Disruption and conflict are facts of life in public dialogue and other kinds of meetings. They can be distracting, annoying, even destructive.
What if you could make that disruptive energy productive? What if you could work with disruptors to increase understanding, broaden support, and build trust in your community?
Dealing with Disruptors provides tools and a framework to make that happen. It includes:
- Ten practical, tested techniques to protect the process while respecting all participants, even those who rant and reject;
- Examples of how to respond to disruptions in the moment; and
- A nine step plan to reduce the threat of disruptions in advance and design meetings that are resilient even when disruptions occur, to sustain engagement in your community.
The three principles for Dealing with Disruptors guide your work on the spot, for instance when you planned for 30 people and 120 show up. And they support your planning as well, say when you're designing a series of discussions to tackle conflicts your community has wrestled with for years.
Dealing with Disruptors gives you ways to deal with ("handle", "manage") disruptors by dealing ("conferring", "negotiating") with them. Terminology, process design, and unexpected subgroup interactions can all spark disruption. Identifying issues in advance and adjusting your plans lets you reroute disruptive energy into participative energy. And in those cases where disruption is strategic and intentional, this approach ensures that you have everyone else's support to deal with disruption in a fair and firm way.
The book is based on the Sarah J. Read's 25 years of experience resolving complex issues as a facilitator, mediator, attorney, and consultant and her work as an award-winning mediation educator.
Dealing with Disruptors concludes with some words of encouragement for the times when the going gets tough.
Open discussion is needed now more than ever. This book gives you tools to make it safe and productive.
