Available Programs and Coaching
This is about slowing down to talk about how we talk to one another, so that we may go farther together.
Habits of Discourse hopes to help you build your capacity to engage in healthier dialogue particularly on difficult public topics. While many focus on the extreme margins of political disagreement, our programs focus first on equipping us for engagement where the vast majority of us live: in the middle area where we have more in common than we realize, a place not of whole agreement, but rather one where we see each other’s humanity and largely share the same desires, even if we disagree on how to realize them. Our approach leans into that space while acknowledging and illuminating the importance of our diversity, unlocking our potential to thrive together.
Primary offerings (more detail below)
In-person civil discourse training: personalized to your context with ideal length of 1 full day, with options for 1/2 day or 1.5 days.
Virtual civil discourse training: personalized to your context with ideal format of 75 minute sessions for 5 to 6 consecutive weeks.
Ongoing coaching: formatted to meet client needs, this coaching may be designed for an individual or a small cohort of community leaders seeking to change the culture in their community through habits of discourse.
Supplementary workshops: civil discourse happens within a larger context of community and political engagement, and often communities experience division around particular issues. Supplementary workshops may take many shapes, but the most popular involve deeper dives into specific issue areas and a training in best practices for political advocacy.
Who is this for?
For your company as a retreat theme or special seminar to help empower your colleagues to engage with each other and on behalf of the company while seeking to be responsive to current events.
For your college, university, or school, which serve as uniquely fruitful ground for this training given the diversity and breadth of people educational institutions brings together.
For your organization seeking new ways to advance your objectives—civil discourse is also useful for broadly likeminded people who may disagree on minute details on how to achieve something.
For your city or town, whether informally or for elected and career government officials, help grow a local culture of civil discourse.
For YOU, our ongoing coaching can help you lead by example in your leadership role. Ongoing coaching is also ideal as a follow-up measure to our group trainings, providing expert guidance to help you tend to and grow the habits of discourse in your community, business, or organization.
We hope to implement our programs wherever they may be useful. Ultimately, they work best when approached locally and in community. Each training and coaching program is personalized to you and your context to ensure we identify the best way forward in building capacity for better conversation.
Many of us are weary of political division on display in news and social media, and worn down in personal relationships with friends, families, colleagues and in our communities. While there are common political issues that cause tension, there is great variation on how they manifest in a particular place and in the individuals within the environment. We approach our programs in a way to meet you where you are, to help introduce habits of discourse where they are most likely to catch on and thrive.
The Bigger Goal
Whichever program you choose, they all center around one initial goal: building your capacity for civil discourse, conversation to enhance understanding.
Our country continues to experience increased polarization not only across partisan lines, but within seemingly like-minded communities, all while more topics are defined by increasing contentiousness. These dynamics inhibit our ability to build consensus, live into our civic responsibilities, maintain relationship, and work to solve the greatest challenges of our time. Yet, the direction we are heading is not an inevitable one.
Part of the solution is learning how to lean into and take advantage of healthy conflict as an inevitable dimension of living with diversity, solving problems, and discussing critical issues facing our communities. To do this, we must build our personal and collective capacity for engaging in civil discourse.
The definition of civil discourse is quite simple: conversation to enhance understanding. Absent from this definition: the word “polite”, a request to accept the status quo, a promise of winning an argument, or a stated goal of changing the minds of others.
Inevitably, as we build our personal and communal ability to conduct healthy dialogue over tough topics, we will see other outcomes like increased sense of community, more effective problem-solving, and changes in opinions of others and even ourselves. But the central goal of this practice is to improve our understanding of one another by weaving habits of discourse into our daily lives. This deeper understanding can help unlock the potential in our communities to overcome deep-seated challenges.
Civil discourse functions like a tool, and like any tool, if we do not practice and maintain it, it may grow dull and our ability to use it, deteriorated. This training will help you hone your ability for civil discourse and learn how to put it into practice, adding a critical tool to the various means of community engagement. Also like any tool, it is just one among many for engaging in the public square, meaning it will not always be the effective tool for a given moment or goal. Our supplemental advocacy training can help place the practice into relationship with other means of advocacy and public engagement.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of this course, participants will be better positioned to build individual and collective capacity for civil discourse, particularly through the following elements:
Understanding civil discourse in context
The tenets of civil discourse
What language has to do with it
Leading with values: how vs. what
Prioritization and salience of political issues
Policymaking is a messy process
The growing edges of civil discourse practice
A sacred space for healthy conflict
“Kansas Wesleyan University was proud to host Civil Discourse training for the Salina Community. Through our Community Resilience Hub, we believe we have a responsibility to help students, faculty, staff, and community members be a part of solutions that enhance our community. In order to do that, we must have the tools to truly hear and respect the viewpoints of others. Alan’s training was engaging, thought-provoking, and inspiring to those in attendance. We are already working to schedule his next session to expand the reach of this important skillset.”
“Alan was a great coaching partner for the Diocese of Iowa with a cohort of people who wanted to deepen their faith community’s engagement with justice in the public square. He listened deeply, asked great questions that drew out the wisdom in the group, and facilitated a really valuable group learning environment. He is a natural weaver of people and ideas, with a wealth of knowledge, experience, and connections that he can draw on to support groups in their learning and growth. ”