Facilitating Dialogue

Knee improving and no surgery required, for those who have been following along at home, has been a good reminder of the value and effectiveness of first aid and old-fashioned remedies of rest, ice, elevation, repeat.?In a time where sport stars injuries are dissected by the media, fans and surgeons, I think I had been spooked by preoccupation of sport in the psyche of our nation and it had seeped into my anxiety.?An interesting phenomenon for someone who doesn’t really follow much sport nor would have no idea about the health of any superstar’s knee, ACL or MCL.?And I found myself using sporting analogies when explaining the injury – I heard myself say “well if it had been an ACL I would be out for the season, but it’s just a small MCL tear and so only a couple of games and a bit of physio should do it.”?Where did this literacy come from??Even in a post Matildas world I had no idea just how much the culture of the body sport in contrast the culture of the body politic has found its way into my language. It is all around me of course and as I’ve tried to eliminate war and battle metaphors from my language over the years, maybe sport has taken up some of that space? Being able to communicate one idea from a base of what is already shared knowledge helps the conversation to keep going and builds understanding.

I’ve had a conscious go at using metaphors from nature, as all the lessons seem to be there anyhow, for instance, nipping something in the bud (as opposed to chopping it off at the knees).?Mycelium being a grand way of demonstrating everything is connected and informed and deciphered by all the fibres that invisibly find their way to the surface to bring forth some fruit – some toxic and others edible.?I’ve talked about the toxicity of the no-alition indirectly and this is fed by deep, deep roots of racism, colonisation and fear. I don’t want to wake up on the morning after the referendum to be living in a country that has voted No. It really is time to right this wrong and write yes.?

Dean Parkin, who is heading the Yes campaign says that if every yes person convinces two maybes, then the vote will get across the line. So, I am on that quest to find the maybe’s who can be persuaded and conversation by conversation drawing out the fears and finding the way to build a bridge from their lives to yes.?

This week I was at a community forum in my role as Mayor and I was asked if the referendum would cause a legal problem for landowners (aka rate payers)??I was able to point to the coterie of?eminent judges?who have put out a statement about the legal advice and their confidence they have to be voting yes.?I don’t know if it swayed this person, but he did seem satisfied. This was in part perhaps to respect of my role as a community leader, and also deference to the role of the law in being a strong piece of our democratic foundations.?It was a curious question to get on a Monday night in a neighbourhood house Annual General Meeting! (I also got a question on the rates going up and if solar panels were going to be installed on more public spaces and where more electric vehicle charging stations are going to be located.)?

There is a body of work that shows it is dialogue and not discussion that is needed to foster safe conversations and to build a pathway towards understanding and consensus. It is this advice and knowledge originally canvassed by David Bohm which has guided me over recent years. So, when I read Davis’s work describing the processes used to create the Uluru Statement from the Heart, drawing on this process too, I was captivated.

Prof Davis?Quarterly Essay?of the Voice of Reason is a must read for anyone interested in a deep dive into how we got here and the incredible community engagement processes that generated the Uluru Statement from the heart. The mycelium of community, the respect for First People’s gerontocracy and the constraint of our legal systems, to say nothing of the facilitation and design process is world class and surely a model for others to follow in the future.?I’ve done a bit of work at scale over the years in consultation with communities seeking to form a position or come to decision and this is the best I’ve ever seen.?Taking time, listening, privileging the voices of the ancients – the land, waters, peoples – continually checking back on what has been heard being captured in a way that advances the dialogue is all there.

Decades before there was social media, Bohm was flagging:

In spite of this worldwide system of linkages, there is, at this very moment, a general feeling that communication is breaking down everywhere, on an unparalleled scale… What appears [in the media] is generally at best a collection of trivial and almost unrelated fragments, while at worst, it can often be a really harmful source of confusion and misinformation.

And he was defining the “problem of communication” as

Different groups … are not actually able to listen to each other. As a result, the very attempt to improve communication leads frequently to yet more confusion, and the consequent sense of frustration inclines people ever further toward aggression and violence, rather than toward mutual understanding and trust.

Taking?Bohm’s?advice on dialogue I have often asked when facilitating a question up front – what are we making together??Because in the exchange in the place where we come together, we find something that joins us together and then we can create something new together, without losing anything of what we already have. This fixation of win:lose in communication is a real challenge in the often binary environment, and even though this national conversation is going to find a junction in the ballot box, while we get to that intersection we have the opportunity to dialogue to discover what we are making together – a more just, inclusive, respectful and creative nation – that is able to celebrate the deep, deep roots of First Peoples, and bring that learning into our nation’s foundations to set us all on a course where voice, treaty and truth, with the potential of breaking through to birth a new nation.