A few months ago, the incoming Rotary District Governor, Amelia Stansell started worrying. Not about the job that she was taking on and how it would disrupt the rhythms of her family and business. Nor about whether or not she was up for the job—once you meet Amelia, you realize that imposter syndrome is not one of her issues.
Rather, she was worried about existing divisions within the more than sixty clubs in our district and how we would deal with the tensions that were bound to pop up during the presidential election campaign, since Rotary is one of the few institutions that has members from who would be supporting both candidates.
So, she asked the incoming Director of Learning and Development if our e-club of Global Peacebuilders would be willing to host a workshop on how to hold difficult, tension-filled conversations, whether they involved internal Rotary matters or the fraught nature of our political system during our century’s version of the roaring twenties.
Ralph asked me to help, and since I knew that Emily Evans of the Peace Innovation Initiative was going to be in town for PeaceCon and had family ties to our part of northern Virginia, I asked her to plan and run the event with us.
We can’t tell you too much about what happened when we gathered on Saturday on the lovely and surprisingly rural campus of Laurel Ridge Community College in Warrenton VA because we promised confidentiality to the participants. Still, I hope that you will be able to see just how interesting and useful the day was—and how we could take this kind of workshop to scale.
Rotary District 7610
For readers who aren’t familiar with Rotary, its 1.4 members all belong to local clubs (and now, a few that only exist on line, like mine) that are part of geographically defined regions. Thus, my e-club is one of those new-fangled online networks, but because its founders live in Northern Virginia, we are part of the district that includes the DC suburbs where I live, the growing exurban communities (like Warranton), and parts of the traditional south since our borders include Charlottesville and go almost all of the way to Richmond.
Demographically, the kinds of committed club members who would give up a Saturday for this workshop are typical of Rotary in the 2020s. Most are or were successful professionals. I said “were” because too many of us are old and retired. There were more people who identified themselves as veterans than I usually see at a peacebuilding event. There were also more women and people of color than one might expect at a Rotary event—at least if you have the stereotypes I had before I joined three years ago.
Perhaps most importantly for our purposes here, although we didn’t ask, my sense is that a significant minority of the people who came to the workshop planned to vote for former President Trump in November.
Even more importantly, almost everyone was reluctant—at best—to talk about divisive issues within their clubs.
What We Hoped to Accomplish
Many Rotarians want to avoid political divisions because they believe they have to. They understand that Rotary is a non-partisan, non-profit organization. As such, it cannot—and should not—endorse candidates or take stands on particular pieces of legislation.
That does not mean that it could or should duck divisive issues.
If anything, we wanted them to see that as Rotarians who joined the organization because they want to be service leaders in their communities, they have an obligation to have those tough conversations with each other and with the communities they serve.
We wanted them to see that they could “model” how to have those difficult conversations.
And that they could have fun doing so.
So, we developed a set of exercises that would help the Rotarians see that having tough conversations is worth it.
Ralph started the day by helping people see that there is a link between our basic personality types and the ways we deal with conflict, whether it is in our Rotary clubs or in the country as a whole.
You Can’t Duck the Tough Issues
Then we spent the rest of the morning helping the forty Rotarians in the room realize that they can’t avoid difficult conversations even if they think that they want to. I had created a role playing exercise in which the members took positions they didn’t personally agree with explored what happened. As expected, everyone3 discovered two things. Avoiding the conversation deepened stereotypes, feelings of resentments and more, all of which might it even harder to talk. More importantly, they found that they learned a lot and became more empathetic when they had to take positions they disagreed with.
Alexandra Carter’s Five Hints
Then, the day before we met, I coincidentally listened to Columbia Law Professor Alexandra Carter’s TED talk on negotiations which actually helped me improvise during the session. And, in retrospect, is probably the best way to present what happened in part because they overlap with core Rotary principles embedded in its four-way test which it uses to guide its internal decision making.
All you can do is steer a discussion. Although Carter doesn’t put it quite this, I never enter a discussion wanting to convince the other people to change their minds. Of course, I want them to agree with me, but my years as a teacher taught me that people do not adopt new positions on difficult issues quickly. And, I never convince them. They have to convince themselves. What’s more, I never know in advance how such a discussion will unfold. Carter used a kayak for her example because of something that happened I her life. I find myself using a sailing metaphor in ways that I learned while teaching campers how to sail when I was a counselor. You have to tack toward your target if you are facing stiff headwinds. Which we certainly are these days.
Be curious. Here, Carter focused on negotiations over salaries and work roles. Her advice is just as useful when Rotarians deal with polarizing questions. Ask questions. Especially open ended questions whose answers help you understand why your discussion partner holds (to you at least) what seem like crazy ideas.
The Negotiations Start Before the Negotiations Start. I would have put this one first rather than third. It really helps to explore the “baggage” or the unspoken assumptions you bring to the discussion. We put this in terms of knowing in advance what you hope to accomplish in the discussion. Again, I rarely try to convince anyone that I’m right in such a discussion. Here, too, it’s important that you approach the discussion with we called a spirit of good will in my days in the Beyond War movement in the 1980s. Rotarians commit themselves to seeking the truth and solutions that benefit all concerned as part of the four-way test. We used all of our exercises to help people see the importance of using those criteria in, as the test puts it, “in everything we say and do.
Embrace quiet. This is the hardest one for me. One of things I’ve always struggled with in the classroom is silence. You ask a question, not a single hand gets raised. Sometimes you do ask a truly stupid question. However, there are times when the best questions force people in your audience to take some time and think before they speak. Sometimes, you actually want them to do so. In other words, in order to land the plane (as Carater put it), everyone has to be part of what the late pollster Daniel Yankelovich called a dialogue “that is so intense that it leaves neither party unchanged.” That takes time.
Understand That Your Adversary in Your Partner. In Rotary’s case, that literally is true. Whatever position Rotarians take on marriage equality or whomever they choose to vote for, they work together in Rotary.
But we wanted them to see something even more profound. Whatever our positions, we actually share most problems and will continue to do so even after we make a key decision, like electing the next president. Whoever wins and by however much, the problems we face are not going to disappear on November 6.
Sure, some public policies can be passed by bare majorities. But, as we’ve seen with Obamacare and the Inflation Reduction Act, they can remain problematical for decades. Or, with the end of the civil war and the rise of feminism, centuries.
Lasting solutions require building agreement around deeper norms as well as specific policies. That takes time. And that takes understanding that everybody on all sides of all issues are going to end up sharing this country long after the 2024 campaign is history.
Our Key Accomplishment: If You Are a Rotarian, You Are a Peacebuilder
One day workshops can be a lot of fun for facilitators and participants alike. And, if the smiles and thanks when we broke up late Saturday afternoon are any indication, we definitely accomplished that.
At the same time, we wanted the people who came to Warrenton to go home with skills they can practice over the weeks and months to come. As the cliché would have it, only time will tell.
Still, I know we enjoyed one small success. One of the women at my table talked about what she and her club were doing to ease their town’s transition from being a mostly rural community to one that sits on the edge of the DC suburbs. That has brought all kinds of changes. Growing population. A more diverse population. Overcrowded schools. A housing market in which values have tripled in the last ten years.
As my friend talked about her work, I said, “you know, you are a peacebuilder because of what you do.” She looked at me quizzingly, and I said something like, “you know, peacebuilding requires addressing all of the issues that Rotary focuses on and then some. So, when you are dealing with housing or immigration or schools, you are dealing with the issues that give rise to conflict in the first place. You are a peacebuilder whetheryou realize it or not.”
Next Steps
The day went well enough that we know that there will be next steps. Amelia would like to hold more of these events. And take them to the individual clubs. And to Rotary writ large. I’d like to see Rotarians model this kind of behavior in the projects they take on as Rotarians so that we model what leadership could be like for our country as a whole.
I have no idea how any of this will play itself out. All I know is that I’ll be spending much of the rest of the week with Rebecca Crall, who is Rotary International’s Area of Focus Manager for Peacebuilding and Conflict Prevention (and yes, her title is a mouthful).
NEXT TIME: PeaceCon and Peacebuilding Starts at Home. Tomorrow, I head to the Alliance for Peacebuilding’s annual conference and then another workshop I’m running on its Peacebuiding Starts at Home initiative.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Alliance for Peacebuilding or its members.
