Better Angels Workshop

On Saturday I went to a Better Angels workshop in my town, hosted at the library.  It went from 1:30 to 4:00.  Better Angels is an organization dedicated to depolarizing America.  The demographics of the meeting were about 30 people, with about 7 being men.  Most were older women, I'd say 50 and up.  Better Angels has you put yourself into either the Red (conservative) or Blue (liberal) category for purposes of learning how to listening and dialogue respectfully.  Only 5 there claimed to be Red.  I was amazed what some of the women shared.  How family members were struggling and had become alienated from each other over politics.  One woman was fighting with her mother, another said she and her brother couldn't get along anymore.  I haven't had that experience, thankfully.

Anyway, the point of the workshop is to get you to understand how real dialogue works.  First you have to be a good listener.  Too often we have immediately hostile assumptions that shut down our listening as we struggle to think of how to respond or how to put the person in their place and prove them wrong.  You want the person to feel that you are listening respectfully.  The way to do this is to:

1)  Paraphrase back to them what they've said to make sure you've got it right.
2)  Go into the conversation with curiosity as your motivation, not winning a debate.   You want to know the person's perspective.  So ask questions of real understanding rather than loaded questions.
3)  Listen for underlying values and aspirations.   This made me think of what R always said.  People either want fairness or freedom.  It's whatever one values the most, that will change one's perspective on issues.


For speaking skills, we learned:

1)  Use I-statements
2)  Use the wording 'what I'm concerned with' or 'what troubles me' or 'what worried me' to preface your objection to something.
3)  Mention an area of agreement or similarity, if there is one.
4)  Before expressing disagreement, say some form of "I hear you" and summarize what you hear and then pause.  Then say What I want to say is. . . . and then say it.  When people feel they've been heard, they'll naturally let you talk. 
5)  If you feel strongly, say so matter of factly and explain what personal life experience leads you to that strong emotion.  This humanizes you to the other.  They may still not agree, but they'll not feel hostile.  They'll see why you might think differently.
6)  If things are getting emotional, it's ok to just agree to disagree.

Better Angels is focusing on getting people in real life to learn to engage each other respectfully and openly.  Learning how to dialogue means we can actually work together for compromise.

It was a really interesting learning experience.  I learned that I am really bad at role playing.  I was supposed to be a red, but the topics were gun control and immigration and I really swing left on those.  I couldn't keep it straight though so I kept using talking points that actually were blue!  LOL.  Fortunately, the guy who was helping me was part of Better Angels and not just a newbie attending.  And he was as purple as me.  We wound up just agreeing with each other!

So now I do think I'll join Better Angels officially.  There is a local alliance group very near me.  I am already set to attend their next meeting.  Better Angels is also streaming the State of the Union speech with commentary from the Better Angels folks.