Tending Fences: Conversations with Difficult People (Like Us)

Behind this playful title is a serious discovery: conversations across political or religious differences often involve two kinds of skills.

In a shared world with many competing points of view, both debate and dialogue are are useful and necessary. Debate is the critical task of checking assumptions, producing evidence, and maybe learning something in the process. It can also be used to liberate ourselves and others from false ideas. Debate is one way to practice the “free and responsible search for truth and meaning."

UU Principle #4

Dialogue does not seek to prove or win anything. Dialogue attempts to establish common ground, build mutually respectful relationships and deepen trust. Dialogue is way one to build a relationship where the “inherent worth and dignity” of both partners is affirmed. 

UU Principle #1

Three Habits of Heart and Mind can be applied either to Dialogue or Debate. In many conversations we move back and forth between these two styles unconsciously. But we can also make more conscious choices of which style we choose.

Debate and Dialogue are two way streets: we need to  apply the same tests to our selves that we do to our partners in conversation. 

Taking the Pulse

At the beginning assess the qualities of oneself and ones partner is to discern what is possible in this conversation and what style of conversation might be best suited. 

What role is your partner playing:

• Stranger • Friend • Family • Adversary • True Believer
• Seeker • "I know better" • Not Sure

What are your goals in this conversation? Honestly? Win an argument, score points

Demonstrate the superiority of your ideas, your party, your faith?Learn something about yourself and/or your partner? Strengthen the felt-sense of sharing “common ground."

The Art of Listening

Tuning into the speaker, their words, tone and body-language and giving them the gift of undivided attention.

Open or Closed Mind

Willing to learn or change or not?
Open to new ideas and sources or not?
Seek or avoid new information and points of view?

Open or Closed Heart

Are you willing to be moved by their story?
Are you willing to be changed by their story or not?
Can you  acknowledge their “inherent worth and dignity” or use them for your own purposes?

Possibilities for Listening

Open mind/closed heart: bright ideas without empathy
open heart/closed mind: kind and empty headed
open heart/open mind: friendly and curious (mentor)
closed heart/close mind: cruel and ignorant (bully)

The Art of Questioning

The process of free and responsible inquiry and empathic inquiry which may lead to the discovery of truth or meaning and deepen the quality of relationship.

Questions which can lead to greater understanding and discern true from false:

1. What evidence can you offer in support of that belief?
2. What sources of information do you trust? why?
3. When was the last time you changed your mind about something important?
4. If you believe in X (“all life is sacred”) why do you support Y (“death penalty” unlimited “right to bear arms,"  health care rationed by cost)
5. What if some of your favorite ideas are not true?

Questions which can deepen relationships, build trust, affirm common ground:

1. What is the personal experience or story behind that position?
2. How did you come to believe that? What changed your beliefs?
3. If you had it to do over again, what would you do different?
4. What story or song to sums up your life so far?
5. What would you like your legacy to be?  What's your epitaph?

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INTERLUDE:
"Mending Wall" by Robert Frost (excerpt)

...He only says, “Good fences make good neighbors.” Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
"Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows. Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

thanks to Gary Stone for sharing this

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INTERACTIVE EXPERIMENT #1

Group A: Think of a conversation with someone with differing views that ended well.

• What helped?
• What made it possible?
• What do you wish you'd done differently?

Group B: Think of a conversation with some with differing views that did NOT end well.

• What got in the way?
• What made it possible?
• What do you wish you'd done differently?

Join a person from the opposite group. Compare notes.
Come up with a list of common qualities or strategies that help or hinder.

INTER-ACTIVE EXPERIMENT #2

1. Do a role play with a conversation that did not go as you had hoped.
2. Let someone else "double" and suggest alternative responses and strategies that MIGHT produce a different outcome.
3. Thanks to all who participated in this program. May these resources be put to good use as we enter the intense political season of 2018.