TAKE ALL SIDES? REALLY?

Really.

One of the core competencies of a dialogue facilitator is the ability to “take all sides” in the midst of potent divides that play out in human relationships and society. But non-facilitators are always asking, how can someone possibly do this when the stakes of a social conflict are so high? When inequity and oppression are present? And when the “sides” are never standing on equal ground?

The simplest answer is because someone has to. 

The more complicated answer has to begin with the very idea of “talking.”

Talking in a group is not like talking to friends--or even talking to enemies. Talking is used by trained professionals as a complex technology that has the implicit goal of disrupting toxic narratives that tend to hurt individuals, relationships and even collectives. This technology invites groups of people to engage each other in non-ordinary ways, to reach non-ordinary goals. And this happens when a facilitator assumes a non-ordinary stance for the benefit of the group. We describe that stance to trainees as taking all sides.

Talking with purpose also requires a particular kind of environment where people at odds (in large and small ways) can meet for the purpose of incubating something new between them. For this to be effective, someone has to intentionally establish different “rules of engagement” in order for any robust changes to occur. Many call this a neutral space and denigrate it as “a bubble” at best, saying it is not “the real world.” At worst, they think it is collusion with the worst of injustice.

They are right; it’s not the real world. But it is an incubator--a controlled environment built with the intention of calling forth and nurturing something that has not matured enough to survive on its own. And that environment is primarily created by facilitators who are skillful at taking all sides in a conflict. In this unusual environment, shared vision and even shared commitment to the collective good can emerge.

But because most of us cannot even conceive of this possibility, we critique the technology and the people who deploy it. However, after years of seeing what’s possible (as well as what is not), I am convinced that we need these “social incubators” where communication operates according to principles and premises that are absolutely not ordinary.

Do I have to emphasize that “ordinary” has gotten us to where we are today?

So what does it actually look like when a facilitator takes all sides? Primarily, it looks like treating each person in a group as if what they see has value and as if their perspective points to something that is true. That’s it, really. This means a facilitator listens as if what is being shared is sincere. They ask questions as if the answers will be thoughtful. They interact with each person as if they deserve respect. Taking all sides could be seen as an inner gesture, more like a beginners mind that allows a facilitator to approach every person’s views with an equal dose of curiosity and skepticism. 

However, facilitators do not advocate taking all sides on the street, in a brutal or violent incident, or where a gross injustice has occurred. They wouldn’t pause and try to “understand” the offender when someone is being victimized. Like anyone else, they would move to stop the assault. But in the context of a space that is created specifically for dialogue, facilitators are trained to respond with profound inclusivity to people who have realized that both fighting reality or denying it is no longer tolerable to anyone, nor the best path forward.

In any conversation, there will be people who have been silenced, people who are passionately vocal, people who know many facts about the subject, and others who know few facts. And the facilitator will have to help every one of them to articulate the value of what they each see--because the future cannot be meaningfully built upon valuing the vision of only a few of us. We know this.

Someone taking all sides is taking a counter-cultural position at every level; it’s not just in the midst of calls for social justice. Just see how it works when you try to take both sides when your two close friends divorce. It’s likely that trying to hold that stance will eventually end one or both of the relationships.

But what I’m talking about here is a seasoned professional competency, one that operates in very particular contexts and one that creates an incubator to hold the tension of deep conflicts that, if meaningfully and skillfully examined, can lead to collaborative solutions that uplift the collective.

At this moment in history, when more and more people are saying, “We need to have conversations,” it should be good news to learn that there are some people who devote themselves to operating in those encounters in ways that ordinary people would not and could not. While this is crucial, we also know it is controversial. But that doesn’t mean we can stop doing it. We know someone has to.

~Laurie Mulvey, Director
World in Conversation at Penn State

© 2020, Laurie L. Mulvey. All rights reserved.