Rhonda Fitzgerald shares a proven methodology for facilitating dialogues in high-stakes situations
As we enter a new academic year, campus leaders are faced with another semester of political conflict manifested in polarized campus cultures and fractured relationships. As the Executive Director of an organization dedicated to transforming difficult relationships and moving toward resolution in conflicts between groups, I understand deeply how intractable these tensions can seem. Yet, there is hope for better outcomes, if we shift from reactive and ill-prepared responses to “sustained dialogues” using a proven methodology.
When I signed up for Sustained Dialogue as a first-year student at Princeton, I had no idea that there were quite a few lessons I’d be asked to learn rapidly, nor that I was discovering a leadership path that would, 20 years later, lead me to regularly bring together groups that find it hard to speak to and listen to each other.
I began formally teaching others how to lead dialogues across difference back in 2008, traveling to campuses, workplaces, and communities that were divided, but that wanted to use a proven five-stage process called Sustained Dialogue, published by a former diplomat named Dr. Harold Saunders. My time doing this work, which started when a fellow student from South Africa asked me to join a dialogue group on race relations, has taken me to Canada, Russia, Ethiopia, Kenya, and to most of the states in the United States. Since 2018, our team is often asked to directly facilitate a process when what is happening in Gaza causes clashes between students or between students and administrators. In response, we often work with all parties to either apply restorative justice conferencing practices or use the full Sustained Dialogue peace process.
The Sustained Dialogue five-stage process is as follows:
Deciding and Committing to Engage
This means leaders often work to remove any logistical, financial, emotional barriers to getting key parties together. This may involve responding directly to requests in order to build trust (inducements), co-shaping the invitee list, and being willing to remove potential spoilers and uninterested parties from the process to build possibilities for success. This is often the longest stage, and includes setting agreements or ground rules.
Mapping and Naming the Conflict
This stage is the time often creates empathy and trust, which is where folks share their histories, concerns, hopes, and interests, not just one’s position. This is also where others become able to articulate the real interests of others in the room.
Identifying Structures and Problems at their Roots
This stage is marked by moving to deeper knowledge of the structures that created conditions for the divides at hand. This is where knowledge of local and group histories is essential.
Brainstorming Scenarios for Change
Each party’s participants in this stage work together to find options that allow ways out of conflict by leading their followers differently. Often this must be done delicately, in ways that preserve their credibility. This often means weighing how one action might affect others. This stage often seeks to answer the same questions that community organizers ask, such as, who is the target of this? Who will be able to implement our goals now that we have built power by speaking together?
Individual and Collective Action
This is when the group, working often as one body, enacts their steps for change, and evaluates how they worked. Often these groups continue to work together for years.
In these high-stakes settings, I learned that it isn't just about managing conversations—it's about understanding the potential for deeper cooperation when specific conditions are met. Here are four lessons that became evident through years of facilitating dialogues under pressure:
Skills for engaging toward equity and inclusion are very similar to the knowledge diplomats and peacebuilders use.
In the U.S., there is a backlash when we talk about power, differences, and cultural history openly. To facilitate intergroup dialogue in settings where leaders believe their credibility will be destroyed if anyone knows that they have come to the table, or restorative justice circles between victims and perpetrators, I am required to have a critical lens for power’s role throughout history. Without a commitment to understanding the complexities of identity and power, no party in a formal dialogue process would ever be able to trust a convener like me who is seeking to move with the group toward justice and peace.
The stickiest situations begin to rhyme over time.
What’s the set of conflicts I see most often in the U.S.? It’s the conflict between those who want others to understand, respect, and consider their needs, and those without the will, opportunity, skills, and/or ability to anticipate what others expect nor provide it. This is why my life is spent on communication work. I see these conflicts as areas where we can gain ground, and many issues we work on for years are fundamentally about this. Each situation adds its own parts to the chorus, for instance when a group that’s expected to provide resources perceives itself as having fewer resources than others believe it has, or when each group feels their pain is just as worthy of care.
Everyone being aware of an issue doesn’t necessary lead to more collaboration.
While conflict is a large part of the reason we gather using the SD process, the purpose is to build relationships and take collaborative action. I am continually struck by the fact that awareness of an issue is not necessarily the first step to get people working on that issue together. In fact, the pre-condition for collaboration I often find is having others be asked to be an active partner in change. Not theoretically in the future. But, here, now, together, in the present tense, which often results from someone sharing their stories with the explicit purpose of trying to find someone to work alongside.
If the goal is collaboration, then people can do it, even when they previously hated each other.
High-stakes dialogues require the absolute best conditions, including pre-steps that decrease anxiety, a willingness to put down arms or armor, and a deep investment of time. Breakthroughs aren’t what many people want them to be: viral moments where someone is challenged with a great comeback or brilliant teachable moment. People who are hoping to see change measured in tears or in a one-time meeting often neglect opportunities for later collaboration.
I do wince when I hear about one-time townhalls expecting to fix extensive conflicts. In some of our settings, we start planning 12 meetings, not one. Why? First, it takes time to move through the five stages and arrive at the final stage of acting together. Secondly, it’s truly easy to do damage to individuals if you expect them to “get it” in a couple of hours. We separate out the process of facilitating to “fix someone” and instead use group time to facilitate relationship building and later, take action on what’s at hand with the people who are with us now, imperfect as they may be.
These lessons suggest some specific things leaders can do now to navigate what they face today.
Campuses need dedicated structures for creating relationships across divides that are likely to boil over. Senior leaders should prioritize building relationships with leaders through Sustained Dialogue rather than hoping change will happen.
Similarly, senior leaders and trustees should receive training about the deep histories of division that are going to be a part of their work. Leaders should plan to onboard new leaders with workshops that include a deep understanding of equity, inclusion, global conflict histories, and an emphasis on building conflict transformation skills.
High-stakes dialogue requires planning and skill, but this type of work can only occur with contagious hope and visionary leadership. I hold onto the belief that there are methods we can use today to support our campus communities in becoming more productive, collaborative, and just.
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About Rhonda
As the Executive Director for the Sustained Dialogue Institute, Rhonda Fitzgerald works with campuses, workplaces, communities, and countries. Rhonda has facilitated more than 10,000 hours of dialogue about race, hierarchy, ethnic mistrust, disability, religion, and resource and land conflicts in her 16 years at SDI, working with partners as diverse as technology companies, hospitals, government agencies, prisons, & nonprofits. She is a co-partner for SD work in Sweden, Ethiopia, & Kenya with the Life and Peace Institute. Rhonda lives in Washington, DC with her partner, Aaron. Rhonda is an alumna of Princeton University.
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