Kshetra’s engagements have always been learning experiences – both, for the Kshetra team and for the partners who engage with them. In conversations with three of Kshetra’s partners – Trina Talukdar (co-founder of Kranti and Bolti Bandh), Arvind Balasubramanian (Director, Socratus), and Jennifer Liang (Founder, The ANT (The action northeast trust) – we find out what they like about their association with Kshetra and what they think can improve future engagements.

The value of Value Creation

“The one thing that always stays with me – and indeed with everyone who’s done the workshop on the Dialogic Method – is sheer wonder at this concept of creating more value,” says Trina. “For anyone associated with conflict, transformation, and negotiation, the narrative has been this middle path – where we divide value, which actually creates lesser value for both. But we’re sort of happy that the other parties didn’t get everything they wanted, even though we didn’t get everything we wanted.

That’s what is usually considered to be the best-case scenario. But the concept of creating more value – like increasing the pie and not just dividing it – that’s what blows my mind. That is a really revolutionary idea,” she adds.

Arvind feels that Socratus and Kshetra are partners and ‘natural allies’. “Both of us (Socratus and Kshetra) have common interests when it comes to applying the Dialogic Method,” he says. In addition, Arvind points out that both organizations are very aligned in purpose when it comes to bringing together people who may never share a common space and facilitating uncomfortable conversations where real problems are discussed in a safe space. “Apart from that, we at Socratus view the Dialogic Method as a very valuable tool in our efforts to promote useful social conversations and really appreciate Kshetra as a source of high-quality co-facilitators at such events,” he adds.

A toolkit for conflict zones

To Jennifer, Kshetra’s efforts at teaching people how to dialogue via their toolkit on the Dialogic Method is most exciting. “I’ve worked with Kshetra in facilitating a training session online for people in the Northeast, and I believe that the Dialogic Method has a lot of relevance for the Northeast,” she says. Jennifer explains that in northeast India, where she has worked as a mediator for peace for 25 years, there is a lack of dialogue between people. “And there is a lack of skills to dialogue with each other. I feel that toolkits which can teach people to use dialogue to talk to each other, can go a long way in solving conflicts (which usually devolve into violence) can be most useful in this region,” she adds.

Currently, Jennifer and Kshetra are working on developing a Dialogic Method toolkit that teaches children to use dialogue to resolve conflicts. “I’m very excited and so is the Kshetra team – we’re creating something very new and very different. I really feel that some of these new tool kits that we’ve created should work well for teaching kids how to actually use dialogue and talk to each other,” she adds.

Learnings

While all three partners have been delighted with Kshetra’s efforts, they acknowledge that the engagements could do with some tweaking. After all, anything worth doing requires time and effort – and in Kshetra’s case, although the effort and time have been well spent, they have focused much more on live, face-to-face interactions. Unfortunately, the pandemic forced people to adopt online interactions, for which many of the Dialogic Method toolkits have not been optimized.

Both Arvind and Jennifer pointed out that the Dialogic Methods workshops and convenings were not as fruitful as those conducted in-person. “Although online sessions may not be as effective as offline ones, the ability to scale up interactions that online sessions enable compensates for its downsides. And as we grow more familiar with online technologies, we may just be able to construct dialogic tools that work well for online formats,” says Arvind.

“I also feel that some of the toolkits can be simplified and more modularised,” adds Jennifer. “The way the toolkit is currently designed, can get a bit confusing for some people. What I’m talking about is that each part of the toolkit has further sub-parts, and sometimes, it’s difficult to grasp which part goes where,” she adds.

Apart from these delivery issues, the Dialogic Method itself is prone to fail under some circumstances as Trina, Arvind, and Jennifer point out. One such situation is when there is not enough preparation – either by the facilitating team or the participants – before the actual dialogic event.

“In my experience in working with Kshetra, I’ve realised that we need to develop a good system of coordination between facilitators and also provide detailed briefs on contentious issues to the Kshetra team, including in-depth analyses of the people in the room beforehand,” says Arvind. “We learnt these lessons after two engagements with them – while both engagements were good, they could have been even better if we’d had the time and forethought for a more thorough prep process,” he adds.

“I think that it’s also important to prepare the group of people who will actually engage in dialogue, apart from just the facilitators of the dialogue, who must of course, understand the group’s triggers and mindsets. Most people come into the room without a conflict transformation mindset – they usually come to win using the traditional forms of conversation, debate, etc. Therefore, I think it’s really important that whatever group we work with, we need to do some thorough prep work with them beforehand to prepare them to come into the room to have a dialogue,” says Trina. “Most people need to be mentally primed to look at creative solutions that they haven’t seen before. If that kind of prep work isn’t done, then sometimes, the Dialogic Method fails because the people in a room have a ‘it’s my way or the highway’ kind of mindset,” she adds.

Apart from issues with preparedness, Jennifer also points out that one situation where the Dialogic Method can fail to achieve much is when there is no mutual trust between the parties. “There is this issue of trust and identity, which I think are really critical. When there are two communities clashing with each other, one cannot have a mediator who belongs to either of the two communities – a dialogue in such a setting will simply not work as there will be no trust in the facilitator or the dialogue process itself. In such situations, having a group of neutral mediators or dialogue facilitators of a different ethnicity is sometimes very important to build trust,” says Jennifer. “Having a neutral arrangement where the two parties can come together for dialogue is also needed, so a neutral space removed from both communities’ home ground is also immensely helpful,” she adds.

Another feedback that Trina provides on the Dialogic Method relates to its applicability to real-life. “Many of the people who attend our workshops on dialogue often tell us that the Dialogic Method isn’t very practical – and most of these arguments center on the fact that a dialogic approach to problem solving takes time, which is usually very limited,” says Trina. “But my question to them usually is – would you rather try a dialogue in the limited time you have and maybe succeed, or do you not try at all, and have a guaranteed repetition of the same issue over and over again? Sometimes, people see the logic behind this argument and realise that taking some extra time for dialogue actually leads to saving a lot of time in the long run.” she adds.