere desire to understand and learn from each other.
In order to engage in true dialogue, I must be open to the possibility that I’m wrong, that the other person has information I don’t have. I must also be open to a paradox: we may have conflicting truths, which are both right in different ways.
I can’t control whether others are open-minded. But I can bring my own sincere curiosity and openness to the conversation, and it’s possible that over time, my openness will be contagious.
2. Try to learn rather than convert.
When we’re talking with someone who disagrees with us, it’s instinctive to try to “win” the conversation. When I feel my face flushing and my blood rising, I repeat this mantra to myself: Let it go. My goal is to learn, not to convert.
If my aim were to debate, I might use my entire arsenal, bombarding the other person with facts and arguments. But when my goal is dialogue, I try to remember that my purpose is simply to understand how they think a little better than I did before. That takes the pressure off, and it helps me relax.
3. Meet face to face.
Nothing beats face-to-face conversation, preferably over a meal. The ritual of eating together is calming: it gives you something to do other than just stare and talk to each other. It breaks up conversations that might otherwise escalate and gives you something light to talk about in between heavier topics.
Sitting around the table with others, it’s a hundred times harder to say the uncivil things you might say online.
4. To change someone’s mind, you must first build their trust.
In dialogue, listening and understanding are often worthy enough goals. But sometimes, we also have reason to try to persuade—persuasion and compromise are necessary for solving our collective problems.
In my experience, though, it’s very hard to persuade someone of anything unless they trust me. So paradoxically, instead of focusing on persuading, I’ve found it actually helps to let go of persuading and focus mainly on trust-building.
In the course of building a trusting relationship with another person, common ground and persuasion are sometimes natural byproducts. They seem to happen almost by accident; when I bring curiosity and openness to the conversation, I naturally discover points of agreement that create openings for common ground.
This kind of indirect persuasion can quite effective—and it’s far less stressful than if I focus on persuading, which often leaves me frustrated.
5. Forgive ignorance.
Just because someone is misinformed doesn’t mean they’re willfully ignorant; it often just means they haven’t been exposed to the same information as us. It’s up to us to politely offer different perspectives.
When we discover someone’s been misinformed, it’s tempting to feel exasperated or even angry. But it’s also an opportunity—it’s quite possible they simply have their facts wrong, and we have the chance to set them straight.
They’ll only listen, though, if we treat them respectfully and forgive them for not knowing everything we know. After all, they probably have things to teach us as well.
6. Remember there are noble and ignoble people on each side.
It’s tempting to be gleeful when someone from the other side messes up, but the truth is, there are unsavory people on all sides of the political spectrum. Try not to let messengers get in the way of messages.
If someone from another “tribe” behaves badly, I try to remind myself that my own people have, at times, let me down. Casting aside the glee I started to feel, I can better focus on what really matters: the issues.
7. Say “you’re right” as often as possible.
In his classic self-help book Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy, Dr. David Burns has a chapter called “Verbal Judo: Learn to Talk Back When You’re Under the Fire of Criticism.” One of his key techniques for “disarming the critic” is agreement:
When you take the wind out of the other person’s sails, you end up the winner, and your opponent more often than not will also feel like a winner. How is this accomplished? It’s simple: Whether your critic is right or wrong, initially find some way to agree with him or her. …[Y]ou can agree in principle with the criticism, or you can find some grain of truth in the statement and agree with that.
To this he adds two rules: 1) avoid sarcasm or defensiveness; 2) always speak the truth. He gives some entertaining examples of how this can work:
YOU: Dr. Burns, you’re a s**t. DAVID: I feel that way at times. I often goof up at things.
When I’m talking to people on “the other side,” I try to agree with them frequently, interjecting “That’s a good point,” or “You’re right!” These small gestures put people at ease. And I’m not being insincere—I often do agree with them on at least some things.
I think many of us fear that if we admit the other side may have a good point about something, they’ll get the upper hand. But the key is letting go of that mentality, in which we’re at odds and only one of us can “win.” Ideally, we’ll both come away feeling that we won, because we’re no longer on opposing teams.
So I recommend expressing agreement whenever possible, out loud and generously. This may take some practice. You can do it consciously, deciding that in your next political conversation, you’ll find at least one thing to agree on and say so out loud—and sincerely. It will make a difference.
8. Consider each idea, regardless of whose it is.
Far too often, we dismiss an idea simply because of who proposes it. But if we constantly divide the world into two opposing groups and refuse all ideas proposed by our opponents, then we’re doomed to stalemate. We need to blur those boundaries.
All of us are wrong about some things and right about others, and everyone has a good idea sometimes. “I don’t like the idea because I don’t trust its proponents” is just not good enough.
9. Imagine a trusted friend on the other side.
Here’s a trick for opening your mind to the “Other’s” ideas.
I’m sometimes surprised to encounter a liberal friend who disagrees with me on an issue. I was surprised one day when a Madison friend said, “I don’t own a gun yet, but I want to. I want to be able to protect myself in my home, and I also don’t trust the government to protect me.” This was someone I highly respected, but his view was one I typically associated with conservatives.
My own reaction to his comment also surprised me. As soon as he spoke, I found myself more open to his argument than I had been when I’d heard the same thing from conservatives. This forced me to admit that my mind had been closed partly because of who was making the argument.
Speaking with my friend reminded me that politics aren’t as black-and-white as they seem. We all cross over on some issues. When talking with conservatives, I strive to remember that many things they say might be said by my own liberal friends in a different context. This thought helps me open my mind to what they’re saying.
10. Stick to the topic at hand.
Political discussions can be wild, veering off topic easily when we get triggered. You might be talking about unions when someone says, “Corporations are like unions—they’re both large hierarchies and they can both be corrupt. But at least unions don’t get citizenship the way corporations do.” Suddenly you’re off on an exploration of corporate personhood.
Some people are comfortable with such shifts, but I find that too many tangents prevent clarity. I prefer sticking to one topic and exploring it in depth. It’s much less dizzying, and I think it’s more likely that we’ll learn from each other.
11. Tell personal stories.
In Healing the Heart of Democracy, Parker Palmer writes, “The more you know about another person’s story, the less possible it is to see that person as your enemy.” Personal stories are an integral part of dialogue, and they’ve been key to building trust among Ron, Carol, Scott, and me in our small dialogue group.
At our Reach Out Wisconsin forums, we encourage people to share their stories with each other during the informal meet-and-mingle portion of the evening. Stories can be more powerful than abstract opinions. And while none of us are experts on most political subjects, all of us are experts on our own experience. As much as possible, tell your own story.
12. Honor the spirit of the comment.
At our Reach Out Wisconsin forum on abortion, a man raised his hand and said, “You know what I don’t understand? We spend all this money sending ships into space to explore other planets, and when we find signs of life it’s the top headline in the news. When are we going to start treating the unborn the same way? When is it going to be treated as a big deal when there’s life right on this planet, in the womb?”
The comment inspired murmurs and smattered applause from pro-lifers in the crowd. Another man raised his hand to respond. “But it bothers me to hear people talk about life beginning in the womb. I’m a scientist, and life doesn’t begin in the womb. Sperm and eggs are already alive before they join, so technically life already existed before conception. This conversation is more about philosophy than about science. I don’t like it when people misuse scientific language to try and back up their philosophy.”
More hands were raised and a discussion ensued about whether life technically “begins in the womb.” But as I witnessed this from the front of the room, I felt the crowd was overlooking the point of the original comment.
I spoke up, indicating the first man. “I think, though, that the spirit of what you were saying is that when we discover life on another planet, it’s treated as a miracle. And you’re wondering when we’re going to treat life in the womb as a miracle.”
He sat back and smiled, nodding. “Yes. Well said.”
Sometimes, the spirit of a statement gets lost if we look only at semantics and facts. In dialogue, where the purpose is learning and understanding, it helps to try and honor the spirit of what the other person is saying—even if it hasn’t been said perfectly.
