Safe Spaces for Brave Conversations: Lessons from Research on RSD
When I moved from the Netherlands in 2016, I was struck by a country that often felt more Divided than United. Public life seemed deeply polarized. Families no longer celebrated Thanksgiving together, and long-standing friendships ended over political differences.
Across the political and social spectrum, people were simply no longer talking to one another. Conversations across differences felt rare, tense, or actively avoided. This troubled me deeply. In a healthy democracy, dialogue across divides is essential. Shared conversations are how we arrive at common solutions to pressing social problems.
I began asking myself: What can be done about increasing polarization?
That question led me to organizations like Essential Partners, which apply dialogue and conflict engagement skills not only in international contexts but also within their own communities. Inspired by this work, I joined a training in Reflective Structured Dialogue facilitation and began hosting dialogues in my own community.
As I facilitated these conversations, another question kept resurfacing—one that eventually became the focus of my research: What are participants actually doing during difficult dialogues, and how do they help create a safe space?
What Surprised Me Most
My research focused on Reflective Structured Dialogue (RSD) and examined how safety is established in small-group conversations on divisive issues. What I found challenged a common assumption in our field.
Yes—facilitators matter. Structured formats, communication agreements, and careful framing are crucial preconditions for dialogue. But safe dialogue spaces are not created by facilitators alone. Participants themselves play a critical role, and understanding their contributions offers valuable insights for improving facilitation practice.
Safe dialogue spaces are dynamic and collaborative.
They emerge through the active engagement of both facilitators and participants.
In the dialogues I studied, participants helped create safety through personal engagement, stepping forward to respond to prompts, engaging with perspectives different from their own, taking interpersonal risks by sharing personal stories, reflecting critically on their assumptions, and balancing openness to difference with a search for common ground. This kind of engagement transformed “safe space” into what many facilitators call a brave space—where discomfort is present, yet meaningful dialogue remains possible.
Participants also fostered safety through interpersonal engagement by validating others—not only their ideas, but by validating them as people—responding with curiosity rather than judgment, and reflecting aloud on how the dialogue itself was unfolding. Together, these behaviors created an environment in which participants felt seen, respected, and free to speak honestly.
Facilitators set the stage for these dynamics by modeling curiosity, encouraging risk-taking, and affirming participants’ contributions, helping the co-created safety deepen and flourish.
The paradox of safety.
One of the most important insights from the research is what I describe as the paradox of safety. Safe dialogue spaces require both the safety to take risks—to voice unpopular, countercultural, or challenging perspectives—and safety from harm—the protection of dignity, respect, and belonging. Participants need to feel both intellectually challenged and relationally protected.
This balance does not happen automatically. It requires courage, sustained engagement, and careful attention during emotionally charged moments. Facilitators can support this by acknowledging the tension openly, helping participants understand that bravery and safety are not opposites, but partners in meaningful dialogue.
The importance of personal narratives.
Another key finding is the importance of personal narratives. Across dialogues, participants actively resisted being reduced to group identities. Assumptions tied to race, ethnicity, political affiliation, or social position often failed to capture the diversity of experiences within groups. Even within the same identity groups, perspectives varied widely.
Facilitators can support dialogue by inviting personal stories, allowing individuals to speak for themselves, and resisting over-categorization—including an overemphasis on binary distinctions between “dominant” and “marginalized” groups. Centering personal narratives helps participants feel accurately represented and more willing to listen deeply to others.
Group dynamics.
Group dynamics also shaped the dialogue in powerful ways. Behavioral mirroring, where one participant reflected on a harmful stereotype, encouraged others to do the same. Risk-taking cascades. One participant sharing a vulnerable or controversial perspective made it easier for others to follow.
Facilitators can strengthen these dynamics by encouraging thoughtful risk-taking and offering affirmations both at the level of ideas and at the relational level, validating participants as individuals. These approaches build trust, deepen dialogue, and strengthen social cohesion within the group.
Final Thoughts for Facilitators
One of the most hopeful findings from this research is that participants are not passive recipients of “safe spaces,” but active co-creators of them. When facilitators recognize this, their role shifts from managing safety alone to cultivating shared responsibility for dialogue.
I hope these insights support more effective facilitation—and remind us that we are better together in creating brave conversations across divides.
Linda Doornbosch holds a PhD in Communication Science from the University of Twente Enschede, The Netherlands. Her full study can be read here: Brave Conversations Within Safe Spaces: Exploring Participant Behavior in Community Dialogues.