Engaging Across Difference: Basic Small Group Dialogue Facilitation

Two-Day Skills Training 

This course introduces foundational approaches to facilitating small-group dialogue across differing perspectives, experiences, and identities. Participants will examine principles of inclusive and deliberative dialogue, facilitator neutrality, psychological safety, group agreements, active listening, inquiry, reframing, and managing challenging group dynamics. Emphasis is placed on creating conditions for substantive exchange, supporting equitable participation, and helping groups remain engaged with complexity and disagreement without requiring consensus.

Thirteen (13) Contact Hours

1) Course Goals

• Build participants’ capacity to facilitate small-group dialogue across meaningful differences in identity, experience, values, culture, ideology, and worldview.
• Create dialogue practices that promote curiosity, dignity, inclusion, and productive engagement.
• Strengthen participants’ ability to manage misunderstanding, assumptions, emotional responses, and tension in diverse groups.
• Help dialogue facilitators create conditions in which participants can listen, be heard, and identify areas of shared concern while differences remain.
• Determine which dialogue model is optimal for the type of issues people want to address.

2) Learner Objectives

• Differentiate dialogue from debate, discussion, persuasion, and decision-making processes.
• Establish a respectful and inclusive environment for small-group dialogue, including appropriate agreements or norms.
• Use active listening and constructive questions to deepen understanding across differences.
• Identify assumptions, interpretations, and possible misunderstandings that may shape group interaction.
• Recognize and manage emotional responses in oneself and in the group.
• Respond constructively to moments of tension, disagreement, or communication breakdown.
• Support participation by people with different identities, experiences, communication styles, and levels of influence.
• Help participants identify areas of shared concern or common ground without minimizing meaningful differences.
• Maintain facilitator neutrality toward participants while actively supporting a fair and constructive process.

3) Learner Outcomes

• Participants can design and facilitate a basic small-group dialogue across difference.
• Participants can establish conditions that encourage respectful participation, curiosity, and psychological safety.
• Participants can use questions and listening techniques that help people understand perspectives they may not share.
• Participants can identify and interrupt assumptions, misunderstandings, and unproductive communication patterns.
• Participants can respond to tension and emotion without forcing consensus or suppressing disagreement.
• Participants can support more inclusive participation and help groups discover areas of shared concern while preserving legitimate differences.
• Participants will be able to determine which dialogue model is optimal based on the goals.

4) Core Skills

• Small-group dialogue facilitation
• Dialogue framing
• Dialogue model selection
• Active and reflective listening
• Constructive questioning
• Assumption identification
• Perception checking
• Managing emotional responses
• Responding to misunderstanding
• Facilitating across identity and worldview differences
• Inclusive participation
• Process neutrality
• Creating group agreements
• Finding shared concerns
• Managing tension without forcing agreement