What Makes Conversations Sustainable?
We know we are in Sustainable Conversations when:
- We are willing
to engage authentically around issues we care about and are committed to - we show up, speak up - and, more than we usually want to - we shut up.
- We are willing to move past being polite, shy or fearful and take the risk of speaking about things as we see and experience them, while making space for others to do the same.
- We support each other in living with and inquiring into the often disquieting realization that what we see - is conditioned by how we see - not how things actually are.
- We speak and listen together in ways that foster relationships of mutual respect, trust and compassion.
- If respect is missing, we will not take each other seriously.
- If trust is missing, we will not engage with each other authentically.
- If compassion is missing, we will not learn well from the mistakes we’ll inevitably make along the way.
Sustainable conversations develop our capacity and capability to successfully address complex and difficult issues in ways that don’t cause any among us to act violently, or cause some of us to become so frustrated that we leave - either figuratively or literally.
Here at the beginning of the 21st Century, old mental models of separateness are yielding to the reality that we are all interconnected in ways we never realized. In order to be truly sustainable, our conversations must go beyond attending to the welfare of just the human race, to include the welfare of all the species that share this amazing world with us - indeed, to include in our conversations the well being of the very elements themselves. We can not long abide without the sun's rays, pure water, healthy soil and clean air.
We are truly all in this together.
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