URBS 230—Community Leadership and Service Learning

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Turning to One Another: Simple Conversations to Restore Hope to the Future

Margaret Wheately (Berrett-Koehler, 2009)

The Process of Conversation

• When a community of people discovers that they share a concern, change begins (p. 26)
• We don’t have to start with power, only with passion (p. 29)
• We attend a conference or meeting for our own purposes, for “what I can get out of this.” Conversation is different. (p. 32)
• Principles for conversation (p 33 ff.):
• Acknowledge one another as equals
• Stay curious about each other
• We need each other’s help to become better listeners
• Slow down to have time to think and reflect
• Conversation is the natural way humans think together
• Expect it to be messy at times
• We’ve cultivated a lot of bad behaviors when we’re together—speaking too fast, interrupting others, monopolizing the time, giving speeches or pronouncements. (p. 36)
• We settle into conversation, we don’t just do it. As we risk talking to each other about something we care about, as we become curious about each other, as we slow things down, gradually we remember this timeless way of being together. (p. 37)
• …we do need to be curious about what someone else believes. We do need to acknowledge that their way of interpreting the world might be essential to our survival. (p. 39)

Twelve conversation starters

1. Do I feel a vocation to be fully human?
2. What is my faith in the future?
3. What do I believe about others?
4. What am I willing to notice in my world?
5. When have I experienced good listening?
6. Am I willing to reclaim time to think?
7. What is the relationship I want with the earth?
8. What is my unique contribution to the whole?
9. When have I experienced working for the common good?
10. When do I experience the sacred?
11. What is our role in creating change?
12. Can I be fearless?

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MSU

© 2002 A.J.Filipovitch
Revised 28 May 2010