The Common Ground Network for Life and Choice Manual

9) Thank participants for their sharing, and express your good feelings about the privilege of
facilitating their conversation.
II. SECOND SMALL GROUP DIALOGUE SESSION
60-90 minutes
This will be the same group that met together in the morning.
1) At the outset, remind the group of the importance of maintaining a listening, respectful tone.
Remember during this session to encourage active listening (though you can use a lighter hand
now), and to draw out areas of commonality at the conclusion of each round of sharing.
Generally this starts to happen spontaneously. The dialogue should be more free-flowing in this
session. Again, let people have a minute to think before answering.
2) Check in to see if everyone is doing well at this point (e.g., ask whether anyone has a concern
they feel a need to express before going on).
3) As a Warm Up question, ask participants “What was one key moment or insight for you so
far today?” This should be a quick go-around.
Receive all comments as valid, simply actively listen to them, and do not get into
argumentation or discussion here. This is not the heart of the dialogue. It is simply the
discussion starter.
Alternative Warm-up question:
To pick up any loose ends from the large group discussion about the questionnaire results, ask:
"Is there something in the questionnaire results that is important to you that you want to
highlight?" Tell people this is a quick go-around -- don't let the conversation get bogged down
in extended discussion of the questionnaire. People eager to move to a discussion about how to
act on apparent commonalities can be advised that everything cannot happen at once but that
before the close of the workshop there will be a chance to highlight apparent areas of common
ground and to address “what next?”
[Time for Warm-up 5 min]
4) Ask the following dialogue question:
"Do you have a question (out of genuine curiosity) you would really like to ask of someone who
holds the opposite view on abortion? This question might have been brought up by the Opinion
Survey discussion. It might be a very specific question or a request for clarification of what