Despite the terrible impacts of the coronavirus on the meeting industry, there’s a silver lining.
Hear me out!
There’s no question that times are hard. The coronavirus pandemic has already devastated lives and businesses globally, and we don’t know how much worse things will get. The meeting industry is reeling under a wave of cancellations, postponements, and uncertainty. All my short-term facilitation and on-site training engagements have been canceled — and I’m lucky in comparison with colleagues who are struggling with the significant financial impact of the loss of work, deposits, and income that a few months ago looked secure.
Consequently, in the short term, the situation looks bleak. In addition, no one knows what “short term” means right now.
In the long term…
Unfortunately, it currently looks like one potential short-term improvement outcome, containment, will not be successful. In the long term, however, the current turmoil caused by the spread of COVID-19 is likely to subside. The development and introduction of an effective and affordable vaccine may bring the virus under control. Or, enough people may get COVID-19 and develop an immune response, leading to herd immunity.
Eventually, the coronavirus is most likely to either burn out or return seasonally, like influenza.
So what’s the coronavirus silver lining?
I believe there are three silver linings that are long-term positives for the meeting industry.
1—Online meetings will replace many broadcast-style meeting sessions
The dramatic cancellation of face-to-face events has led to an immediate focus on replacing them, when possible, with online meetings. This focus is welcome because online technology can and should replace the lecture-centric components of conventional meetings.
2—Online meetings process technology will improve
In my opinion, we can significantly improve online meeting process technology. The pressure to find a replacement for face-to-face meetings may speed the development of technology processes for connection that current platforms lack.
All major online platforms support broadcast-style meetings. In small meetings, any meeting participant can become the broadcaster of the moment by speaking. As in face-to-face large meetings, this speaker-switching mechanism doesn’t work with a large group without central control over who, or how many, can speak at any moment.
What online meeting technology currently ignores or implements poorly is participant-initiated small group voice or video chat discussions of the kind that happen at face-to-face meetings. Although some platforms implement breakout groups, they are generally limited in number, and platform facilitators initiate them rather than participants on an as-needed basis.
Hopefully, a pressing demand for virtual meetings that can provide the spontaneous interaction and connection possible at face-to-face meetings will spur the development of connection-centric online meeting technology features.
3—We will better understand the true value of face-to-face meetings
Right now, the human race is responding to the short-term devastating effects of coronavirus by implementing social distance. We are rapidly curtailing how we get together for entertainment, education, and the many other reasons we meet.
But human beings do not thrive long-term on social distance; rather, we want and need social existence. Over time, restricting meetings to online modalities will make us aware of what they lack: personal connection and engagement around pertinent content. Consequently, the meeting industry will better understand the unique possibilities that face-to-face events can provide. And, perhaps, we will become increasingly open to the value of human process technologies that allow meetings to become what participants actually want and need.
Can you think of other long-term silver linings for the meeting industry as a result of the coronavirus pandemic? Share them in the comments below.
“Yes,” say thousands of books on how to improve business meetings. And I agree.
But “No”, when we’re talking about most meeting industry events.
Unfortunately, the meeting industry tends to assume that if business meetings should be efficient, meeting industry events should be too.
Obviously, there are aspects of meeting events that should be efficient whenever possible. For example, registration, coffee service, transporting attendees between venues, room set changes, etc.
In addition, a well-thought-out broadcast style design may be the right choice for some trainings and corporate events that require a top-down approach to achieve their objectives.
But, for meetings where you want participants to:
learn effectively;
form valuable connections; and
generate valuable ideas and approaches
you need to design inefficient meetings.
How efficiency can be counterproductive
Sometimes, efficiency can be the enemy of effectiveness. Here are three examples:
“If you have ever watched a symphony orchestra you may have noticed how inefficient the musicians are. They are not utilized 100%. Most have below 50% efficiency. Imagine how good the music would turn out if all instruments were playing all the time. Such is the science of efficiency.“
—Alidad Hamidi
“The problem is that democracy is by definition slow, messy, and cumbersome. Today demands on democracy, driven by modern means of communication, are different. The pace is fast. Decisions have to be made quickly. Time for reflection and compromise is limited.”
—@AlexStubb, former Prime Minister of Finland
“My own experience consulting inside some highly successful companies (Microsoft, Apple, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Dupont, to name a few) cannot corroborate a relationship between busyness and success. Very successful companies have never struck me as particularly busy; in fact, they are, as a group, rather laid-back.”
—Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency, Tom DeMarco
We are not mind readers
Effectively figuring out what people want and need to learn and giving them the time and space to learn it is inefficient because learning is messy.
Successfully supporting people in making valuable connections at meetings is also inefficient because we do not know who might be valuable to meet until we are given opportunities and good process to find out about the people we’re with.
And creating worthwhile ideas and approaches through group process at meetings is inefficient because we invariably have to generate many ideas that don’t pan out to glean the few specks of gold we’re looking for.
So, should meetings be efficient?
As Alex Stubb says, we are living in a fast-paced world where time is valuable. There is continuing pressure to shorten events, in the belief that busy prospective attendees will be more likely to attend a meeting that doesn’t tie up too much of their time and money.
However, the consequent shortening of programs and sessions has a significant impact on the effectiveness of events: their ability to deliver desired learning, connection, and creative outcomes. So be careful not to destroy the effectiveness of your event in the name of efficiency.
Participant-driven and participation-rich meeting designs incorporate a braindate’s purpose — one-to-one or small group connection around relevant content — organically into every session. In addition, the beginning of a peer conference uncovers the topics that people want to talk about, as well as providing plentiful opportunities for participants to discover others who share their challenges and interests.
By the time a peer conference is underway, you will have learned core information about many of the other participants. And they, of course, will have learned important things about you!
So there’s no need to add a braindate process to a well-designed meeting. Instead, make your entire conference a braindate!
Sharing our experience of others directly with them can be incredibly powerful. Let me tell you a story…
Not long ago, I was working at a multi-day workshop with a 6-person group that included someone I’ll call D. D self-described themself as mentally ill, bipolar, and with psychological issues. They spoke slowly and described themself as not emotionally available, and often confused about what they said.
D also shared that they:
Felt isolated and wanted to get better at connecting with people;
Believed that other people couldn’t easily understand them and didn’t like them; and
Had a hard time deciding whether to attend the workshop.
It quickly became apparent that D was intelligent, perceptive, sensitive, thoughtful, and communicated clearly.
So from time to time during the group sessions, I’d tell D my experience of them. When appropriate, I’d say something like “By the way, you told us earlier that you think people find you hard to understand. I want you to know that I think you communicate really well, and I’ve had no problem understanding you.”
I didn’t have to worry about the rest of the group. They had a similar experience of D and regularly reinforced this and similar sentiments.
As the workshop continued, D visibly relaxed. We were impressed by how D had handled and was dealing with the many difficulties in their life. Our group liked D and told them so several times.
An unexpected conclusion
At the end of the workshop, participants had the opportunity to stand up in front of everyone (about 80 people) and share what they’d learned. Given what I knew of D, I didn’t expect them to contribute. So I was totally surprised when D got up and walked to the front of the room. Slowly, D said:
“I’m really nervous.
I learned that there are people in this world who like me, who understand me, and who I can have an emotionally intimate relationship with.”
D stopped and stood there, looking at us all.
I was weepy and the applause was loud and sustained.
Yes, sharing our experience of others directly with them can be incredibly powerful.
Do you have examples of the power of sharing your experience of others with them? Please tell us in the comments!
“I read once that the first time they put an escapologist in a tank of water, he or she will have one of two reactions, and which one determines the course of their life.
The first sort of escapologist is an ordinary person who has come to the trade organically, by whatever curious sequence of opportunity and happenstance—and that sort will panic. There is very little that is more appallingly unnatural or frightening than being lowered, bound, into a confined space containing an atmosphere you cannot breathe. … Some people just never go back in the tank. … Some get right back in and they master their fear and they go on to be as good as their skill allows. These last are most compelling to watch.
The second sort of escapologist is the sort that doesn’t panic. They touch the water and relax, as if just now realising where they truly want to be. … This sort of escapologist tends not to be very successful commercially, because their contentedness in the tank disturbs the audience. …
The second sort of escapologist … invites a placid contemplation of mortality that is nowhere on the razzle-dazzle shopping list and which will certainly not get you laid. Audiences come out of the theatre sober and chilled, and a little while later they make life changes and spend more time with the people they love.“ —From Gnomon: A Novel by Nick Harkaway
“Images of free market society that made sense prior to the Industrial Revolution continue to circulate today as ideals, blind to the gross mismatch between the background social assumptions reigning in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and today’s institutional realities. We are told that our choice is between free markets and state control, when most adults live their working lives under a third thing entirely: private government[emphasis added].“
What else could you call the modern workplace, where superiors can issue changing orders, control attire, surveil correspondence, demand medical testing, define schedules, and monitor communication, such as social-media posts?
—Nathan Heller on Elizabeth Anderson, The Philosopher Redefining Equality
Society’s structure and governance impact almost every aspect of our lives. How civic discourse frames our actual structure and governance conditions what we think is ethical. Ever since Richard Cantillon and Adam Smith developed the concept of the free market, political economists have framed the choice for society as one between free markets and state control.
Anderson points out that this framing ignores the reality that the modern workplace increasingly controls adults’ lives. Such loss of individual autonomy threatens to reduce spontaneous connection and authentic community, both inside and outside work.
1984
We are still a long way from George Orwell’s 1984, where the Party only allowed conformist relationships. (Though the current rise of dictatorships around the world is an ominous sign for the future.) But we need to be aware of new kinds of oppression in private organizations. In addition to those mentioned above, organizations continue to further blur the line between work and personal. Corporations require more and more employees to respond to routine “emergencies” day or night.
The number of people with substantial autonomy in their work and life is decreasing with the rise of private government. This concerns me more than the historic tension between free markets and the state. With the ongoing collapse of unions and continuing consolidation of businesses, private government has fewer checks on its power. As a result, workers find it more and more difficult to resist new demands.
What to do?
The first step in tackling a problem is to notice it exists. We overlook the rise of private government by focusing on creating the “right” balance between free markets and state control. Free markets move inexorably towards the minimum “acceptable” competition, typically duopolies (think Uber versus Lyft). State power provides some limits on how much concentration of power occurs.
But inside organizations, there is little, if any, limit on what private government can impose on employees’ lives.
Public government is the only means workers have to communicate their desire to limit the suffocating effects of private government. Private government uses its vast resources to fight such efforts via well-funded media campaigns. Such campaigns use effective tools, such as polarizing and misleading memes, which work at an emotional level to demoralize opponents or sway audiences to an advantageous point of view.
The unchecked power of private government may only be curbed when its excesses become too much for workers to bear and a tipping point is reached. Until then, it’s important to work to increase awareness of the growing control that companies have over employees’ lives and the ensuing deleterious effects.
Here’s an example of why I love conference facilitation and design. After setting up a Personal Introspective this morning (25 minutes), I turned over what happens to the small groups. Watch the listening and involvement of every person as I weave my phone through the circles of chairs.
These people just determined what they wanted to change in their lives as a result of the experiences, learning, and connections they made during this three-day conference. Now they’re taking turns to share their commitments with group members, getting validation and support in the process. Subsequently, when they leave the conference this afternoon, they’ll have the knowledge and community support to make the changes they want and need in their workplaces.
I love facilitating connection, learning, and growth like this. Being trusted to help conference participants improve their lives via interactive peer learning is an honor — and it feels very good!
That’s why I love my conference facilitation and design work!
The first three of his revolutionary cycles are well established, the fourth is now arriving. Cycles one through three introduced calculation and data storage, connection, and shifting place and time.
Above all, Seth’s fourth cycle adds prediction.
“Call it AI if you want to, but to be specific, it’s a combination of analyzing information and then predicting what we would do if we knew what the computer knew.
…we’re giving those computers the ability to make predictions based on what thousands of people before us have done.
…If you’re a mediocre lawyer or doctor, your job is now in serious jeopardy. The combination of all four of these cycles means that the hive computer is going to do your job better than you can, soon.
With each cycle, the old cycles continue to increase. Better databases, better arithmetic. Better connectivity, more people submitting more data, less emphasis on where you are and more on what you’re connected to and what you’re doing.
…just as we made a massive leap in just fifteen years, the next leap will take less than ten. Because each cycle supports the next one.”
In an earlier post, I wrote about how neural networks can now quickly learn to do certain tasks better than humans with no external examples, only the rules that govern the task environment.
Seth points out that when we supply computers with the huge, rapidly growing databases of human behavior, the fourth cycle becomes even more capable.
In conclusion, Seth ends with:
“Welcome to the fourth cycle. The hive will see you now.“
In April 2017, I posted the following to the NCDD-DISCUSSION list. (The National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation [NCDD] is “a network of innovators who bring people together across divides to discuss, decide, and take action together effectively on today’s toughest issues”.)
ADRIAN SEGAR
It’s an advertisement and carefully staged, but I wonder if there are lessons for NCDD folks in the largely positive response to this recent Heineken ad:
The resulting conversation was fascinating and instructive. So I’ve taken the liberty of reproducing it here, and have added links when possible to the participants. I hope you find it a valuable dialog on the important issue of bringing people together across divides.
I loved seeing two people get to know each other quickly before tackling a subject.
I don’t see any of the presented issues being discussed during the participant’s time together, so see neither “left” nor “right” changed views. The issue they worked on was constructing a bar and participating in a get-to-know-you exercise.
“Right” viewers may have changed their willingness to discuss their viewpoint with someone on the “other” side, but we can’t assume they were any less willing to discuss differences before being invited to participate in this filming.
After their joint beer, the opponents may keep their original beliefs, although now appreciate someone with an opposing belief.
Maybe our differences continue because no one invites us to discuss issues and we don’t have public places to discuss and work on them outside of establishments selling products.
Yes, there is a lesson in the largely positive response to this advertisement. The general public is not offended by the suggestion that bridging the divide is simple.
For those of us who actually try to address the divide, this can feel like discovering that the Matrix is real–there are few allies to be found because so many people are lost in fantasy.
But that lesson can be misleading. Fantasy can’t last forever. When the world actually collapses, the public response to this advertisement will change. At that point, people will see Heineken as an intoxicant. Cigarette ads used to get positive responses too, but don’t anymore.
Today I enjoyed the pleasure of playing with a three-year-old. Fantasy. Fantasy. There is no point at which people fully escape the instinct to fantasize or the instinct to honor the fantasies of those we love. Reality does force itself upon us from time to time–but not typically at times when we are likely to formulate a response to a Heineken ad.
I’m not seeing this as fantasy. It includes echoes of interactions I’ve had or seen myself. I would say that it doesn’t represent the full range of possible outcomes for such conversations: no one walked out on their bar-building partner, for instance, and there were no heated words. Of course, it wouldn’t include those things: at bottom it’s an ad. Perhaps its value is to get people thinking about the possibility of dialogue—people who’ve never even considered it before.
I was disturbed that there was no dialogue. Before the beer and the bar segment, there were only statements of belief and projections onto the ‘other’. Very sad that they used beer and a bar to seduce us into thinking that the divide could be crossed in that way. If there was anything positive about this ad it was that they were able to portray well several real divides (naming it publicly is a first step towards moving into it and past it) and that people had the capacity and willingness to form relationships even though the divides still exist. We can hope that in their willingness to form relationships that might last, that they could eventually dialogue about their differences.
Be careful about discounting fantasy. It’s one of the ways children and adults deal with reality. Yes, fantasy can be used to deny reality, but it can equally well be used to cope with reality by playing with its elements and making sense of it. When you see a child playing with fantasies, you are quite often seeing a child dealing with stark frightening reality in an oblique but much needed way.
The key to using fantasy to face rather than avoid reality is multiplicity, which is why children will tell the same story dozens of times, with slight variations, to explore a very real danger or concern. For narrative sensemaking to work, there can never be only one story. We’ve forgotten this function of fantasy because Disney and other cultural appropriators have unified and sanitized some of the deep and dangerous stories with which we used to make sense of reality. But fantasy is still a useful mechanism for coping with reality, and there are ways to help people use fantasy to face difficult problems, get new ideas, come together, and thrive.
To build on what Cynthia is saying, fantasy, or dreaming, is also how we envision a desirable future. In fact, it’s essential for imagining what we aspire to.
The social science behind Appreciative Inquiry points to the role that aspirations play in moving towards what we can imagine. In fact, it can be a matter of live and death. Social scientist Fred Polak, author of The Image of the Future (1973), found that cultures die when they cease to have a positive image of their own future:
“As long as a society’s image is positive and flourishing, the flower of culture is in full bloom. Once the image begins to decay and lose its vitality, however, the culture does not long survive.”
I agree with Cynthia and Peggy that fantasy is a tricky topic. To be anti-fantasy is to be anti-human. And yet, to be anti-reality is also to be anti-human. If we believe fantasy should have non-trivial limits, then we need to do the work of specifying those limits.
I also agree with John that it is kind-of-encouraging to see that Pepsi and Heineken bother to address the divide at all. What makes me say “Ouch!” is the uncritical public response to it.
To me, the good situation would be that the ad starts a conversation which makes a constructive difference. I assume that was what Adrian had in mind (and I do appreciate his raising the issue, even if I say “Ouch!”). Unfortunately, the following more public response (which does call-out the fantasy) seems too angry to be constructive:
Honestly, I find it difficult to be surprised that fantasy did not inspire a constructive conversation. The only experiences we share are those of reality, so reality must be the basis of our common language. In public deliberation to solve communal problems, I think we should privilege science (when available) over fantasy. I hope no one interprets that as discrimination, because I do think there are other contexts in which science should not be privileged (e.g. generative, instead of comparative).
There is a problem when people drag the communal conversation into fantasy because they can’t (or don’t want to) learn the science. Three-year-olds who do this face something at least as violent as being forced to go to bed. We expect the conflict to be different among adults. In modern democracies, we even insist that adults who don’t do the science nonetheless have a duty to vote…
Mere voting or empathy will not satisfy me when I bring scientific evidence to a disagreement. I cannot be convinced that truth changes just because I love you, or because you outnumber me. Call me stubborn and unfeeling, if you must, but I don’t think I am alone in this, so I don’t think it would be helpful to dismiss this view.
We should probably not attempt too deep of an examination of a beer advertisement lest we discover that its motives are at root, capitalistic – surprise!
On the other hand the message – as I interpret it – demonstrates a valuable lesson. An important prerequisite to exploring differences of opinions/ideologies, is making sure that we have humanized and legitimized every person holding those opinions. In this ad, I see a brilliant (if truncated) example – for those of you who know him – of Humberto Matujrana’s definition of love; which is granting legitimacy to the other.
True, we did not see where the conversations went after the beer was opened. I don’t think we need to, that, for me at least, is beside the point. What struck me was how the set up of:
needing to collaborate while building something concrete
getting to know the other person in their own words (the 5 adjectives)
appreciation by the other person for positive qualities they see in me
– were all vital building blocks. Once that foundation of connection between two people was in place, it allowed for a different kind of conversation to emerge even though the participants have opposing ideological stances.
The Heineken ad, along with this one from TV2 in Denmark on All That We Share, show that when we humanize the people we have been conditioned to think of as “other”, we are in a much better place to enlarge our collective options, than if we keep thinking of people as fixed sets of characteristics or as believers in this or that system that we personally find abhorrent. They also show a vastly different approach between European and American commercials!
We are all of us, far more complex, nuanced, mysterious, and extraordinary than any model or theory. From where I stand, it seems pretty clear that there are very few thoughts that are easily and quickly shared with others that produce an immediate resonance. On the other hand, people very easily and quickly share emotions. It is instinctual (unless life has conditioned it out of us) to feel joy when we see it being expressed by those around us – even if it comes from another species – think of the joy we get when our pets are excited to see us. Likewise with sorrow or fear.
My experience as a facilitator is that when we focus on creating the conditions to feel empathy and kindness and friendship towards people, we get a lot farther in opening people to work with diverse and even conflicting viewpoints than we will if we are focusing solely on changing minds. In the Heineken ad, this seems quite clearly shown. The people who stayed for a beer were not sitting down with someone who represented a threat to their ideological position. They were sitting down with someone they had come to respect as worth listening to. And that is something that in my book, is worth paying attention to.
I am aware that what I am pointing to regarding creating the conditions for engagement is anecdotal and does not rise to the level of peer-reviewed science. I invite anyone who doubts that this approach is effective to engage in experiments to prove or disprove the hypothesis. Perhaps by working together, we can create a science of collaboration through conversation.
That’s another “Ouch!” because the ad is based on the techniques of conflict resolution experts. That’s right, instead of telling people that disputes which can be resolved through scientific test ought to be resolved through scientific test, conflict resolution experts are telling Heineken (and the world) that these disputes should be resolved through empathy. I’m not suggesting that empathy is not part of the solution, but it’s the easy part–not the actual bottleneck.
I think this is a case of “When all you’ve got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail,” and so-called conflict resolution experts having little more than empathy in their toolbox.
Ken, thank you for a thought-provoking post… indeed, “we are all of us, far more complex, nuanced, mysterious and extraordinary than any model or theory.”
your evocative words strongly remind me of one of my teachers… while he may not be so well-known in this community, many of us in the Focusing world are mourning the passing of Dr. Eugene Gendlin, philosopher, psychologist, and extraordinary listener…
As to the connection with this topic… Chris, I’m curious about what you mean, when you say “science”… do you mean mainly the “hard sciences”, such as physics and chemistry?
reason I’m asking, is that it seems that there is a lot of research recently in the social sciences and the human sciences, about such things as confirmation bias — what are the conditions under which people are willing to even consider information that differs from their current belief systems. And so I’m curious as to whether you would consider such research as “science”…
There’s also been a tremendous amount of scientific research in the last 10 years especially, on the subject of empathy, including its role in cognition… so I am not understanding the contrast between “empathy” and “science” as two non-overlapping entities.
**
But back to some points of agreement… yes, I see the exploration of “reality” (as in, what are our current conditions) as important as the exploration of “fantasy” (what do we want to create). Holding both is key to creative tension, a concept originally formulated by Robert Fritz and later popularized by Peter Senge.
Some eminent scientists have maintained that creativity is also involved in science, though that’s not how we are usually taught to think of as science… and, maybe more to the point here, creativity is key for generating possibilities and new understandings, especially in public policy situations where as much as we might long for it, there is no clear “one right answer” that satisfies everyone’s initial positions.
**
To come around full circle: the human process of creating new meanings and new understandings was Gendlin’s philosophical interest, which led him to psychology and to Carl Roger’s work at the University of Chicago. Many people are aware of Carl Rogers as the “founder of humanistic psychology”; few are aware that Rogers had a deep and abiding respect for science, and was the first to break the taboo against “intruding on the sacrosanct process of therapy” in order to place tape recorders in the therapy room (with consent from all involved.)
Thus Rogers was able to conduct research by analyzing a huge number of transcripts of therapy sessions; meanwhile Eugen Gendlin had become Carl Roger’s research director. For anyone interested in the kind of listening that supports the creation of new meaning (whether or not you are a therapist), I am including two somewhat technical resources below, along with some more popular resources.
I share Chris’ position that facts established through the application of the scientific method to evidence ought not to be evaluated by popularity polls. However, I think there is a role for empathy-building in laying the groundwork for, on the science side learning why a person is resistant to an inconvenient truth, and on the denial side creating trust that the opposing side isn’t manufacturing false facts for an ulterior motive. An uninformed opinion is not equally valuable as an informed judgment, but the people within whose brains those opinions and judgments reside are of equal worth. So helping them communicate makes sense.
I have participated as a book in a Human Library. It was interesting and rather fun. It confirmed for me Harvey Milk’s urging everyone to be out so that people would understand that yes, they did know someone who would be affected by a proposed law. The tricky part is to keep it from becoming a judgment on a different person’s worth as a human being. I’m not sure the ad got that right.
I was more impressed that they were building something together. That is not always possible, and it can create new conflicts, but it is also an excellent way to get past bias.
This has been an interesting discussion. I had not seen any of the advertisements before.
Rosa asked what I meant by “science” as a tool of conflict resolution distinct from empathy. Carolyn phrased it well.
When I wrote “disputes which can be resolved through scientific test ought to be resolved through scientific test” I did not mean that we ought to use psychology to figure out how to make our opponents’ minds more pliable. I meant that experiments can tell us whether cigarettes cause cancer, or whether human activity is causing the climate to change, or whether the only value women bring to a society is to birth children, or whether gender identity necessarily aligns with development of sexual organs.
A conflict resolution expert who doesn’t know how to design and manage such experiments would be missing something very important from his/her toolbox. Disagreements on these issues are resolved if the science-deniers are busy trying to do better science.
Carolyn suggested that the science-supporter can use empathy to discover why the science-denier instead continues to resist, but then what? The bottleneck is not our inability to see the real pain that science-deniers are suffering–the bottleneck is that we cannot allow that pain to sway our beliefs about the science. The real pain will never go away–there will always be pain–so we ultimately have to say, “Too bad for you, but that doesn’t give you any right to deny the science.”
I am not saying that pain should be ignored, but it shouldn’t be attached to science like earmarks to a bill. There are limits to whom gets to be part of any conversation, and unwillingness to preserve the integrity of social epistemic practices puts one on the outside of a natural limit.
Isn’t that how it usually works? When forced to work together, and get to know each other, barriers tend to drop – particularly at the end of the day when it’s time for a beer.
What I’ve learned from moderating National Issues Forum deliberations is to probe for what each person values that underlie their positions because until those are out in the open the conversation cannot move forward. Each individual who denies climate change has his or her own particular concerns.
Some I’ve heard are that it will be used to justify more government intrusion into the individual’s freedom; that it will mean giving up the comforts of modern civilization and returning to a spartan 19th century way of life; that it threatens the person’s job. That allows us to talk about how we might respond to climate change in ways that minimize nanny government or maintain the important aspects of modern life or create new jobs and help workers transition. And the NIF emphasis on acknowledging tradeoffs and recognizing who does not benefit allows us to plan ways to address the pain of change.
I’m not saying that everyone can be brought into a productive conversation this way. But I know from bitter experience that saying “it is a scientific fact” does not get work. I wish it did.
Thank you, Ken, for your wonderful comments. It seems all too easy and common these days to vilify and disregard those who hold significantly different values than we do. As we use the instant one-to-many communication of Facebook or Twitter, we amplify difference as much as we do similarity. Beliefs and intentions built on falsehood and fear are reinforced as much as those informed by fact and science.
Since the Brexit vote, we have seen the consequences of our infatuation with the internet, social media, and those posing as legitimate sources of knowledge. We have significant numbers of citizens who seem unwilling or unable to be in respectful dialogue. Unwilling or unable to learn, unlearn, and relearn.
And so. . . what happens when we break the rules of civil discourse? When conversation is no longer able to influence people’s learning, understanding, beliefs, and action?
And if. . . we no longer have a way through communicated language to create common meaning sufficient to coordinate action together, what can catalyze new sense-making, new shared meaning, and coordinated action towards a shared purpose?
Research into the dynamics of complex human systems suggests an answer. We have tumbled from the presumed stability of the status quo, into a time and space of chaos. We know that simply saying “you’re wrong” or “why can’t you see what I see the way I see it?” Isn’t going to work. We’ve seen the power of a dominant new narrative to dramatically change minds and behavior.
And. . . Our narratives come from our experience. Even as we retreat from the space of civil discourse, it is experience that formed our knowledge, understanding, values, and intentions. It is experience that may catalyze new shared meaning, and make possible new dialogue and coordinated action.
My concern is that we will not collectively choose to walk into the room and build an Ikea bar together with those holding views very different from our own. My concern is that we may only change our thinking and behavior in the wake of a catastrophic event we all experience. One, perhaps, in which many may suffer.
I hope we will choose to walk into the room with An Other. I hope we will choose to experience collaboration, catalyze new meaning, and engage in dialogue for new possibility. Yet hope is not probability.
I appreciate the reality check on the feeling of “See! It is possible to talk across the divide!” I am not quite ready to trash the whole idea though.
Yes, Heineken picked the easiest hot-button issues and people to represent each side in a sensational kind of way. The fact of the matter is that people do exist who have either ill-informed ideas or just plain mean-spirited attitudes toward those who differ from them. We have to find some way to co-exist them too, not just ones who have ideas or attitudes we like. If this simplistic approach gets someone to consider that a trans woman (for example) might be a human being worth getting to know then that is something. The alternative as I see it is to pretend that people with bad (from my point of view) ideas or attitudes don’t exist, which is silly. Or to try to legislate or shame them out of existence, which is scary. I vote for reaching out as many times as it takes.
Even though I think it will never work, I second the motion to reach out as many times as it takes. I am not suggesting that science should never overrule people the way parents overrule a three-year-old. I just think the story shouldn’t end there. Our commitment to each other should go beyond the settling of any particular dispute, and that commitment needs to include a commitment to achieve mutual respect (eventually) no matter how impossible.
Suppose you could ask any test of my commitment to achieve respect for you–not just drinking a Heineken with you–what would it be?
A HT to Chris Santos-Lang who reposted this “Bringing people together across divides” conversation recently and sparked me to reproduce it here.
Peer sessions provide greater connection around content
The most important reason people go to conferences is to usefully connect with others around relevant content. But our conference programs still focus on lectures, where a few experts broadcast their knowledge to passive listeners. During lectures there’s no connection between audience members and no connection around lecture content. Here are five reasons why.
Lectures are a terrible way to learn.We’ve known for over a hundred years that lectures are a terrible way to learn. Lectures are a seductive meeting format because they provide an efficient way of sharing information. However, lectures are perhaps the least effective way of learning anything.
Why? Over time, we rapidly forget almost everything we’ve been told. But when we engage with content, we remember more of it, remember it more accurately, and remember it longer. Every measure of learning increases drastically when attendees actively participate in sessions.
Professionals learn predominantly socially, not in the classroom. Until about twenty years ago, professionals learned most of what they needed to know to do their jobs in the classroom. Today only about 10% of what we need to know involves formal classroom teaching. The other 90% is informal — a combination of self-directed learning, experiential learning on the job or learning at conferences with our peers.
Unfortunately, we persist in making the bulk of “education” at meetings consist of formal presentations by a few experts.
Today, everyone has expertise and experience to share. Everyone who has worked in a profession for a while is an expert resource in some capacity. Instead of limiting content to a few “experts,” peer conferences uncover and tap the thousands of years of expertise and experience in the room. As author David Weinberger puts it: “The smartest person in the room is the room.”
Most sessions don’t address actual attendee wants and needs. Conferences need to provide just-in-time learning, and you can’t predict most of those topics in advance. My research has found that 50 – 90% of all prescheduled conference sessions are not what attendees actually want and need. In contrast, just about all peer conference sessions, chosen and run by participants during the event, are rated highly because they provide what participants want.
At traditional conferences, connection is relegated to the breaks, meals, and socials. We so often hear “The best part of that conference was the hallway conversations.” It doesn’t have to be that way! Peer conferences provide conference sessions where participants connect around relevant, timely content. How can you adapt what you do to be a catalyst for conference change?
Despite the terrible impacts of the coronavirus on the meeting industry, there’s a silver lining.
Should meetings be efficient?
Why not make your entire conference a braindate?
I am the second sort of escapologist.
As someone who loves to facilitate connection between people, I was struck by this 