IF discussions encourage participants to think broadly about a topic, promote multiple perspectives, and at times contribute ideas or opinions that they believe someone who is very different from them would possess.  Under these circumstances, it seems like it would be contradictory to also stress the importance of recognizing self-interest, but it may actually be a very important component of a successful deliberation.  Understanding one’s own motivations and desires can obviously help a citizen articulate their own points, but it can also serve another important purpose; to help someone realize and appreciate the perspectives of others. 

There are different types of participants in all deliberations.  Sure, there are those who will try and talk until their face turns blue while attempting to get their points across, but there are also those citizens who fear that sharing ideas based on their own self-interests will create some kind of conflict in the discussion.   Sometimes I think facilitators inadvertently create an atmosphere where people are afraid to express self-interest because, like some participants, they fear that the discussion will become too aggressive.   Taking all of this into consideration, it might be a good idea for a facilitator to encourage or at least explain the positive aspects that incorporating self-interest into discussion can bring.

Scheduling an event and selecting a topic is very time consuming. In order to avoid going back and forth between people, IFers have come up with ideas such as to let students write down their available time slots and interested topics on pieces of papers, so that the organizer can combine them and make a decision.  Many times, the organizer has to sacrifice a few people and make compromises. However, with doodle.com scheduling an event is much easier and more efficient. Participants’ demand can be maximized in this way. Here is how:

When you click into www.doodle.com you will see a blue button “schedule an event.” Once you click on that, you can put in the event title (such as “IF Boston August Discussion”) and tentative location for the discussion. You can also write a brief description about the discussions if you have not informed the participants yet. Entering your name and email address will be helpful here.

Once you click “next,” you will see a calendar, which allows you to put in potential days to organize this event. Usually including both weekdays and weekends will work the best. Too few options will end up with less mutually agreeable times and too many options will make people select less. With my past experience, 5-7 dates will be ideal.

Once you’ve select your dates, you can click “next.” You will be able to specify time slots for each date. Or you can simply enter time slots for the first date and click “copy and paste first row.” Make sure your time slots can potentially accommodate people who have to work during the day and also keep the meal time in mind. It is extremely important that the facilitator herself/himself can make it to all the time slots you’ve put in.

Once you are done, click “next” and select “basic” to “finish” and your event is now scheduled. All you need to do is copy and paste the link provided saying “Send this link to anyone you wish to invite” to the emails you will be sending out to the participants. It is always a good idea to fill out the survey first yourself to see if it works. I would recommend checking all the time slots (since you’ve only put time slots you are available on the list). This, in economics terms, is setting an “anchor.” Participants, therefore, will be more likely to enter more slots.

Here is an example what the participants will see: http://www.doodle.com/rgderxx7h45i6ni2  You can click on the same link to check participants’ responses or you will receive an email after each respondent has answered if you’ve entered your email previously.

I also provided a list of topics for the participants to choose using survey monkey (many of you are already using). Again, setting an anchor by selecting all works well based on my experience: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/X236V78

You will be surprised by how many people actually have access to the internet nowadays, especially the student body. The entire scheduling process probably will take you ten minutes and you will get the maximum out of it. Some phone communication is still needed before setting up the doodle as you will need to know around which days there might be people available for discussions.

I hope this can save some of your time and make your scheduling more efficient.

Best,

Taiyi

I heard an interview with former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor earlier this month. She talked about the importance of civic engagement in our democracy and her concern about the state of policy discussions in America. She was particularly concerned that people are not being taught how to think and evaluate policies. (And let’s face it, no one is born with it.) Indeed, we are not taught how to think about policy in our schools, our universities, or our increasingly polarized media. This poor civic knowledge and engagement weakens American democracy.

Jay Stern, the founder of the Interactivity Foundation, wanted to address this concern by facilitating and encouraging the development and thoughtful consideration of contrasting policy possibilities. We explore and develop a wide range of contrasting conceptual possibilities for public policy pertaining to our areas of concern in our sanctuary projects, and we then organize and facilitate discussions of them among the general public. The facilitators who conduct these discussions do not tell you what to think about policies pertaining to food, property, genetic technology, or work; which possibilities you should or should not support; or which congressman to call. They focus instead on the process of thinking carefully, critically, and seriously about the possibilities themselves. They focus, in other words, upon understanding the different concepts, principles, beliefs, values, interests, and goals that might motivate different policies; understanding how they relate to the possibilities themselves; exploring their possible implementations; and exploring their intended and unintended consequences (for more see Mark Notturno’s four part series on ‘How to Evaluate an IF Policy Possibility’). And they try to do this for each of the conceptual possibilities that we present in our reports.

But it is not an easy process. It is, first of all, very difficult to think conceptually. Most of us are focused upon the more practical everyday world and are unaccustomed to thinking about abstract concepts, principles, beliefs, values, interests, goals, and the reasoning behind them. And it is even more difficult to carefully and critically and seriously consider ideas that are fundamentally different from our own—especially because they just seem to be outright wrong.

But we do not try to show you that possibilities are either right or wrong in IF discussions. We do not try to change your mind. We simply provide a forum in which you can discuss—as opposed to debate—the different policy possibilities with your neighbors, and explore the possible ways of approaching important issues to our society.

Consider the description of the possibility from the Democratic Nation Building Report that we discussed last time: ‘This possibility would have us forgo all active efforts to build democratic nations abroad’. This description is typical of the descriptions of IF policy possibilities, and indeed of policy possibilities in general, in that it briefly describes what the possibility would do, but not the reasons why it would do it. If you had only this description to go on, then you would be at a loss as to how to evaluate it. You could say ‘salvation at last’ or ‘over my dead body’. But this is just a reaction, and not an evaluation. It may, no doubt, be based upon the concerns, beliefs, values, goals, and interests that you have pertaining to democratic nation building. But there are all sorts of reasons why someone might think we should not try to build democratic nations abroad. And the concerns, beliefs, values, goals, and interests that motivate this possibility may be very different from your own.

So what are the concerns that motivate this possibility? And what are the beliefs, values, goals, and interests that underlie it?

These are the questions that you have to ask yourself in order to understand the reasoning behind it. The question at this stage is not whether you like the possibility, or would be willing to support it. It is not whether you share the concerns, beliefs, values, goals, and interests that motivate it. It is not whether the possibility is consistent with the beliefs, values, goals, and interests that underlie it. And it is not even whether or to what extent it is likely to address the concerns that motivate it. We will get to all of that soon enough. The question at this stage is what those concerns, beliefs, values, goals, and interests actually are. But in order to understand what they actually are, you will have to understand the possibility on its own terms. And in order to do this, you will typically have to see the possibility—and, indeed, the world—through the eyes of someone who might propose it.

But here, we may once again be our own worst enemies, just as we are when we are trying to understand what a policy possibility says and does not say. For we are all almost inevitably over-burdened by the conceptual baggage of our own concerns, beliefs, values, goals, and interests when we try to understand a policy possibility on its own terms. And if we are not very, very careful about it, then we may all too easily end up understanding it on our own terms instead.

Thinking seriously about contrasting policy possibilities is not for sissies. This is because it can be very difficult to understand a possibility on its own terms. It is because most of us are so locked up in the prisons of our own minds—so certain about the truth of what we believe and the falsity of what we don’t—that we never even recognize the bars. But it is also because trying understanding a policy possibility on its own terms can also be very frightening. It may force us to question some of our deepest and most fundamental beliefs, values, goals, interests, and concerns. And it may, for many of us, even challenge our own self-identities and self-understandings of who we are.

All of this would be bad enough. But there is also the human condition.

We may feel that we have understood a policy possibility on its own terms when it begins to make sense in light of the beliefs, values, goals, interests, and concerns that motivate it. But human beings are inherently fallible and always subject to error. So it is always possible that, even when everything seems to make sense, we do not really understand the things that we think we understand.  The upshot is that even when we think that we have understood a policy possibility on its own terms, we may always come across something that makes us think that we haven’t. So we should always remain open to the possibility that we have not yet understood a possibility on its own terms and must rethink the whole thing all over again.

This is the human condition. And there is no way around it. One of the most difficult things in life is how to know whether we are ahead or behind—whether, in other words, we disagree with someone because we do not quite understand the reasoning behind his beliefs, or because we understand the reasoning behind them well enough and believe that they are false.

But this is where your imagination, creativity, and courage come in. In order to understand a policy possibility on its own terms, you will typically have to break out of your own mental prison far enough and long enough to think how someone who thinks very differently from you might think. This will require your creativity to find a way to explore the world with someone else’s eyes. It will require your imagination to see how the world might look to someone who has very different concerns, beliefs, values, goals, and interests than you do. And it may even require your courage to question your most fundamental beliefs, values, goals, interests, and concerns—and, very possibly, the courage to become a very different person than you currently are by doing so.

I have sometimes heard people say that the language in our reports is too sophisticated and that it may sometimes even prevent people from understanding what a possibility means. But I, like Pogo, think that we have met the enemy and he is us. For my own sense is that it is more often the conceptual and political baggage that we carry into a discussion⎯our personal expectations and our philosophical presuppositions and our political prejudices and what we have heard on TV and our reluctance to take the time to read something, let alone carefully⎯that prevents us from understanding what is clearly described on a page in front of us.

Why do I think this? Because I usually find that the people who misinterpreted a possibility will quickly agree that they have done so after someone points it out to them.

In this particular case, there were two pieces of baggage that stood in the way⎯a suitcase and a carry-on. The suitcase was the fact that there are currently a lot of isolationist policy possibilities in the air⎯and the presupposition that this possibility must, of course, be one of them. The carry-on was the presupposition that every nation-building project must be a democratic nation-building project.

The suitcase led some participants to think that ‘Forget About Building Democratic Nations Abroad’ would forbid us from pursuing relationships with foreign countries at all⎯which might be a reason for some people to support it and for others to oppose it. The carry-on led some participants to think that the possibility would forbid us from engaging in nation building projects that do not aim at spreading democracy abroad, such as offering foreign aid to underdeveloped countries with no political strings involved (as China currently does)⎯which might be another good reason for some people to support it and for others to oppose it.

But is this what the possibility actually says?

⎯⎯‘Look at the first paragraph in the second column where it says ‘Far from being an isolationist policy, this possibility would encourage us to pursue our economic, military, and geo-political interests openly instead of linking them to spreading democracy abroad’.

⎯⎯‘Oh yeah!’

⎯⎯ ‘Look at the first paragraph in the second column where it says that this possibility ‘would not prevent us from offering foreign aid, or from participating in nation building projects in underdeveloped countries, or from offering humanitarian aid to countries that need it.’

⎯⎯ ‘Oh yeah!’

It wasn’t that anyone had any difficulty understanding what these sentences mean. And it wasn’t that they didn’t take the time to read the description of the possibility (though I am told that that sometimes happens). It was simply that their presuppositions about the area of concern and the policy possibilities for addressing it had somehow prevented them from taking these sentences on board.

Understanding what a policy possibility says is the first step toward evaluating it. And it may be especially difficult if the possibility says something new or something you don’t expect. It often means getting down and dirty with the language that describes it. And there’s not too much you can do to get around it. You certainly can’t do it with pictures. They may, no doubt, be worth a thousand words. But they do not say or mean any one of them. And while developing a policy possibility may be a fine art, the possibilities themselves are much more like laws. They are articulated in language. They are supposed to mean something fairly definite⎯this, and not that⎯and we may actually need to rewrite them if they don’t. They may, of course, be subject to different interpretations. And they may stimulate you to think about different possibilities. But they can’t mean anything you like⎯they would be more or less meaningless if they did⎯even if it does sometimes take a judge or two to say what they currently mean for us. And ignorance, just like in court, is no excuse here.

Understanding what a policy possibility says is the first step toward evaluating it. But you obviously do not need to understand what a policy possibility means in order to discuss it with your friends or neighbors, or even to discuss it intelligently. That, on the contrary, is a large part of what our public discussions are all about. For the process of coming to understand a possibility is the process of exploring its description and the concerns that inspired it, and what it would permit and forbid, and how it might differ from other possibilities for addressing the same governance concerns. You do, however, need to know what the possibility means, and what it does not mean, if you want to evaluate it. For otherwise you are quite literally evaluating something else.

The non-participating part is relatively easy. IF facilitators facilitate their panelists’ discussions by asking questions, by managing the flow of the discussion, and by seeing that everyone gets involved and has a chance to express their ideas. But they do not (or at least are not supposed to) push their own policy ideas in them. A good non-participating facilitator is concerned that a discussion achieves its goals–and, more specifically, that the participants do not get stuck arguing or telling irrelevant stories.  The ‘strong’ part is more complicated.

IF discussions aim at exploring an area of concern and developing a set of contrasting conceptual possibilities for addressing it that might be useful for public discussion. But they also try to avoid advocacy, and debate, and narrow problem-solving. And an IF facilitator must be strong in a number of different ways in order to achieve these goals. An IF facilitator must, for example, be strong enough to:

• Manage the flow of discussion amongst panelists who may have very different political ideas, social positions, educational levels, beliefs, values, goals, and interests so as to keep it both civil and moving toward the development of policy possibilities that will be useful for public discussion–which in practice often means helping the panelists to explore their differences without having their discussions devolve into heated debates
• Keep the project panels together and functioning–which in practice often requires the management strength to ensure that everyone actually gets to the meetings at least most of the time
• Prevent their discussions from degenerating into attempts to advocate specific policies for addressing an area of concern–which in practice often requires the intellectual strength to recognize how the use of certain terms and descriptions might frame an issue and bias people for or against a possibility
• Push the panelists to develop truly contrasting policy possibilities even if they do not want to–which in practice often requires the strength to push the panelists to describe real contrasting possibilities instead of straw men possibilities that neither threaten nor interest anyone
• Keep their discussions on the conceptual level–which in practice often requires strength to prevent the discussion from degenerating into attempts to solve specific problems pertaining to current policy
• Allow the panelists to take their discussion where they want it to go instead of trying to direct or control where it goes–which in practice often requires strength to avoid the temptation to end the panelists’ discussion just as it begins to take off

This last point is an important one. The idea of strength is often associated with control. So it is natural to assume that a strong facilitator is one who keeps a panel’s discussion on a short leash. And it is natural to juxtapose this image of the strong facilitator with the image of the ‘weak’ facilitator who ‘simply stands in the front of the room and takes notes on the flip charts’.

I personally would not want to see a facilitator do much more than stand at the front of the room and take notes on the flip charts–if his or her panel’s discussions were moving along nicely, if they were civil and no one was stuck in heated debates, if they seemed to be interesting and productive, and if no one was trying to push the panel into advocating some possibility in its report.

This, indeed, is what our panels’ discussions should be like when everything goes right. And if everything is going right, then why mess with a good thing? But it is worth noting that both of these images can be deceptive.

When a facilitator exerts too much control, a discussion can easily become a series of dialogues between the facilitator and the various different panelists, who direct their remarks either directly to the facilitator or indirectly through the facilitator to the other panelists. This type of thing is simply too artificial to be a real discussion, and panelists are seldom satisfied with it for very long. The irony, however, is that a facilitator who is ‘strong’ in this sense may easily get frightened when he senses that a discussion is getting out of his control–when the panelists actually begin to address their comments directly to each other instead of to or through him–and try to put an end to a real discussion before it can get too far off the ground.

The image of the weak facilitator who simply takes notes at the flip charts is the other side of the coin. It belies the fact that a quiet guy with a felt tip pen may all too easily control a discussion and determine its outcome by encouraging his panelists to develop some thoughts and not others.

Neither of these facilitators is what we want. But unless a facilitator has recruited panelists who all think alike, or weak panelists who are sheep ready for the slaughter, there may be little to worry about. For he or she will eventually be confronted by the ‘strong’ participating panelists who will simply talk more loudly when he or she tries to shut them up, or who will pointedly ask him or her to record what they just said on the flip charts too.

This is just a round-about way of saying that a strong IF facilitator must be strong enough to recruit panelists who have ideas of their own that they are ready and willing to discuss with others; strong enough to let a panel’s discussion go where the panelists themselves want to take it, regardless of what his or her plans for the discussion might have been; and strong enough to pull the panelists back if it becomes apparent that they are debating an issue in a totally unproductive way, or are engaged in narrow-problem solving, or are moving toward advocacy, or are simply shooting the breeze.

Some of their concerns mirrored my own: how do we institutionalize civic engagement (embedding discussion), how do we get the public and officials to recognize its value, and how do we best cultivate improved discussion habits? I hope I was able to add to the conversation on the first two questions, but looking back I can see how other attendees helped me think more about the last question.

Not surprisingly, many of the scholars I spoke to looked at improved discussion habits as a “learning” issue and they knocked around many good ideas about improved facilitation technique, clearer materials, and certification in discussion practice. But as one person put it to me, “people just need to do it and do it again and again”. This of course implicates many issues of convincing participants that recurrent participation is worthwhile, having suitable material to discuss, and maintaining an inviting setting.

Another attendee asked me, “Do we know for sure that people ‘get better’ at discussion through repetition?”. The question was clearly colored by last summer’s evidence that repeated shouting matches at town hall meetings did not improve discourse.

My answer was that IF public discussion results seem to suggest that they do. I have seen that borne out in my own experience and that of my colleagues and summer institute faculty where “repeat” participants have been part of more than one discussion series of an IF report. But I believe that the most impressive evidence of the positive benefits of repeat participation have arisen in the public discussion series in the Wisconsin discussion project in series facilitated by James Schneider, Melissa Simonson, and Karen Stollenwerk.

As I review their discussion summaries and “de-brief” with them on what they are finding in discussions that have repeat participants, I am seeing some very common sense patterns:

• People who return for additional discussion gain comfort with the process stressing civility and “ground rules”, the open and exploratory nature of a “non-debate” format, and the imaginative exercise of “trying on contrasting concepts for size”.
• “Returnees” notice a “productivity gain” and feel good that less time is spent on figuring out what can be expected from discussion and how to interact with other participants.
• In multiple discussion series relying on the same participants a “club” identity starts to grow that builds community.
• In discussion series where a core of “returnees” is mixed with newcomers, those with experience tend to “model” discussion practice for newcomers and coach them in very helpful ways.

The above points suggest that repetitive discussion practice is not only good for the quality of discussion, but that it also provides partial answers for some of the other nagging civic engagement questions. It serves as a magnet for new recruits as participants talk about it and what they are getting out of it. James Schneider reports that it can turn into “the place to be” in a community and thus attract the attention of movers and shakers.

One of my own repeat participants pointed to her sense of accomplishment after participating in three discussion series. “It was like when I first started working out at the gym—I was a little awkward and sore—but I built up my muscle and now I’m pretty good at it,” she said.

It all sort of came to a head at our last session when I just spent some time talking with the entire group about how I felt I was being too hard on them concerning their development of group communication skills, and that I was going to give them more responsibility for assessing their individual and group communication skills. In turn, students commented that they felt they were learning a lot but that learning communication skills to have deep and meaningful discussions was HARD. Students said they enjoyed the challenges of listening to different perspectives, accommodating different discussion styles, asking good questions, and considering ideas and interventions in a considered fashion. But, they said, they had had few opportunities to engage in this type or level of discussion, so it was taking them some time to get good at this. It was a good discussion, affirming for them that they were engaged in a difficult but highly enjoyable communication process, and confirming for me that communication/discussion/facilitation skill development is taking place among most students – for some at a very high level.

My experience teaching this course has shown me that students hunger for experiences where they get to practice good facilitation and rhetorical skills. What makes the development of these skills so meaningful for them, however, is that rather than practicing them in a vacuum, they are developing communication skills to engage in public deliberation of issues they care about. This, I think, is in large part why the process is hard but satisfying for them. A few weeks ago, I had lost sight of this connection, but then the students helped me see this.

But it is a fundamental error to value blogging because it might create opportunities for discussion.  Blogging might engender discussion, that is true.  But not all discussions are created equal.  Not all discussions are exploratory; not all are developmental.  In order to ensure that they are, IF goes to great length to facilitate its discussions.  That is what we do.  Discussions on a blog will rise to the level of IF’s other discussions only if and to the extent that they are likewise facilitated.

The notion of blogging as creating opportunities for discussion rests on a quantitative view of communication: the more communication, the better.  But that view is fundamentally at odds with the very raison d’etre of IF.  Not all opportunities actually lead to discussion, and not all discussions are equally useful.