RedBlue

Dialogue Tips

Communicating successfully with those with whom we disagree passionately is not easy.  Doing it online, where body language and tone of voice cues are missing, can be even more challenging.

Over the past 17 years, dialogue participants have taught us a variety of ways to help conversations become deeper and more satisfying.  Below are some ideas that you may find helpful, as well.

Prepare myself for a constructive conversation

• Reflect on my purposes for the conversation.
• Reflect on what is likely to improve our relationship.
• Keep the Ground Rules in mind.

Listen for understanding rather than agreement with my partner

• Be curious and assume that I do not know about my partner's experience.
• Pay attention to my partner's exact words and ways of using language.
• Take time to absorb what I hear.
• Reflect on my understanding and check out its accuracy with my partner.
• Ask if there's something my partner would like to ask that they haven't.

Stay open to hearing different meanings

• Ask my partner what they mean when they use the term ____.
• Check with my partner to make sure I have understood their words and feelings accurately.

Stay open to ideas that are challenging to my viewpoint

• Listen to the words and to the feelings.
• Suspend my assumptions.
• Suspend my judgment.
• Check to see if I have understood my partner's words and feelings accurately.

Be direct and clear if I am upset

• Let my partner know what they said or did and what its effect on me is.
• Avoid sarcasm.
• Try to focus on how I experienced what was said.
• Avoid assumptions about what my partner meant.

Assume success

• Assume that my partner and I can do this.
• Reflect on my partner's hopes, wishes and dreams.
• Reflect on what our success in reaching across the divide will look like, feel like and sound like.
• Assume that asking genuine questions and responding thoughtfully to my partner's genuine questions will enable us to feel connected.
• If my partner indicates that they are not feeling understood, ask what I am missing.

Separate listening to understand and learn from listening to develop solutions

• Agree to keep the "understanding conversation" separate from the "solution-developing conversation."
• Imagine that listening to learn may open solutions that may not have existed previously.
• Speak fully and respectfully from a place of compassion and hope.

Talk and listen for solutions

• Listen for shared higher commitments or goal descriptions.
• Dream, be imaginative and future oriented.
• Give myself and my partner time.
• Be patient.