Bridging the Divide

I recently took a short 45 minute on-line course offered by edX.  EdX offers free MOOC's or Massive Open Online Courses.  It was started by a professor at MIT and now hundreds of thousands of students from all over the world have taken all kinds of university courses online.  The founder describes this as the "democratization of education."   The course that I took was called Communication Skills for Bridging Divides which you can check out here or at edx.org.

This course attracted me because of the polarization that I am seeing in Europe and North America in the last year.  If you watch the news, you will see countless examples of politicians representing worldviews that seem to be light years apart.  So I thought I would learn some skills for bridging these divides.

The course designers explained the difference between debate, discussion and dialogue.  According to them, debate is set up to have a winner and a loser and discussion seeks to come up with a solution or a decision.  But the purpose of dialogue is to understand the other person’s point of view more fully.  Rather than seeking closure, dialogue uncovers more options. 

It seems to me that we float between these three all the time even in the same conversation.  So often we like to score points or try to convince the other person of our ideas while looking for the closure of agreement.  The idea that you would only be seeking to understand the other person’s point of view and not pushing your own agenda sounded like something I don’t hear very often.  And so I decided to learn more about that.

Whereas, discussions assume that all parties have the same beliefs or worldview, a dialogue is designed to bridge the divide between different worldviews or beliefs.  Dialogue has to be collaborative to work as it involves trust.  However one person can model this and begin a dialogue.  The course listed five ways to facilitate this.

First, you can consciously choose to believe that the other person has good intentions.  This reduces the likelihood of being judgmental and helps one to focus on understanding the other person’s viewpoint.  The second strategy is to ask clarifying questions or paraphrase what you think you heard to make sure that that is correct.  Phrases such as “Can you say more about that," or saying that "this is an unfamiliar way of looking at this for me. Can you give me more details," are ways to gain more understanding.  

The third strategy is to listen humbly, putting aside your own viewpoints and showing that you are listening.  The fourth strategy is to pause when the person is finished talking instead of jumping right back in with your own comments.  This can be a real change for those of us who are used to a fast paced, fast talking, competitive environment.  And lastly, look for common ground, something that you both agree on to build bridges.  If that is impossible, you could always simply thank the person for sharing their point of view.

I got an opportunity to practice some of these strategies.  I was talking to someone about a best selling book that I had recently read.  Most people I talked to didn't like the book and neither did I.  But this person actually liked the book.  I told her that she was the first person that I had met who did like it and asked her to tell me what she liked about it.  As I listened to her point of view, I gained more insight.  I realized that there were people who thought the same way about life as the author and that they would enjoy the book.  We could agree that we simply liked different things.  And we did both agree that we didn't think it should have won the prize that it did.

Sound bites, twitter, and texts make it easy to be get your message out but they are not so good for understanding points of view, listening to subtleties and finding ways to understand complex issues.  It may be that we need to learn and re-learn how to communicate so that we can collaborate, cooperate and take care of each other.

I ran into a story in the newspaper that seemed to be a good example of this idea. Sam Fiorella's son Lucas lived silently with depression for about five years.  It wasn't until he died by suicide that Sam learned how many others his son had reached out to, while he himself was suffering.  At Lucas' funeral many young people told his family how Lucas reaching out to them had helped them to not take their lives. 

This inspired Sam to found The Friendship Bench.  This non-profit organization provides space on campuses where students can talk about mental health issues.  The group installs bright yellow benches in high schools, colleges and universities across Canada to encourage students to talk to each other.  During Mental Health Week this year (May 1 – 7, 2017) they will install benches in five new schools.  The benches are a physical place to sit and talk as well as a reminder to take the time to talk about mental health.  

On the website yellowisforhello.org there are short videos with mental health messages and tips.  Sam suggests taking the media out of social media and encourages young people to get out with others.

Perhaps all our technological progress has taken us too far away from each other.  But humans are resilient and adaptable and we can always learn new things to make our lives better.  You may want to experiment yourself with dialogue and see what stories and new ideas emerge.