Written by NCDD director Sandy Heierbacher to expand upon the text on our “What Are Dialogue & Deliberation?” page. This resource provides enough details to enable you to decide which of these leading dialogue and deliberation methods you should learn more about. In addition to looking at which methods fit your intentions, you will need to consider which methods are aligned with your resources, timeline, and the people you feel need to be involved. The text below is drawn from NCDD’s Engagement Streams Framework. AmericaSpeaks […] (continue)

This spiral-bound manual describes a transformational approach for facilitating dialogue in situations where people are highly invested, emotionally charged or polarized, and helping groups arrive at practical and creative breakthroughs. (continue)

The Center assists communities in creating Wisdom Councils - randomly-selected, facilitated 'juries,' reflecting the larger diversity of the community - which engage in dialogue about the larger system and arrive at creative consensus on shared visions. These visions in turn serve to increase the quality of the dialogue among the larger community. (continue)

The Center for Wise Democracy assists communities in creating Wisdom Councils - randomly-selected, facilitated 'juries' reflecting the larger diversity of the community - which engage in dialogue about the larger system and arrive at creative consensus on shared visions.... The Center for Wise Democracy provides 20% discounts to their trainings for dues-paying NCDD members. (continue)

Jim Rough & Associates offers transformational workshops on facilitating Dynamic Facilitation - generative dialogue for creative and practical problem-solving, applicable to both technical and social issues. Dynamic Facilitation is the essence of "emergent leadership." It's where one person helps others face difficult issues creatively and collaboratively, where they achieve unanimous, win/win solutions. It achieves this magic by engendering a nonlinear, heartfelt, transformational quality of thinking called "choice-creating" ? vs. "decision-making" or "problem-solving" or "creative problem-solving." (continue)

This book suggests that the U.S. adopt a Citizens Constitutional Amendment which says: Each year, 24 registered voters will be randomly selected in a lottery to form a Citizens Wisdom Council. This Wisdom Council will be a symbol of the people of the United States. With the aid of a dynamic facilitator, the group will meet for one week to choose issues, talk about them and determine consensus statements. (continue)

Active listening is a way of listening and responding to another person that improves mutual understanding. Active listening is a structured form of listening and responding that focuses the attention on the speaker. The listener must take care to attend to the speaker fully, and then repeats, in the listener's own words, what he or she thinks the speaker has said. (continue)

Dynamic Facilitation is an energy-based way of facilitating where people address difficult issues creatively and collaboratively, achieving breakthrough results. It creates a process of talking and thinking that builds mutual respect, trust and the sense of community. (continue)

The Wisdom Council is a newly invented structural approach to achieving genuine democracy in cities, unions, associations, counties, or nations ... and even in corporations. No matter how many people are in the system, it structures a creative, thoughtful, system-wide conversation about the most pressing issues. It facilitates everyone to form a unanimous "We the People" viewpoint. (continue)

The following is a working document developed in 2002 to ensure that members of the planning team for the first National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation were aware of the various streams of dialogic and deliberative practice. The 2002 conference was the first major event to bring people together from the entire spectrum of D&D practice, and it was important to us that all of these streams felt welcomed to the conference, and were represented in all aspects of the conference - from the handbook to the break-out sessions. (continue)