5 research-backed skills for open dialogue and conflict resolution
The world can feel like it’s getting ever-more polarised. Televised debate is shrill. Social media is both siloing us off into echo chambers and creating daily outrages on which instant opinions must be formed and battlelines immediately drawn. But it doesn’t need to be like this. Diverse communities can hold diverse opinions and still co-exist happily. As a society, we can have free speech, reasoned dialogue and diversity of thought if we learn to disagree well. Encouraging this kind of respectful, attentive dialogue has always been one of the key roles of the nation’s universities, which is one of the reasons that University College London (UCL) has expanded its Disagreeing Well programme, an initiative designed to promote the kind of careful listening and thoughtful dialogue that enables all of us to challenge our assumptions and open up our minds to new perspectives. A centrepiece of the programme is the Disagreeing Well Video Skills series, written and hosted by Mia Forbes Pirie, international conflict mediator and UCL alumna, in which she explores five fundamental skills for …
