Page 334 - Mike Ratner CC - WISR Complete Dissertation - v6

Consequences/Impact

Two important dimensions emerged from the facilitator’s perspective, which aided in the

outcomes of the dialogue and discourse among participants: letting the dialogue go its own way

and honoring the experiences of others. Letting the dialogue go its own way is a technique also

discussed by an experienced facilitator interviewed in the pilot study leading up to the dissertation

research. The concept of letting the dialogue go its own way is a group process strategy used by

the facilitator used to focus the energy of the group away from the structure of a set agenda process

and inward to the issues that are at work in the group. Letting the dialogue go its own way.

“I don’t think I needed to take a particular, uh, role with respect to that [next steps by the

group]. I thought that the group was confronting its evolution as a group.” (F01)

“The facilitation was fairly open and allowed the [dialogue] conversation to go where it

needed to go.” (P05MW)

Honoring the experience of others. The dialogue experience was a blend of facilitation that

created and held space open for hearing all perspectives, negative and positive. The personal stories

were explored in dialogue sessions that at times were free flowing and at other times challenging

and contentious for both participants and facilitators. Comments voiced in the dialogue space were

heard and subject to varying levels of response and examination.

“When someone is engaged in a dialogue group…some of those people were engaging and

talking to each other, and some of those people did not talk to one another. When you hear

a fellow citizen that you wouldn’t normally talk to, when you hear their stories about the

place that you live in and you hear a different story and people have a real challenge they

say, “Wow I didn’t know that you looked at our community from that perspective.” So I

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