Spot Positive Deviance

Now is the time to locate the people, groups, and organizations in your community who are already navigating the same tense divisions you're seeing in your in-group and who can provide advice on how to do so effectively.

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Exercises

Choose Your Lift Level

What do you have capacity for today? Whether it's a light lift, or something a little heavier, taking a step is what counts.

5 minutes 15 minutes 1 hour

5 minutes

Find Your Local Models

Begin by locating the people around you who are helping encourage candor within your in-group.

The Science Behind It

Often, within our families, groups, and organizations, some individuals or subgroups are already speaking up against our worst tendencies and may even encourage us to improve. Take some time to identify them and envision ways they may help promote honest conversations even more.

15 minutes

Ask Different Questions

Practice asking questions in your in-group about why things don't get even more tense with members of the out-group and where they might even be getting better. Explore why this is happening.

The Science Behind It

Research has shown that identifying those things in our communities that are already working well to address complex problems (conflict, poverty, malnutrition) can go a long way toward changing our understanding of the problem and pointing us to practical solutions that we should consider.

1 hour

Propose In-Group Norms on When and How to Discuss Divisive Issues

Propose the possibility of generating a set of norms together about when and how to speak honestly with one another over tense issues if they arise.

The Science Behind It

Creating the conditions for respectful conversations despite significant differences is not rocket science (we learned most of the conditions in kindergarten), but we often need to be more proactive. Generating a set of norms that all can agree on is essential to gaining buy-in on a process at the onset. It also signals that conflicts within your group are to be expected.

One initial step to consider is to propose generating and trying out a set of group norms together. If they fail to help, change them. But they might provide some guardrails that keep conversations from deadlock.

Set a daily reminder

Get daily exercise reminders on your phone or email throughout The Challenge to stay on track.

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