Deepening engagement
in civic life

A different civic dialogue

Civic life is almost always problem-focused. Whether the talk is of potholes or poverty, it's almost always about the community's deficits.

And political campaigns are notoriously negative, with candidates eager to attack and blame their opponents.

What might civic life look like if a different kind of dialogue were taking place? Is it possible to have a civic dialogue that begins by looking back and remembering our best experiences, rather than our worst, and using them as a launching pad for initiatives by communities, organizations, and even individuals?

Imagine Spokane

Elinor Magnuson, a respected leader in Spokane, Washington, decided to find out. After participating in a philanthropic quest workshop, she personally conducted about 70 one-on-one interviews with leaders in her community -- people she had specifically sought out because they had positive and hopeful views of the future.

I had the privilege of facilitating a one-day gathering of these engaged citizens. The event took place a week after the 2000 election -- a bitterly-contested mayoral race that had divided the community.

A few months before the event, Elinor and I happened to see one of the mayoral candidates on the street. She told him about the idea. She knew that she wanted the candidates to attend. Of course, come November, one would be the victor and the other the vanquished.

John said he would be there, win or lose. He liked the idea of an "envisioning meeting" and told us he thought some healing would be called for by then.

I told him my idea was to be less direct. Given the design we had developed, a one-day program, I didn't want anyone to think we were going to heal anything. Besides, healing focuses on an illness and pathology.

Envisioning one's own contribution

Most important: I thought that creating an image of the future of the community was too common an exercise -- one that often led to disappointment rather than realization. (Even when aspects of it are realized, they can seem obscured.)

So I told him that I saw the day as a forum for people to come together and envision and begin to plan something different: what they wanted their greatest contribution to be to the community.

The work begins by voicing for each of us what we have going for us, and our wishes for the kind of world we want to live in -- and then we see how we come together to create the contribution each of us wants to make to society. All of this stands in contrast to the more common practice of seeing how people can simply be instruments for others' visions. More about Spokane ...

Creating new social norms

This kind of shared experience can create new norms about what's OK to talk about in civic life.

Anne Nickerson heads a family foundation in Sheridan, Wyoming, one of the most dynamic communities of its size (15,000 people) I've ever encountered. According to Anne, she used to feel timid about expressing her optimistic ideas in meetings with others in the community.

"I didn't want to look silly," she admits. "Sometimes people can make you feel that way."

After participating in a community-wide inquiry process, Anne realized how many people in the room wanted the same kinds of things for the community she did. From that point on, she vowed to speak up with confidence, instead of holding back on her thoughts and feelings.

What might we all be able to accomplish if people everywhere brought that kind of confidence to their civic engagement?