Reflective Structured Dialogue Helps Address “Wicked” Public Health Challenges

During one dialogue, as we were reading The Joy Luck Club, we were asked to discuss our relationship to America. There were students who grew up in the United States and also those who hadn’t—and I was surprised to hear that everyone had equally complex relationships with the topic.

I appreciated being able to hear and express the full depth of our own context before delving into a discussion about first-generation immigrants.

“The Dialogic Classroom is by far and away the most skillful and thoughtful professional development I have had in years as an educator.”

Essential Partners does the best work in the field of dialogue and communication.

This is the best adult learning experience I have had in the past five years. I wanted to learn new skills—I did!

One of the things that we talked about was the ability to hear another person’s point of view, even if our minds aren’t changed. We have to remember that any sort of movement is movement. If we don’t acknowledge small movement, then we just stay on two different sides, and it’s all black and white, and we don’t hear each other.

Dialogue challenged us to think more deeply about the class topics. Talking about our own thoughts and experiences in relation to the topic also challenged us to think about our own views and articulate them more clearly.

The community dialogue was instrumental in helping us create a new policy around class rank. Though a controversial topic in the community, the dialogue EP helped us run ensured all voices were heard and valued. Regardless of how people felt with the final result, one parent summed it up best for us, ‘sometimes the process is more important than the outcome’.

I realized that by using the “dialogue” approach, people could talk of what is deep in their heart, especially things that have harmed them.

What is special about Essential Partners' approach is that it promotes authenticity, reduces defensiveness, increases curiosity, and boosts connectedness.

This is a new idea, so many people speaking from their hearts. People can come together...if people can understand, they can change their hearts; then this can bring about more change.

This wasn’t a policy debate [about guns]. Instead, two people whose backgrounds and views diverged in almost every way possible shared a moment of honesty that struck at the heart of the matter.

I have learned how to not be offended and to be better prepared to receive other people's communication. You don't have to agree, but you can respect the other person.

Here safe space was created for pastors and church leaders to wrestle with topics like evolution which are all too often “off limits” or believed to be antagonistic to the faith.

I’ve gained not only confidence but tools. The Essential Partners training was worth every penny.

As a pharmacy major, I do not receive much training on how to handle difficult or controversial conversations. I think that this training will help me not only in my duties as a resident assistant, but in discussing medications and therapies with future patients when the conversation becomes difficult.

The Sheridan Community has changed in the best way since the Essential Partners training. The Center for a Vital Community has been holding monthly dialogues. I’m going to facilitate the upcoming one. What’s great is that we’re attracting a much more diverse group of participants. There are always the regulars who come, but now we’re also getting conservative Republicans to come as well—politicians come, even the Sheriff comes.

The most significant thing for me was learning how to ask for more information rather than trying to persuade a person to think differently. I also learned helpful dialogue tips, which are more effective during difficult conversations. If I encounter a difficult dialogue with any of my residents, I plan on using the techniques I learned in this workshop to facilitate those talks.

I learned a lot about myself from others’ perspectives—it was comforting to hear similar values and ideas expressed, yet really eye-opening and intriguing to hear very different philosophies.

The Essential Partners workshop was a way of building up our ability to talk about more difficult issues, such as poverty and GLBTQ safe spaces. It was really the foundational entrée into those more challenging issues of race, ethnicity, sexuality, and gender. People walked away feeling much more confident about having difficult conversations.

I ran for my local school board in 2018 and was elected. I use the skills in our meetings, whether I’m chairing the meeting or not. This makes the meetings much more productive. We don’t go over the same topics over and over again.

Before, I thought all dialogue that does not culminate in solution was considered equivalent to failure. Now I see that dialogue is a stage complete in itself.

I started to trust everyone in the class—I felt heard and I felt that people wanted to listen. As a result, I wasn’t afraid to let my past come out and let people learn from what I have been through.

Dialogue gets more results. It makes decision-making easier. It makes creating participation easier … our greatest organizational impact has been more contributions as well as more effective and efficient meetings.

I am amazed at what came out—the way people shared their stories. This is not like a role-play; it really touched me.

I learned that I can build relationships, that I can be connected to anybody who I want to be connected to, no matter how difficult it is

As a former rebel, I really believe that if we had known about dialogue, perhaps we would not have had a civil war.

It is really different than it was before. The Essential Partners process has given me the power to be heard and be seen. It’s unreal.

There’s a real difference to people who are coming to meetings. They say, wow this is so different. They all said how people were more on the ball, more congenial. Now people see growing the economy as a way to unify the receiving community and immigrant communities.

Essential Partners does the best work in the field of dialogue and communication.

The highlight for me was the interconnectedness of the participants’ views, mutual respect, and range of experiences within the group

Authentic conversations will lead people to reflect on their own thinking and transform their perspectives to include that of others.

I realized that by using the “dialogue” approach, people could talk of what is deep in their heart, especially things that have harmed them.

I have never heard people talk so openly about race, especially in a class setting. Everyone was respectful and honest at the same time. The dialogue structure helped me learn about my peers and helped me feel more comfortable than I ever have about discussing controversial issues.

This was probably the most profound workshop that we ever brought to campus. It offered a really unique foundation in personal insight.

It’s nice to talk about things that we encounter all the time but rarely get talked about. This made me hopeful that there are people who are willing to talk about serious issues.

There was a remarkable change in the way we were able to communicate with one another following the facilitated conversations.

I’ve gained not only confidence but tools. The Essential Partners training was worth every penny.

I notice that my classmates take much more care when speaking about people who practice other religions. They make fewer assumptions, and they’re more careful with their words to make sure to avoid unintentional connotations.

We tackled really difficult topics and this helped everyone know each other and understand each person's individual perspective. Over the course of the semester, I became much more comfortable engaging with my classmates—specifically because of the peer dialogue groups.

We talked about where we are in the world right now, so we talked quite a bit about polarization. Essential Partners showed how these conversations are becoming more taxing and challenging because of that polarization. These were some first steps in terms of how we can start to have those conversations.

Dialogue not only teaches you how to interact and understand more deeply those around you, it also teaches you more about the world around you and yourself. I think dialogue is super important to my growth as a student, a global citizen and a human being. I have learned to listen, I have learned to speak out, I have learned how to access my stretch zone (where I feel uncomfortable speaking but not turned off) and I have learned where my limits are.

This has been quite different from other discussions in Liberia about peace. While many processes have been about how to reform ex-combatants, this was about how we may hold our own views but live together peacefully.

This wasn’t a policy debate [about guns]. Instead, two people whose backgrounds and views diverged in almost every way possible shared a moment of honesty that struck at the heart of the matter.

Instead of demonizing and dehumanizing the other, we built a deeper connection. The fact that we disagree matters much less. It matters much more that we are neighbors in this community.

Essential Partners has played a catalytic role in our ability to facilitate dialogue time and time again, and we could not have done this work without them.

I notice that my classmates take much more care when speaking about people who practice other religions. They make fewer assumptions, and they’re more careful with their words to make sure to avoid unintentional connotations.

The professor was able to engage every student. She encouraged them to present new ideas. Dialogue helped create an environment that really deepened the understanding of the material.

The thing that always feels like magic to me—and I’ve used it in several meetings that I’ve had since—is how the practitioners start by setting out pacts or agreements.

In these divisive times, Essential Partners has given my local YMCA and now the national YMCA a means to build bridges through dialogue, re-establishing foundations for constructive change to occur.

This is the best adult learning experience I have had in the past five years. I wanted to learn new skills—I did!

I did not anticipate having as many concrete takeaways as I do. I feel there is an immense practical application.

Through this training, we will have more people in the stream of work that we do and become better equipped with the know-how, skills and techniques. But most important, together we will sow a seed that will germinate and become a source of the antidote to terrorism, fanaticism, bigotry and extremism.

I felt an amazing sense of accomplishment when the Essential Partners training ended; that I'd done something important for my community and something important for me.

At the beginning of the semester, there was not much participation in class. But by the end, almost everyone had something constructive to add every day.

Using what we learned from Essential Partners, staff were able to model effective and respectful communication for students. A next step would be for us to help students employ some of these methods themselves. The staff not only gained skills in communication but also left feeling supported by each other in the work that we do.

Facilitated dialogue creates a classroom atmosphere in which exploring uncomfortable issues and asking difficult questions is an expected part of the process, and it allows students space to engage each other without fear of the vitriol common in our public discourse.

I read this comment from the 14th Dalai Lama: "Every change of mind is first of all a change of heart.” It seems appropriate for what we are doing.

We get more requests [for campus dialogue] than we could ever respond to.… I’m proud that our work on campus is actually kind of unusual, because it doesn’t support just one population. It supports everyone—students, staff, faculty, graduate students. I don’t know if there are other University of Colorado projects going on that hit all of our campus population.

There is a need not only for safe space within our churches but for our church leaders who often feel alone, or who may feel their job could be at risk if they engage in controversial conversations. How are they to make safe spaces in their own congregations for healthy dialogue if they rarely experience safe space to do the same?

What surprised me was how much you could transform a relationship during a three-hour conversation.

I am now open to new views and can moderate my impulse to debate or persuade others of different views

The learning we received from Essential Partners has helped us open up space for people to have difficult conversations in a different way. The more we do this, the more we realize that dialogue has to be a part of all our work.

I did not anticipate having as many concrete takeaways as I do. I feel there is an immense practical application.

I think Essential Partners' training should be mandatory in every legislature. I think it should be a requirement.

One of the things that’s so crucial to even fostering dialogue around diversity, equity, and inclusion is creating opportunities for folks to engage in deep reflective self-awareness.

Essential Partners' process gives people the space to be intellectually curious and to engage with others on important issues in a way that also benefits their own understanding of what they believe.

I learned to expect the best of my classmates, even when we don’t agree. I can’t write off their opinions anymore, despite our disagreements.

I felt an amazing sense of accomplishment when the Essential Partners training ended; that I'd done something important for my community and something important for me.

I can't possibly overstate the positive effects the Dialogic Classroom training had on the curriculum and approach to my Introduction to Data Science class. The difference in the course from a year ago and now is night and day. My lectures are now filled with meaningful discussion and discourse—often related to sensitive topics that I wouldn't have dared touching without the training. Student feedback about these discussions has been overwhelmingly positive, and there is no chance that I would have had the wherewithal or initiative to revamp the course in such a dramatic manner without the training.

One of the things that we talked about was the ability to hear another person’s point of view, even if our minds aren’t changed. We have to remember that any sort of movement is movement. If we don’t acknowledge small movement, then we just stay on two different sides, and it’s all black and white, and we don’t hear each other.

After using this approach in my classroom, I am now more willing, and more able, to engage students in meaningful conversations about potentially contentious issues. Whereas I used to nod toward things like homosexuality in religious life, interfaith marriage, or the role of government in reproduction, now I build these conversations into the class so students can learn to speak about their experiences, and so they learn to listen and learn from those with whom they might disagree.

This is a different tool for engagement. It’s not about you, it’s about others. It involves the art of listening and sincerely talking from the heart

I feel more comfortable participating in class and less defensive when other students disagree. And because I learned more from my fellow students about their views, I now feel less competitive with them than in other classes.

The past few years in our country have been the most divisive and alienating in my lifetime, which can be a tremendous challenge in the classroom that aims for community, shared experience, and listening with empathy to opinions that are different from one's own. The Essential Partners workshop I attended provided invaluable tools to meet the challenges of teaching today. It helped me reimagine the classroom as a place to help students learn the essential tools of living and learning in community and interconnection, skills that are necessary in every single area of life. I have no doubt that my teaching has been dramatically reshaped in light of my introduction to structured dialogue and I feel like I have so much more to offer my students because of that.

I’ve learned that it is not enough to announce my commitment to dialogue and expect students to know what I mean; I need concrete exercises to allow students to learn how to do it.

Every opinion was accepted. No one felt judged or uncomfortable talking to one another. These have been, by far, the best classroom discussions I have ever had.

[Essential Partners’] technique is used to explore contentious or divisive issues. So looking at renewable energy we thought this was an ideal opportunity to explore all the complexities of that issue. I found it a really useful method, and although this is the first time we’ve used it I am sure we’ll be using it again.

What surprised me was how much you could transform a relationship during a three-hour conversation.

Together, we married our ideas to create a dialogue model that took into consideration our young people’s particular needs, and our culture.

We owe a debt of gratitude to Laura Chasin and her collaborators at Essential Partners… From them, we have learned about the transformative power of telling one’s story and speaking to the heart of the matter.