Giess: There are many approaches to addressing our nation’s social divides. What differentiates the technique you utilize – “collaborative problem-solving” – from other forms of conflict mediation or social cohesion efforts?
Levison: To deal with the challenges we have around our democracy, we really need a million flowers to bloom. All of the approaches that are out there are valuable. Collaborative problem-solving is the one in which Rob and I love and have invested our lives. It does the work that people often call bridgebuilding – building trust and relationships – but it uses those relationships to solve concrete problems. The transformative power of those relationships is mighty, but so is working together to solve real problems. This approach also aligns with research around contact theory, which essentially says that one of the best ways to build enduring relationships across differences is to work together on shared priorities and address problems.
Fersh: I’ve seen in my work that when we go through the cauldron of getting to know each other across lines of difference and finding ways to work for common goals, it binds us together in a way that other interventions don’t. We take our bridgebuilding work further and extend those relationships to drive social impact. Creating a tool that helps people get along and get stuff done together was essential. It’s rarely been done at the level that Convergence does it, in terms of trying to shape national policy and especially who we engage. Our work brings together the stakeholders disputing various policy solutions – often the people who drive division around a particular issue – and we put them through a process to build bonds. Over time, they have seen each other and the issue very differently.
Giess: One quote early in the book really caught my attention because it relates to something that I see regularly in IA’s work.
You wrote, “Unfortunately, today it feels as though too many of us are abandoning the concept that reasonable people can disagree while also working side by side, or that you can disagree while at the same time respecting each other’s motives.” This idea that working with someone with whom you disagree can make you complicit in their sins feels like a strong and growing cultural idea that is very dangerous in a diverse democracy.
Where do you think this perspective has come from, and what does it take for us societally to push back on this thinking?
Levison: First, it’s important to say that most people assume they disagree on way more than they actually do. In terms of fundamental values, like fairness or equality, we have a lot in common. Of course, we have disagreements on the best way to achieve those values, and our society is set up to have productive competition around the best ideas that can move us forward together. That productive competition aligns with the idea in our book that some conflict can be healthy; essentially, we can manage the divergences of opinion on how to best achieve our shared values – but fundamentally, we too often forget we do ultimately have shared values and goals. Why do I think it’s gotten this way?
There are many reasons – social media, changing demographics, growing inequality, money in politics – all of these things are true, but in my view, everything boils down to fear. Things feel challenging to folks. Things have started to feel more existential regarding whose needs will be met, especially as our country gets more diverse. As we increasingly talk about the value of diversity, we have inadvertently created a fear that we will throw some people out of the boat to make space for new folks rather than collectively building a bigger boat. When we get fearful, we cling to who we know and what we know. These societal drivers for division are real, but fear is a fundamental motivator.
Fersh: Of course, the growth of multiple media outlets and social media gives many avenues for people to be more strident in their views and get their word out. And there has been the rise of certain leaders who have been quite charismatic in getting their ideas out.
Incentives in Congress for what types of behavior are valuable have also changed. I recently had dinner with Leon Panetta, who I used to work for, and he was coming out of his term as Secretary of Defense – he was asking us what had changed in Congress since he served. These days, there’s greater party purity, the leadership puts together the big packages, and connection in party-based social groups is more influential in Congressional success. To get out of this place of division, we need leaders who understand the power of collaboration. People need to have their own experiences of cooperation and hear stories about direct collaboration experiences. Once someone who was a sworn enemy suddenly becomes a partner for change, it’s a stickier relationship – an essential ingredient for societal change.
Levison: Relationships are a vital ingredient, as you say, Rob, and then the other piece is to show that there are ways that come together that don’t involve compromising your values. We call those ideas “higher ground solutions.”
It’s really been our experience that compromise is a good thing in many cases, but when it comes to values and principles – ideas like justice and fairness – we don’t want to compromise on those essential ideas. The process then needs to get people out of their rigid and mutually exclusive solutions and instead focus on unpacking their beliefs, values, and concerns. Once people do that, we discover many shared values that create pathways for solutions that don’t force anyone to compromise their principles and values. Instead, we can find higher-ground, wiser, and more durable solutions than any stakeholders’ individual solutions because they’ve done the hard work of building consensus.
Giess: Can you tell me a story from the book that best embodies the possibility that you can disagree while respecting others’ motives?
Fersh: One story I love is from the early days of Convergence when we worked on healthcare issues. In the ’90s, Hillary Clinton was put in charge of the Clinton healthcare plan, which caused a great deal of division and a sense that the issue was intractable.
From 2004 to 2007, we built relationships with the same people who were at each other’s throats around the Clinton healthcare plan and found consensus. What values were beneath everyone’s motivations? They all wanted other people to have healthcare coverage. To arrive at that goal, everyone’s first choice was their own policy ideas.
But we created an atmosphere where trust was built, values were shared, and there was generative thinking about alternate pathways. After that process, a leader from the American Medical Association approached me and said, “You’ve ruined my life!” When I asked her why, she explained that the process of sitting together with people who viewed the world very differently had fundamentally changed the way she viewed the world. She could no longer see it – or her so-called “enemies” – the way they had in the past. It changed everything for her.
One of the challenges of the bridgebuilding field is that we are often accused of “preaching to the choir” or only working with folks who are already bought in on the process of bridging. What I appreciated about your book is it showed where that isn’t the case – you’re working with stakeholders around various policy issues, so they are already ”bought-in,” but differently – they care about the policy. What will it take to get Americans to be ”bought in” on the idea of collaborative problem-solving more broadly?
Levison: In the stories from Convergence’s history, there’s indeed some history of problem-solving together. Even folks who didn’t want to solve problems wanted to have all the essential conversations about an issue they cared about. Giving people an experience of a well-structured process designed to help them build trust and relationships and find higher-ground solutions is one way to get people more invested.
Once they’ve had an experience, they want to keep participating and do more. In my work in Minnesota, it was less the case that people were volunteering to come into the process; the convener indicated that important decisions would be made there (convened by the governor, mayor, or tribal authority). People were not excited to be there, but the process resulted in shared understanding, strong relationships, and robust solutions. That’s certainly hard to scale, but having pieces of our education system (K12 and higher ed) give people these experiences is a valuable opportunity. Other partners’ work on narrative change also feels like a powerful part of the answer. More people are interested, but the opportunity isn’t always present. It could make a real difference if we integrate these kinds of opportunities into various ways people engage in everyday life.
Fersh: Most people have shared goals, which may open a door once they recognize that. For you to win, does someone else have to lose? Most people would say it would be OK for both sides to win if we could find a way to do that. Leadership is also really important. We’d like to be part of a huge cultural change where more and more leaders in more places adopt this way of operating. Marc Rasciot founded the Montana Consensus Council – a republican governor, a friend of George W. Bush, became head of the RNC, chaired the 2004 election committee – he’s not in vogue these days and has been cast out by the Montana Republican party – but we think it’s possible that as the public gets tired of leaders that don’t prioritize problem-solving, that people are tired of the unpredictability of the world, that there’s a greater value that our solutions come to. We’d like to think that leaders in many sectors begin to talk this language and develop these skills; there will be an appetite for that, and more and more people will see that Stephen Covey’s idea of ”win-win solutions” is the way to go.
Religions come together around the same idea, which is a principled approach to how we ought to treat each other.
Giess: You have invested your life in bridging divides and finding surprising solutions, and you’re passionate about it. Where does that passionate commitment come from for you personally? What are the values that you anchor this work in?
Fersh: All the world’s great religions come together around the same idea, which is a principled approach to how we ought to treat each other. It’s painful to see how we treat each other unnecessarily and badly, though there are times when we need to stand up and fight.
My passion comes from my own upbringing as a Jewish person. I grew up in a congregation led by a rabbi who escaped Berlin in the 1930s during the rise of Hitler and who later marched for civil rights in the American context. He was never political, to my mind – he led in a way grounded in values about how we treat each other. The Jewish community often uses the concept of tikkun olam – healing the world – to explain their social change work, but not everyone has the same view of what good social change looks like. I once shocked an adult educator at a synagogue a few years ago by saying that ISIS also thinks they are trying to improve the world!
The idea of tikkun olam may not be enough when we are only focused on solutions that work for us versus work for everyone. My commitment to this work comes from caring about solving big problems, and how we solve those problems, so we also build civility and relationship in the process. I care about being both a more civil and a more effective society.
Levison: I’ve spent a lot of years working with folks in a lot of trouble – mediating disputes between people in detention centers, caught up in gang life, navigating violent public schools, and working in criminal misdemeanor court where people had assaulted each other.
Through those experiences, it was painfully obvious how much people were struggling. While their behavior was unproductive, it was genuinely driven by unmet needs and people trying to get those needs met by any means necessary, whether belonging, esteem, or basic resources. Clearly, struggling people were not working because they were bad people but because they needed the tools or resources to meet their needs more productively.
I remember complaining to my mom as a kid that I wasn’t good at soccer or swimming, and she said, “But you’re good at people!” At the time, I really just wanted to be a good dancer, but she turned out to be correct, and that turned out to be a very useful talent. I can bring people together and help others see that people are engaging in specific ways because they lack a better path for meeting a shared need and achieving shared goals.
Mary Ellen Giess is the Chief Innovation Officer at Interfaith America.