After we published our blog post on the documentary entitled The Abortion Talks, which described the six-year long abortion dialogue facilitated by the Public Conversations Project (PCP) from 1995-2000, our colleague, Bob Stains, wrote us saying that, while he loved the piece, he thought it would be useful for us to talk to one of the current leaders of Essential Partners (the new name for PCP), to learn about what EP was doing now.
In our original post, we pointed out that dialogue seldom scales well. It is very effective at changing relationships among the people sitting around the table, at least for a short period of time. But, we observed, it was hard to scale up beyond those people who had first-hand experience with it, and it was also difficult to maintain the changed attitudes toward "the other" over time. We thought that the 6-year long abortion talks with abortion leaders was a good counter example, as the changes extended far beyond those at the table, and they lasted a long time as well. Bob noted that Essential Partners has been doing a lot to address both those issues in other ways in the years hence, so we were eager to talk to learn what they've been doing since we were last familiar with their work back in the early 2000s. The Co-executive Director of EP, Katie Hyten, volunteered to talk to us, and we had a wonderful discussion on October 3, 2023.
You can download this video from Vimeo for offline viewing.
Heidi: Hi, this is Heidi Burgess, and I'm here on October 3rd, talking with Katie Hyten, who is Co-executive Director of Essential Partners, which used to be known as Public Conversations Project. I have to admit, that's the way I still think of you because that's what the organization was named when I first learned about it at its very beginning back in 1989, I think, which was about the time when Beyond Intractability, well, when the Conflict Information Consortium was starting, Beyond Intractability was a bit later than that.
But we were growing up together and spent quite a bit of time talking to Laura Chasin, who was one of the founders and Bob Stains, who came on later, and Sally Ann Roth and learned a lot about what PCP was up to then. But I gather you have evolved and expanded and gotten more sophisticated over the years, and I'm really eager to hear about that.
So maybe let's start with a description from you about what's been going on since I lost track. And maybe since the organization changed from PCP to EP.
Katie: Yeah. Well, thank you so much for having me. It's so lovely to be back in touch and to reconnect as an organization after all these years. The folks that you mentioned are still actually involved with us. We're going to be seeing many of them in November. And it's such an honor to be able to build on their legacy to continue that legacy and to hopefully grow its impact in the world. So it's really lovely to be here chatting with you and to feel like, in some ways, we're kind of reweaving a thread that's been around for a long time. So happy to share a little bit about what we've been up to.
So Public Conversations Project did rebrand to Essential Partners in 2016. For us, it was a long time coming, in part because we'd been around since 1989. So it felt a bit silly, still calling us a “project.” And in part, because so much of our work no longer happens in the public sphere. And a lot of it is in training and capacity building and really partnering with organizations and communities to help them do what they do more effectively and be in places where people have a deep sense of belonging, really strong relationships across differences, and hope that they can do what they need to do together.
And I think for us, we want to work in a system, and a system which makes that possible over time. So, I think what I love about where we're at now is that we have really doubled down on our roots. And so, you might remember that our founders, including Laura and Sally Ann, and many of our founders, were all family therapists and family systems therapists, particularly, which makes us a little bit unique in the field of dialogue and conflict resolution and peacebuilding.
It also, I think, gives us a really unique orientation to this work because, just like in a family, no community or institution will ever eradicate conflict or difference.
Heidi: Nor should it.
Katie: Right, nor should it. That's why I love y'all's title, too, of Beyond Intractability ,because we envision a world of thriving communities that are strengthened by difference and connected by trust.
And in doing that, we need to make space for people to wrestle with their differences, to engage across their differences, and to build community, even in the midst of differences in ways that are resilient enough to withstand truly difficult moments. And we see that every day in our work, which is really lovely.
So what our work really focuses on now is helping shift the fabric of the DNA of our partners over time in ways that model and reflect the best ways in which they are already working.
So, it's adaptable, it's scalable, and it's able to be authentic for each space that we work in. So, we want to equip people over time to hold this, not just in the separate space of dialogue, which still certainly will happen, but also to embed it within the life of that space.
So whether it's a school that is using dialogic principals in their classrooms, and all of their teachers are helping equip their students with these skills, but also teaching the curriculum in a dialogic way, or a YMCA that's embedding dialogic elements into their programming, or a library that's thinking about how to support places for community connection in their programming, or a city government that does its community meetings and community engagement differently because of their work with us, we want to embed it so that the system changes, because we know that no matter what happens with this issue, regardless of what this issue is in your context, the next issue is just going to be right around the corner. So we want to help prepare you for that, too.
Heidi: That sounds fabulous. And as you were talking, I was coming up with all of these questions. Give me an example of what you mean by “taking a dialogic approach” in maybe a couple of these settings. I'm certainly interested in the school setting, the community setting, all the other settings that you mentioned are interesting too. But start us out with an example or two of how that plays out, what it means.
Katie: So actually, I'll touch on a few different organizations that we're working with that are all in the triangle area near Raleigh, North Carolina. Because we've been working in that area for almost a decade now, and we just received some more funding to really deepen that work, which is amazing.
The people who are doing that work on the ground in the Triangle area of North Carolina are just incredible. And so I'll share a couple of stories about each of those pieces of work, but also how they connect to each other, which is, I think, where sustainability and scalability happens. So, in one of the places where we've worked, we've done quite a lot of work in two schools in North Carolina, in Cary Academy and Ravenscroft, the Ravenscroft School.
And for both of those, they're doing some incredible work. Cary Academy has trained a lot of their teachers. So, a lot of their teachers are using this in their class. We have an advisory program with many of our schools, so that in an advisory period, teachers are doing little mini modules of dialogic work. But also in their classes, teachers are using dialogic principles, whether it's in English, or other disciplines.
Actually, this wasn't in Raleigh, but in one of our other chools, one of my favorite stories from the curricular work is an eighth-grade English teacher of ours started helping his students listen differently to prompts, whether they're speakers or movies. And so they would say, have a guest speaker come to the school for something, and he would have his students go off into groups. So some of them would listen for actions. Some of them would listen for emotions. Some of them would listen for values. And some of them would listen for relationships. And then they would have to ask the speaker something based off of what they were listening for. So they were learning the content from the speaker, but they were also practicing listening in an intentional way and asking follow-up questions in an intentional way. And so, it pairs that learning with the community conversations.
Similarly, one of our librarians started doing some work where she would have a town-wide initiative on a book. In one case, it was Just Mercy. After whoever wanted to read that book in the school and in the town, had a chance to read it, they would actually have student facilitators facilitate conversations about the book for their peers, for their teachers, but also for community members. So it was forwarding the learning of that goal, right, for the library, but it was also creating an infrastructure for people to wrestle with things that they heard, that they read, and connect their own experiences. And these students were the ones facilitating, which is amazing. And the last one, the mayor came to, and then the mayor started using this in her own space. And so, I think that's really beautiful.
And I think one of the pieces that's really cool, is that in the schools in North Carolina, they're thinking about what students need to be successful and what they need to thrive. And so, for example, in the pandemic, some of those students actually facilitated conversations that weren't necessarily about a contentious issue, but they wanted to talk about mental health and anxiety and stress. And so, they actually facilitated conversations for students, but also for parents, to talk about what that was like for them. And all of that was helmed by the students and the teachers who were supporting them. And these parents got to come in and be facilitated by students to talk about their own experience. And it was incredibly powerful for them. It was incredibly powerful for the students.
It kind of creates over time, you start to see a holistic shift in some of these in the schools where we work, especially, because you start to see them turn to dialogue and say, "you know, we have a tool that we can work on this with."
And so you'll see high schoolers start to bring in middle schoolers using dialogue. You'll start to see teachers saying, "Oh, I want to create a lesson plan that uses this work for my class. We're preparing to have a difficult conversation. Even in science and math, those conversations come up. So how are we prepared to do that?"
In the community space, it can look very similar, but different. So for example, again, in the Raleigh area, we've been partnering for many years with the police and with communities of color to help build trust and help build relationships and a deeper understanding of what safety means for their community.
And one of the participants in that recently became, I believe, the chief of police of his town. And he started saying, "I'm actually going to be using this dialogue methodology for all of our community engagement for our whole department, for the police, because this is now how we're going to do it. It's just how we're going to do things." And that's what we hear over and over, that once you take it out of this kind of separate space, these tools become just how you do things around here.
So it becomes how you have your one-on-ones. It becomes how you have your team meetings. And then you also begin to see opportunities to collaborate across organizations. So one of the schools that we worked at in North Carolina actually partnered with the police to talk about school safety and creating a more safe community, especially for their students of color. And so that became a really powerful opportunity to build ties across these institutions, that once you've had deep transformation, you can start to see that scale.
And that's really what we're doing now in North Carolina. It is really helping embed this infrastructure, so that it goes deeply in each institution. And over time, it just is who they are. So no one person has to hold it or keep it going. But those institutions are already creating networks of relationships and networks of infrastructure to actually create community change on topics that matter to them because they're connected and speaking the same language and working in the same way as other folks in the area.
So it's a slow start. It takes a long time, but it's sustainable, and then it grows.
Heidi. Sounds really exciting. One of the things that I'm wondering about, though, is a complaint that I've heard from some other people that when you have, for instance, students facilitating dialogues, they don't really know how to do it, and it can get out of control and do more harm than good. How do you train these folks so that they can deal with the emotions that are going to come up? How do the teachers do the training? How do you maintain quality and safety?
Katie: So we actually train almost all of our facilitators at this point directly. So anyone who trains to facilitate is trained by someone who's a certified EP trainer, if you will. So all the students are not trained by teachers.
Heidi: They're trained by you?
Katie: For the facilitators, yes. So the teachers kind of scaffold the building. So they'll help students build skills in listening or build skills in asking questions and in designing dialogues. But the students who are actually doing the facilitating work are almost exclusively trained by us or by people that we've trained to train specifically.
And I will say it's really interesting that you've heard that feedback because our experience, I think, has been different, that we have found that students grab onto this in beautiful ways, that they are able to take this role and take the importance of it really seriously and that they're hungry for opportunities to feel a sense of belonging, to support and create a sense of belonging for others.
The other thing that you might remember about our work is that because we have a systems lens that we take to conversations, a lot of our work is around creating a container that can support difficult conversations and in doing a lot of the preventative work so that it's both less likely that damage happens, and also easier to recover from it and to help a group move forward together, whatever that means, right? If that's taking a break or disbanding for a moment or whatever it might need.
So I think that also helps it also helps to have a model that isn't dependent on you having 10 to 15 years of facilitation experience to facilitate very hard conversations. We’re helping these students, we're helping schools create containers that are intentionally structured and intentionally designed with clear communication agreements so that it's easy for them to bring folks back to that container, and it's less likely to be disrupted. So I think, in part, our model helps with it. In part, we found our students to be incredible. And especially when they're facilitating with adults, I think we also find that adults want to be on their best behavior if they're being facilitated by a 15-year-old. So it creates a different system or pattern even in the creation of it. So that has not been our experience.
Heidi: I want to clarify that what I said. The complaint that I heard was not about you. I mean, it was not about EP. It was about other folks.
Katie: I didn't think it was, but we don't actually hear a lot about this. So it's really interesting that other folks are a having different experience.
Heidi: One of the things that I'm really excited about, but cautious too, given what I've heard, is that dialogue is getting to be so much more prevalent. Back when PCP started, it was them and there was The Search for Common Ground on Life and Choice --or something like that --that was part of Search for Common Ground. And they were about the only things going on.
And now, of course, it's just all over. And that's great, but there are these concerns that it's not being done properly and damage is being done. And I've been trying to sort through whether that's really true and whether all of these organizations that I'm thrilled about really aren't doing what needs to be done. And I don't know.
They certainly aren't following the structure that I learned about from PCP, which one of the things that struck me that was so important about it, and I think this is what you're referring to when you talk about a container, is it's pretty rigid as to the rules and the process. And I don't know whether you still do this, I'm curious to find out…
But back in the day, there was a lot of prep for the participants before they even came into the room. And the ground rules were decided before they even came into the room. So, people were really well-prepared, which did prevent some of the meltdowns that might have otherwise happened. And I don't know whether other folks are doing that or not. I need to find out more. But is that still part of your process as well?
Katie Yes, and no. So that container is exactly that kind of process that is created. And we want it to be co-created as much as possible with the people who are in the room. And I think that makes a big difference because when you have said what you recognize to be a problem in the group's communication and the challenges, and then you see that design address that particular challenge or problem, then you're more likely to be bought in and you're more likely to work to abide by it, right?
So that still is very much a key component of our process that we have that we want to create. And the reason I use kind of the metaphor of a container is because we want that container to match the needs and the purposes of that group. So I think that's what's a little bit different now because I think often where we started in the earlier days, we were doing really intense long-term work within kind of multi-stakeholder groups, within kind of long-term systems around particular issues, right?
But in going back to that systems design approach, we've really been thinking, "Okay, what does it look like to actually make this work within the setting of that organization's life?" If you were to imagine a map of where people are moving in a nonprofit, in a city government, and you see the places where people are engaging the most, right? Where there are the most footprints in your imaginary map, we want to say, "Okay, what does it look like to bring dialogue there, rather than to have it be a separate thing?" And that might mean that you can't have the same level of preparation, because it's not feasible for that context.
Or it might mean that you actually have to tweak the structure of the container a little bit to align purposes, right, to make it an educational purpose or a strategic planning purpose or a team meeting purpose, right, so that you can adjust it as needed. And I think that's what makes it more sustainable. So it is something that is very, very key to our approach.
And when we look at a lot of other organizations, I think, we feel actually really similarly that we love seeing this field grow. We love seeing that it expand. And I think that's part of creating scale is being able to partner with folks.
And we've partnered with Share Our America at the 92 Y's Belfer Center and helped them create a program that is slightly different than ours, but uses some similar approaches. We've done the same thing with Starts with Us to help expand access to this work for teachers. We've worked with the Bridge Alliance and NCDD and Braver Angels and the Trust Network. I know you've spoken with Prabha and Mediators Beyond Borders So I think that partnering can be a key component of growth and scaling.
I also think, just like with any growing field, people are going to make mistakes along the way and struggle. And I think that's naturally a part of it. So you have to be careful and intentional.
But it's also really lovely to see so many places expand, and we're honored to be a part of so many of them.
Heidi: So how do you-- I don't know which way this goes, and I suspect it goes both ways. Do you choose partners? Do people come to you? How do the partnerships get formed?
Katie: So for right now, I would say 99% of the time, people come to us in some way, shape, or form. And I think that's really important because from the very beginning, we want it to be driven by community needs and community goals, right? So, we don't want to tell them what they need and then kind of help them move that along. So, I think, for most of it, in some way or another, they come to us.
Now what's often happening with our work right now is that people will see you know other YMCAs, for example, doing something differently. And then they'll say, "Wait, what is this? How do you do this? I would love to do this." And so it kind of grows that way, right, where as long as you can have models and examples of something different that's working, that those give kind of a spark of hope to people who didn't know that another way was possible.
So I think that's our challenge right now is helping people understand that another way is possible and then help kind of scaffold in that support so that we can meet folks where they're at.
One thing that we do that I love is that, yes, our best use case scenario is partnering with people over time to do incredible work on their own terms and helping embed it into the way they work. But we also offer a ton of free resources on our website that are downloaded thousands of times every year. I think you actually use some of them too.
Heidi: Oh, yeah. I've downloaded a ton of them. And -- for the record, there are a ton of materials and they're really useful. So go to your website -- whatisessential.org – and you can find them. So anybody who's watching this or reading the transcript, go to whatisessential.org. There's a tab for resources, if I remember right, and it's just loaded with stuff.
Katie: Yes, it's amazing. And we've started surveying people. And I think those resources we know impacted 500,000 people last year.
Heidi: Wow!
Katie: And so we want to be able to meet folks where they're at, right? And so we tend to not go out and try to tell people what they need. But we do want to make our work available and create spaces where people can look and find alternatives and try them out on their terms and see how it goes.
Heidi: So let me nail you down on the overarching purpose. When you talk about “work,” something works or it doesn't work. To do what? What's the ultimate goal that you're trying to reach—yourselves--and trying to get your partner organizations to reach? What does “work” mean?
Katie: I love that question! Ultimately, our mission is to equip people to live and work better together in communities and by really helping deepen a sense of belonging, grow and strengthen relationships and renew hope. And we think that when that happens, when you have these communities, that you enable communities to address their own most pressing challenges.
So all of our communities right now are facing challenges everyday and in existential ways, and encountering differences in everyday ways and in existential ways. And we want to equip people to actually go into their communities and have the relationships in place that allow them to address those communities’ most pressing issues, even across deep differences.
Heidi: One of the things that Laura Chason and Sally Anne really stressed early on is that they were all about improving relationships, but not moving that forward into action.
And the other thing that was related to that was that they vehemently avoided the term “common ground,” saying that you couldn't say you wanted to find common ground, because people would scatter because they had no interest in finding common ground with “those people.” And it sounds to me that you're more instrumental now and not so afraid of the notion of common ground or action coming out of the relationships. Am I correct in that?
Katie: I think that's right. We definitely never, never expect common ground. And we don't actually try to find common ground, right? And I think that that's really important, because no one wants to show up to a conversation about, especially an issue that matters deeply to you, thinking that you're going to be persuaded to change your mind.
So we actually explicitly still don't work towards common ground. However, what we find is that people oftentimes find surprising similarities and surprising differences. So, they might find differences where they thought they were in a like group, and they might find similarities with people that they didn't expect to. And that's all part of being in community. It's part of being a complex person in community.
You know, I grew up in a military family and now work in peace. And I don't see those two things as too different, right, as too far away. And I can hold those because I can live into my own complexity, right? And we want our communities to be able to do the same thing.
In terms of moving to action, actually, one of my favorite images that I actually learned from Laura was the idea of dialogue is a “safe harbor,”that people could come into this harbor with many different flags, many different needs, many different priorities, and know that they're going to be safe within this space, or safe enough to do what they need to do.
And then as they go out, they get to decide together which flag they fly. So some small groups might go out and do some work together that the whole group isn't on board with. Maybe the whole group decides that they want to do something together. Maybe one or two people go off and do something differently because of this work, right?
And so, that's how I learned about it, and that's what I love about our work, that it's not actually opposed to action at all, that we want to equip people to go out and do this. But we want to also give them language and give them tools to be transparent, collaborative, and authentic in whatever way they decide to do that, in whatever way that's aligned with their purposes.
Heidi: Makes sense. Let's move from the scalability. I think you've really given some good illustrations about how you're making these processes much more scalable than what was done traditionally, and I think what's usually done.
There's also the sustainability issue. Where I first learned about this was in terms of the dialogues that were done between Israelis and Palestinians at Seeds of Peace, which is this long running camp in Maine that brings Israeli and Palestinian or Jewish and Palestinian students up to Maine for a wonderful, I don't know, four-week period or something.
And then they go back home to Israel, and all of those warm feelings and good relationships are really challenged by what's happening around them. And that's an extreme case.
In the United States, we're not Israel yet. I can see some movements in that direction, but we're not there yet. But still, people go back to their normal environment. They get bombarded with the really hateful social media that's out there. And I'm sure they get pressured to revert to old ways of thinking. How do you make the changes that happen through your dialogues sustainable over time in the people who actually participated in them?
Katie: That's a great question. I would say that there are actually two kind of strategies that we take to this. One is actually what we've been talking a little bit about already, which is actually working within those systems from the very beginning. So rather than bringing people out and then having them go back into a dysfunctional system, we're actually working to change that system from the beginning. And it's a very, very grassroots approach.
That's not to pretend that there aren't forces that are impacting people. I mean, we do a ton of work in schools, and so you have to interact with the school board, with the PTA, with the local politics, with the local news. All of that will have impact, right? You don't exist in isolation.
However, if we can start on a small level where we can actually influence that system, we start to create reinforcing mechanisms and reinforcing signals that things are different, and that they're driving results, that they're doing better, right? That the students who are doing this work actually have better learning outcomes, right?
That they have retained the information, that they have a sense of belonging, that they have a sense of well-being, right? That they're growing into skills that will make them more employable as they move forward, right? So we're also starting to see those mutual reinforcing things that actually have outcomes that are of interest to other stakeholders, right? And so it makes it easier to say “yes.”
Also, if you're in that system and having a ton of day-to-day difficult conversations, you are more equipped and you have more relational infrastructure there when that hard thing does come. That's not to say that it will go well or that it will go without flaw, but it's just more likely, right, than something happening in a vacuum or something happening separately and then going back and nothing ever changes.
So I think that real grassroots local focus for us helps not ignore the systemic factors that are very much getting in the way, but empowering the people who are doing the work, right? The coalition of the willing of people who are already working to make their students' lives better, working to make their program attendees' lives better, working to make their library more accessible to everyone. Those folks will continue to do the work and continue to do it in effective ways because they realize that it works and it makes a difference.
I think the second thing that we do is we never want to leave folks. So one of the things I love about this is and this has been true from the very beginning, right, that Bob is still one of our associates. We're still in communication with Sally Ann. We're still in communication with Maggie and Corky and Dick [all some of the founders of PCP back in the 1990s] and just the whole universe of people who have worked with us, and we never want them to feel like they can't reach out again.
So we will always pick up the phone, and we'll always create spaces for those folks to come back and be filled up because it's really easy, especially when you're in those early phases or in moments of transition, or moments of hardship, to feel alone.
And what we try to do is offer monthly office hours and alumni-only webinars and gatherings every summer and hopefully more often soon for people who are doing similar work to come together and connect with each other and connect back with us so that they always know that they're not alone in this work, that Essential Partners will always be there to support, to empower, but also to fill up that sense of hope for us too, right?
Because especially the folks who are doing this work in the world right now, it is hard work. It is hard, hard work. And a lot of you know whether it's your librarians or local city council members or a staff person at your local Boys and Girls Club or a teacher or a healthcare worker, you are in the midst of it every single day. So you want to make sure that you have a place to go to be taken care of, too, because so much of those folks spend so much of their time giving.
Heidi: Sounds really good! I'm wondering.. you said something in an email exchange that we had before today that intrigued me. And I'm wondering if it relates to what you just said. You said you're going virtual. And I was really surprised by that. I thought, "How in the world are they going to do that?” Is that part of what this is all about?" And you said you hope you'll do more of this. Is that related to going virtual?
Katie: Absolutely. So, we have been based out of Cambridge and Watertown, Massachusetts for as long as the organization has existed. And also, for as long as the organization has existed, we have done work all over the country and all over the world. And our work takes place within the communities who are most impacted and who are most influencing and most impacted by their community's decisions, right?
So most of our work on any given year actually happens on the ground in those spaces, right?
Very, very irregularly will we have folks flying into Cambridge or flying into Watertown because we want it to feel like each community is “in”from the beginning. So for us, it made a lot of sense to just make the call to officially go remote, because we want to be able to actually be more accessible to the people who we're working with, to our partners, to our community of practice members, and you know, to all of the universe of people who make this work possible, our donors, our funders, we want to be able to show up,
Heidi: So when you're working, say, with the folks in North Carolina, are you doing that virtually or are you flying to North Carolina?
Katie: It's a both-and, it's a hybrid model. For a lot of the work, we're on the ground. And we're able to pick up the phone when we're not on the ground. So we can hold planning meetings. We can hold office hours, hold refreshers, skill-building opportunities, coaching hours, everything like tha,t on the phone.
But for those longer trainings that we want to have people on the ground or for those opportunities where people are building relationships with each other, we want to have those kind of complementary in-person experiences.
Heidi: Makes sense. Changing subjects again: I got connected to you because Bob Stains suggested that we talk. He said that you had a wealth of data. And I'm wondering what he was talking about.
Katie: Yes! So since about late 2016, early 2017, we are so proud of this, we actually have been working really hard to have a really robust monitoring evaluation and learning system. I think it's still, although a lot of organizations are upping their game in amazing ways, I think it's still one of the best in the field because we actually look at a longitudinal level and are actually adapted every three years.
So we have, I think, just over 4,000 people participating in our data set right now. We do pre and post, and then some version of longitudinal. I think we're at about a 10% response rate for longitudinal work, which is about standard for this work. But we actually track and monitor impact at three months, six months, and 12 months.
Heidi: How do you do that?
Katie: Interviews. And some surveys. And so we follow up with folks we've trained, and we ask them about how they're doing. And actually, in a lot of the areas that we've talked about, we ask, “how is the trust?” “How are your relationships and cohesion across differences, your sense of belonging?”” How much are you actually using this work, and what of the skills have you retained?”
So about every five years, and we're actually in the process of doing that now, we'll kind of go back to our theory of change, make sure that the data is still telling us that our theory of change works, and make adjustments if needed.
And every year, our practitioners and our staff are involved in making meaning of that data to help us make sure that we're continuing to offer things that we know have an impact, and we know meet people where they are.
And it's really cool. So right now, we're actually kind of in the next year, we're going to be piloting that process within institutions so we can start to see the scale within institutions in a deeper way.
But for the last five years, we've really just connected with folks that we've trained-- across every institution that we've worked with. We have heard just incredible stories, a lot of which are on our website now, but really incredible stories about people using this work in everyday ways and in massive systems change ways to make change in their communities, whether it's a vote to build a school in Ohio or doing parent-teacher conferences differently for your students.
Heidi: So you say that you are I don't remember your words, but at the cutting edge of how to do this kind of evaluation. Is that one of the resources that folks can download?
Katie: Yes. We offer our whole system available for free with a. Creative Commons license. And so if you go to our website, I think the page is under program evaluation. So if you search for program evaluation, you should be able to see the whole kit and caboodle.
Heidi: One of the problems with program evaluation is it's almost always worked into grants for the short term. So everybody's doing the survey of participants right at the end of whatever programming they had. It's much rarer to get funding to pay you to do it two, five, ten years out. How do you do that?
Katie: So for us, there are two things. One is being really clear about your purpose for evaluation. So for us, our purpose is not to be peer-reviewable or to --and I don't want to say this, because it is a very robust system. But, you know, I started my career in spaces where it was mostly grant-funded, but where you had to have independent evaluators really at every step of the way from the design all the way through to the analysis and reporting piece. And it was a huge line item in the budget.
And for us, it's all internally done, and it's a part of our strategy. So our program team is the one doing the interviews, which creates a different cadence, right? It's less peer-reviewable, but it's more about our own learning, about our own efficacy, and what we know about the impact of our work.
It also deepens those relationships that we have with our partners and helps people feel closer and more connected to us like we're a resource from the very beginning. So I think that's the first thing, that it's a purpose.
It goes around with purpose, because I don't want to make it sound like, "Oh, yes, you can hire a full-time independent evaluator without funding it." We make this work a key part of our strategy. It's not a thing that you do for a funder. It's not a thing that you do for a particular project. But it's us saying, "If we harvest and collect these stories, it will help improve the quality of our work and the impact of our work, but it will also help us tell better stories of the impact of our work, understand the impact that we're making, and stay in touch with people for a longer period of time, and help make the case for other donors and funders who really care deeply about knowing the impact of the work."
And so rather than making it a separate thing, now impact evaluation is tied to programming, tied to development, tied to communication, right? So it's intertwined with all of our organization. So it's easier to make the case to invest in it.
Heidi: Sounds good. Trying to think of what else I had on my list to ask you. I think we've done a pretty good job in covering it. Oh, here's a general question. I'm thinking back to the complaints that I've heard that some people are really messing this up? What do you think are the essential elements that anybody who's doing this kind of work should be keeping in mind?
I know that there's lots of different styles and lots of different settings, but are there some key things that you think are necessary in order to have a good dialogue or dialogic process?
Katie: That's a great question. One that I feel like we could give a lot of thought to. I could think about for the next year when you and I could talk about it for the next hour. Let me think about it.
A couple of things that come to mind for me. One is community ownership and leadership from the start, that the people who are most impacted by whatever you're trying to start are at the center of it, no matter what. And that they can decide to stop it. They can decide to end it, right? They can decide to change it completely, and that's okay, as long as it serves their purposes.
The second thing for me is and this is the first thing that we tend to teach in all of our training still to this day. I think it was created probably 20 years ago, probably by Bob and Maggie, but it’s the centrality of purpose in people. So being really clear from the beginning what purpose you're serving and what you're working towards.
And I don't mean you know our purpose would be to help the city come to a vote on this issue, whether it be a sanctuary city, for example. I more mean a larger purpose around are you trying to bring the city together around action? Are you trying to create a more cohesive community? Are you trying to build relationships? Are you trying to bridge partisan differences or any kind of differences?
So, being really clear about your purpose and then being really clear about the people who will need to be in the room in order to accomplish that purpose, right? And if those two aren't in alignment, the whole thing falls apart.
So if the right people won't come into the room for your purpose, one of those things has to change, because from my experience, your program is dead in the water. If those two things can't be aligned, the right people being in the room for the purpose that you can uniquely accomplish.
So I think those would be the things that I would start with.
We actually did a grant a long time ago that used framing that I still use all the time, which is a balance of humility and conviction, right? So we want to have a conviction that we think things can be better, that there's a better way to do things. But we also want to have a ton of humility, that we might not know the best way to do that, and that we can all learn from each other in the process.
Heidi: Those are great. Anything else you can think of?
Katie: The other thing that I'll say is kind of an asterisk around that people and purpose because for me, everything comes back to people and purpose.
But the most common questions that I get in our work and in my kind of practice specifically are around equity and power, right? So when it comes to people, you want to be thinking about who hasn't been heard, who's going to be most impacted by this, and who's been historically left out of these conversations, right? Who has a voice and something to say? And not just bring them in, but actually have them be a part of designing the process.
One of our former executive directors used to talk about “spreading out the discomfort.” So in every room, there are people who have never once had to think about how to bring themselves into a space, because whether intentionally or not, it was created for them. So it's just natural.
And then there are people who, every day of their lives, have had to come in and kind of shift or adapt how they bring themselves to the space. And so we want to spread that out a little bit. So you want to think about that.
You know It's not as simple as, "Okay, if we want to have partisan conversations, we need to have an equal part of liberal and conservative voices." That might not be true. Maybe if you want to combat polarization, you actually work within groups for a little while. Or you focus on the people who have been historically left out or unheard from partisan conversations who have a voice but haven't been heard, right? So there's so many ways to think about it. And then you know the layer of power is such a real one.
And so that also aligns with purpose. To be intentional about whether you need decisions makers in the room or not, whether you need people who are, say, their supervisors in the room or not, right? And it all goes back to what you're trying to accomplish.
And also knowing that you can take lots and lots of steps before you get to the big thing, right? You don't have to start, just because you say, "Our purpose is to do this." And in order to do that purpose, we need to bring X, Y, and Z people into the room tomorrow.
Maybe you bring those folks into the room in a year, in two years, right? None of these things are going to go away. So you have the time and space to do it right and to build that groundwork slowly. So I think that's probably enough.
Heidi: That's good. And it covered part of another question that I have is, how do you deal with differential power in the room? Two of the concerns about these processes that I've heard is, one, the powerful will dominate no matter what, because the powerless won't feel comfortable, regardless of what the facilitator does to say what they really think. That's the one story you hear. The other story that you hear is that I'm conflating several things here, that I shouldn't conflate, but I've heard the same story in different versions. The powerful won't come because they have no reason to. They can get what they want regardless. They're happy with the status quo. That's one version. Another version is conservatives don't like dialogue. They don't play that way. So I've heard from someone with Braver Angels that they have a very hard time getting conservatives well, maybe not a very hard time, a much harder time getting conservatives to participate in their dialogues, than they have getting progressives to participate because their phrase is, “conservatives don't feel comfortable doing this.” I'm curious as to whether, A, you found that true as well, and if so, what you see as the cause?
Katie: So the first thing that I'll say is kind of a disclaimer, but it's also honest. And it's something that I say in most rooms that I go into, which is that dialogue is not the only tool to make change. We believe that it's a very effective tool, and dialogic approaches can help support change-making in almost any space, but it's not the only way.
And so we don't want to ever pretend that it's this way or no change, right? It's dialogue or no change. So, I think there are many ways to seek change. One of our colleagues, Ray, often says, "You're just looking for the room down the hall," Go to the room down the hall and those are “your people”. So we're here for that.
If it is the case that people in power actually prefer the status quo, look for another avenue, right? Look for another way to make change.
The second thing that I'll say, though, is that this is why I love teaching this work, because this is where shared purpose comes in. And what I mean by that is that everyone is in the room because they agree that something needs to be different.
And it doesn't have to be because of the same pain point, by the way,, So a lot of places that we work, you know schools, higher education institutions, administrators are terrified of being the next headline, right, are terrified of making national news. That can be an incentive that brings them into the room for that shared purpose. You know It doesn't mean that everyone has the same pain point, but it means that everyone can align around a sense that things need to be different than they are, that things aren't working in some way or that things are too risky as they currently are.
So, as long as it has a sense of urgency and a sense of importance, that's why I love teaching this work because it orients people around what will bring them into the room together, even if the pain point is not the same.
But when it comes to actual power differentials, I think there are two pieces that are important. First is being honest about power, especially power outside of the room. A lot of people will say, “you know, I don't think I can be honest in this situation if my supervisor's there because I might get fired.” And there's nothing that I can do as a facilitator or a trainer that can guarantee that that person won’t get fired. That six months from now, their supervisor will make a decision that is kind of based on what happened in this room. I can't guarantee that. So, then I take a step back, since the first step then is to build trust. So I say, "Okay, what would make it possible to take that risk?" Because there will be risk. There will never not be risk, especially for people who experience higher levels of risk, who aren't in positions of power, whatever that looks like, right? Who aren't in the dominant culture, whatever that looks like in that space. So the first is being honest about that. And then you take the requisite steps to help people see it as worth it to take that risk and to feel like they can take that risk.
And then you can do the work to spread out the power in the room. So, for example, we won't have people introduce themselves by sharing their title, We won't have people answer questions in a way that gives people more speaking time than others. Because we want to share that power, that air space,, and that influence, right?
We want to be thinking about how people are making decisions and how that reflects shared power within the room. Knowing that you know once you leave that space, this is why it's important to be honest about power outside of the room, once you leave that space.
And I think this is why we go back to the beginning, that dialogue isn't the only tool. Because a lot of people have seen and have experienced dialogue being used to co-opt something or as a placeholder. So someone without any good faith in doing anything differently says, "Oh, we'll do dialogue." And it'll appease these concerns that we're hearing. That is not shared purpose, right?
So that's why we kind of start there. We say, "Look, if you want to be thinking about these conversations intentionally, if you have a goal, something that brings you to the space, then let's design around that and make sure the right people can come into the room in a way that allows them, that makes it possible for them, to say “yes” to a risk that doesn't disappear just because you come into that space.
Heidi: Great! So my last question for you is, is there anything that you really wanted to share that I didn't ask the right question about and you haven't had the opportunity to share?
Katie: I don't think so. I mean, the only thing that I'd say is I would love to get to know some of the people who read your newsletter, whether they're in the US or not.
So, I think you know all the things we've talked about, whether it's connecting with other people doing the work, connecting with people doing the work in their own institutions, or people who are just looking for free resources, I want you to know that you're not alone, that we would love to show up and be in partner with you and be in relationship with you because this work can be exhausting, especially these days. So, we're here to be a part of that larger community.
Heidi: All right! Well, we will be sure to include that statement.
I want to thank you very much. This has been wonderful. I feel like I really understand much better who you guys are and what you're up to and why. And finally, the name change makes total sense to me. It didn't before. So that's just great.
And I hope we will be able to continue building this relationship and this conversation. So thank you very much!
Katie: Thank you, Heidi.