One should guarantee that public engagement processes will be transparent, consensual, and inclusive through the application of private, non-judgmental, non-coercive transformative facilitation. In facilitation, the duality of right versus wrong does not have to exist. There can instead be a continuum of "rightness," predicated on a participant’s knowledge and perception of possible outcomes. This is one of the focal points of Transformative Facilitation. People must learn to listen to one another's ideas, not as points of debate but as different and valid experiences in a collective reality, in order to have new experiences and broaden their understanding. Then they can fully participate in a search for common ground. After all, society evolves not by shouting each other down, but by the unique capacity of unique, individual human beings to comprehend each other. The role of a facilitator using Transformative Facilitation is to help people do this in a group setting.
At the same time, through the application of appropriate transformative facilitation tools, participants are encouraged to accept a challenge to their ideas in the spirit of learning, rather than as an invitation to combat. The greatest triumphs in science and/or policy-setting for example are not, after all, triumphs of facts but rather triumphs of new ways of seeing, of thinking, of perceiving, and of asking questions. In this way participants can act in the spirit of “since I do not know for sure who is more right than whom, I must in fairness accept that everyone is right from his or her own point of view, and each point of view is different -- not wrong, only different -- regardless of what the discussion is about.” Through appropriately facilitated communication, our many individual perceptions are coordinated and integrated into a collective vision of reality.
Likewise, transformative facilitation techniques focus on the fact that it is extremely important in human interactions to keep each person's dignity, which means “I will protect your dignity so you can protect mine.” Dignity's emotional foundation rests on the perceived ability to make choices, which in turn provides a sense of hope. For example, although I cannot convince you that you are wrong without somehow attacking your dignity, I can give you new data, which raises the value of your making a new decision based on new information. In this way, I can be patient while maintaining your dignity intact. Remove the sense of choice that has to do with one's determination of one's own destiny and you remove hope as well, and human dignity withers.
Comments (0)