Keystone Practices for a Principle of Consent: Debate vs Dialogue

Over the past few years, we’ve observed dozens of groups practicing Consent as the basis for decisions. Among those, we’ve seen groups that said they practiced Consent, but individual group members expressed frustration that their voice wasn’t heard. In the worst cases, trust was low, meetings felt stressful, and people blamed each other and stopped showing up. Most of us would probably agree that a culture like that is missing the spirit of Consent.

Consent is a principle that is realized through everyday choices and practices, it’s not a cure. Some deeply ingrained behaviors can be pretty counterproductive to our principle of Consent. We’ve been curious about the failures, and we are continuously testing and evaluating what seem to be keystone practices for maintaining a culture of Consent.

This month, join us in exploring one of the Keystone Practices: Dialogue vs Debate