Exclusive Q&A: Raye Rawls Answers Your Questions!
"Some people are just tired of feeling fraught and fearful"
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Here’s a special bonus episode for listeners of the Omni-Win Project Podcast. Duncan welcomes Raye Rawls for an exclusive Q&A session with an audience from the Democracy, Politics and Conflict Engagement Initiative (DPACE). Listen to learn about the nuances of Reflective Structured Dialogue from this award-winning mediator and dialogue facilitator.
Discover what motivates people to participate in tricky conversations and how they can benefit everyone, from law enforcement officials to families. Raye doesn’t shy away from difficult topics like guns and abortion. She talks about the pros and cons of social media for conversations, education, and information. She answers questions about the magic of reflective structured dialogue and shares a profound question that she asks participants to make them think more about their stance.
Whether you prefer to watch, listen, or read, this thought-provoking Q&A with Raye is a truly multimedia installment.
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The Q&A with Raye
Do different rounds of questions serve different purposes in reflective structured dialogue?
From Kimberly Best, DPACE Initiative
Raye: There is a model for the rounds. I consider myself a little chaotic, so I love this structure because it's so different from who I am. There are four rounds, including questions of curiosity.
The first round of questions asks people to “share a story from your personal or community life.” It helps others understand what this issue means to you. Chris Singleton’s mother was murdered while praying in a church, and he talked about how his friend, a gun advocate and hunter, told him a story that humanized the issue. (Audiogram below)
The second round of questions asks people to think about what's at the heart of the matter for them. “What are your values, hopes, and fears?” It digs into deeply held beliefs, values, and assumptions at the center of their conviction. If I believe it’s important for people to feel safe in their communities, and that could mean responsible gun ownership.
The third round is my favorite one, and it’s a powerful question: “Within your overall perspective on this issue, what are some areas of uncertainty or internal value conflicts that you are willing to speak about?”
If you don't have any internal conflicts, and if you’re 100% sure that abortion should be illegal, what's the source of your conviction? That's the question that I've seen softening positions or developing internal curiosity.
Dave Joseph told me the story of a woman who came to an abortion dialogue. She was adamant that a woman has an absolute right to do what she wants with her body. No ifs, ands, or buts: Absolutely no conversation. But in response to that third question, she said, “I have a fear that one day they will locate a gene that will determine if a child will be gay or lesbian, and we'll see a Holocaust of unborn gay and lesbian babies.”
While she felt certain that a woman has an absolute right, she also had this fear. In that space, you can lean into her if you have a very different opinion.
The fourth round is for questions of curiosity, which are much less structured. They’re not rhetorical questions, it's not an opportunity to teach people a lesson. Rather, they’re questions that say, “I really wanna get what this means to you. Why is this important to you? How are you framing it that way?” I laugh when I describe it because I've seen some folks just struggle with it. It's hard work, but when you get it right, the atoms in the room transform.
Something magical happens when someone taking a stance on something feels really wants to get me. They want to understand my feelings, even if they’re on the “opposite” side. It has the power to be transformational.
What motivates people to come into very difficult conversations?
From Wendy Wood, DPACE Initiative
Raye: There are different motivations. People come for many reasons. Maybe they need to write a policy about protesting, riots, and maintaining a civic society. In one police-community dialogues that I did in a Southern state, black female law enforcement officers said, “We think we are doing the right work and supporting our country and community, but we don't want anyone to kill our sons.”
Sometimes I work for a leadership institute, and people want to have a dialogue around an issue that's relevant so that leaders can understand the process and approach to take into their communities.
Some people are just tired of feeling fraught and fearful. I’ve done a lot of work around masks. At a Rotary Club, someone actually said, “What are we gonna do now that we no longer trust science? What are we going to rely on?” Somehow it got to me that they wanted to have a conversation about making decisions on public health and safety.
Is social media interfering with our ability to be in dialogue with each other?
From Wendy Wood, DPACE Initiative
Raye: Yes, it's huge, it's problematic. But I had a student who wrote a dissertation on social media and dialogue, and groups read it and did a remarkable job of creating a space for dialogue in their rules and structures. We’ve got to educate people about this. So much is going on, and there’s a focus on the negative part of social media, which is my experience as I don’t use it a lot.
In the field of preserving democracy, conflict resolution, mediation, peace, love, and connection, we have to uplift the other possibilities. We also need to call out our own folk, not just the others. Even on the news programs and publications I love, there's polarization.
“So-and-so made a fool out of so-and-so!” Why don't you just share the story and let me judge who was made a fool of? So, I have been having conversations with two schools of journalism about reframing this, and there’s a lot of interest in the field.
We need to be intentional about reaching out to people in those fields and educating them about the possibilities when journalists see their role as preserving democracy because a lot of them are okay with that. We also need to encourage them to hold those mirrors up and say, “How am I framing this story to preserve the values that we are supposed to hold in a democratic society?”
We need to get together and do a tremendous amount of good.
What’s the ideal number of participants in a dialogue?
From Duncan Autrey
Raye: Well, how many facilitators do you have? We trained 30 middle school, high school, and college students to facilitate. A middle school kid facilitated a dialogue with the Chief of Police, other law enforcement officers, and members of the community: 145 people in the room!
With a face-to-face dialogue, I like seven to nine people in a room. With virtual dialogue, maybe six. Skilled facilitators can work with larger groups, and I've done several dialogues with over a hundred people now. As long as the actual conversation is small, and we break large groups into smaller groups, we can work with it, depending on the amount of facilitators we have.
Some people say, “Well, we wanna hear everybody!” Then we have to think of another way of doing it.
I have done a couple with really large groups, where I was the master facilitator on the stage. In fact, I did that with the young kids facilitating, and they were amazing. I was giving the structure to it, which is challenging, but if you want to break a habit or unlearn something, you need structure. You have to be intentional about not doing what you always do.
How do you guide people into understanding the value of understanding others?
From Wendy Wood, DPACE Initiative
Raye: I love that question, and I'm still grappling with that. While working with a group of engineers, they were just like, “We need a formula to do this, this, and this.” That is a real challenge. We aren’t going to solve your math problem. What we have heard from you is that the issue is not the formula; the issue is the relationship.
I was talking to a colleague who said, “We need to do a lot more prep work with certain groups,” and that's the reality of it. How do we help people differentiate between problem solving and problem understanding? How do we create TikTok videos to help people see the value in understanding the variety of perspectives prior to problem solving?
Sometimes it's easy, and people get it, but neurodiversity is a big deal, and I believe that's work we need to do. We really need to think about how to frame the benefit of this process, no matter how you think and process information.
How do you harness dialogue to aid deliberation and know when to switch back?
From Courtney Cole, DPACE Initiative
Raye: The work that I do through the University of Georgia is a lot of a large group deliberative processes. Oftentimes, we do the dialogue first, and then move into the deliberative process. It might be consensus-building or a variety of processes. I rely on the group to let me know if they've hit a wall.
The other thing that I love is seeing people in other processes, including faculty meetings, say “Before you respond, please think for two minutes.” And I'm going, “Wow!” So, there are pieces of the dialogue, communication agreements, and structures that we can use in a variety of processes.
Conversely, I have people say, “No, we can't do that. We need to come to a decision now.” That's fine, let's bring in the decision-making people who are doing the deliberative work. But you now know there is an approach that you can use if you hit a wall, wanna shift the tenor of what's happening in the room, or want a breather. I have had people say, “Oh my, we've had 12 hours of this deliberating.”
So, let's use a dialogic approach as a check in: “What about this conversation is working for you? How will you know that we are heading in the right direction? What feedback will you get, verbal, nonverbal, or otherwise?”
Perhaps it’s the quality of the questions or deliberation that reminds people we are on track. Or the Mayor is once again talking a lot, and they’re taking the expert stance in a way that's not particularly helpful.
It's a tremendous way of checking in.
Have you ever had people come up with more answers and issues and return to dialogue?
From Duncan Autrey
Raye: Oh, absolutely. An example is hitting a wall in the deliberative process, and a policy that they created stirred things up. They realized they missed the first step with reparations. What does that mean? Well, it’s the eighth meeting, and we’ve just found that your definition of reparations is very different from mine.
I am actually seeking a group to talk about reparations. It keeps coming up, but I can't get a group together to talk about it. In one of the conversations that I was a part of, they wanted to have the conversation, but they became fearful of it because there were a lot of people of color from the islands in the room.
And they were like, “No, this is not your stuff. You are African people who oftentimes get treated with racist elements, but your people weren't here. You don't get $4.57.”
I think that's a really good conversation to have a dialogue around.
Thank you, Raye!
Interested in hearing more from Raye? Check out the first episode!
Raye is offering a training on
Reflective Structured Dialogue
September 1st and 2nd, 2022.
About Raye:
Raye Rawls is an award-winning mediator, arbitrator, and dialogue facilitator with decades of experience. Rawls has worked on thousands of cases in government institutions, court systems, corporations, and with private parties.
Some examples of topics that she has covered in her dialogue work include confederate monuments on campus, guns on campus, gender issues (what bathroom should people use), defining freedom of speech on campus, evolving roles of organizations or institutions (e.g., chamber of commerce), climate change, human trafficking, intergovernmental cooperation, immigration, and police-community relationships.
Raye Rawls is a Senior Associate with Essential Partners. She is also a Senior Public Service Faculty at the University of Georgia’s Fanning Institute for Leadership Development, where her practice area is in conflict transformation and dialogue. Raye is also a member of Mediators Beyond Borders International and the DPACE Initiative.
Connect with Raye Rawls:
Email: raye@whatisessential.org
Check out the episode page for more resources and information.
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