Finding Common Ground across Divides: the Win Win Approach to Tackling Disagreement

A Workshop to help you understand & learn the Win Win Approach for difficult conversations

How often do you get into discussion with people who disagree with your ethics and worldview? And end up with silent disagreement, or even shouting? This simple and easy to learn tool helps you to delve down from entrenched positions to underlying aims and needs. Frequently these are found to overlap, so making it possible to find a common position.

This is one of two workshops, on consecutive days, at Star & Shadow presented by Talk Shop & Thinking Box: a collaboration over more than 10 years promoting respectful discussion about big issues around the country.

We are living in an age of information, yet we’ve never felt more in the dark. Deliberate falsehoods inflame divisions between neighbours, and erode the very foundations of our democracy. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed, cynical, or powerless.

In this workshop, we'll role play a common disagreement and help you to analyse what happened, and how it works. You'll then learn how to do it for yourselves, and practice it. For the remainder of the session we'll ask you to share the conflict situations that you get immersed in, and work on those too. So do come prepared with at least one topic you’re struggling with right now.

Your Facilitator: Perry Walker has spent the last 25 years developing new approaches for groups to use in holding constructive conversations, finding common ground, and coming to shared decisions. The Democs conversation kits, for example, have been used by thousands of people across Europe - see www.playdecide.eu He and Paul Thistlethwaite are currently setting up the Win-Win Alliance to spread the Win-Win approach.