ConversationLabs
Building Confidence One Meaningful Conversation at a Time
By sharing our own life experiences we are seeking to break through the outer shells that our culture has told us matter: physical looks, wardrobe, speech or media-modeled anti-social practices.
Simply, we are striving to revive the art of meaningful conversation. We strive to disrupt routine and convention. We inspire our lab partners to speak at their level of comfort, avoiding empty phrases.
Meaningful Conversations Inspire Interest and Trust
ConversationLabs are Learning Labs, although they feel a bit like a board game. There are 2 Versions that serve different purposes.
Labs Version 1
Arenas of “Everyday Life” Experiences
For Everybody, Age 14+
Arenas of Conversation in Version 1:
- Community
- Family
- Relationships
- Money
- Polarizing Issues
- In Later Years
- Work Life
- Learning
The group chooses one Arena for that one-hour lab. The learning lab supports listening and story sharing skills while building sensitivity to group dynamics. Meaningful conversations inspire us: we experience a sense of community. From 8th Graders through Elders, we all benefit from safe models for how to come together in an era of divisiveness.
Labs Version 2
Arenas of “Hard-to-Talk-About” Experiences
For Those Learning Their Way Forward
Arenas of Conversation in Version 2:
- Caregiving Challenges
- Exploring Meaningful Work
- Parenting Teens with Harmful Habits
- Emerging Adults in Today’s Real World
- Making it Through High School
- Welcoming Newcomers in Senior Centers
- Grieving Loss
Version 2 is focused on learning, sharing, and airing the complexity of these specific issues with fellow travelers. Isolated, we can feel caught up in these seemingly intractable challenges. A safe form to share stories can be nourishing, even though each lab is only an hour.
Why 2 Versions?
The basic design, form, and process for both Version 1 and Version 2 are the same. There are differences in the Story Sharing Prompts and the Arenas with their companion Topic Cards.
Both versions are designed to be self-facilitating by the group of 3-6 lab partners. Each lab experience is one hour. The directions are straightforward and read aloud. The variations of experiences in both versions are infinite!
Why do ConversationLabs Nourish Us?
We are all familiar with the cultural forces and experiences that leave us cautious and feeling awkward with strangers, colleagues, and even family members! Meaningful conversations that warmly connect us are rare, and many of us wander in isolation between vigilance and vulnerability. In the tsunami of the tech era, we have fewer chances to learn healthy practices face-to-face.
Humans have a yearning to soften the barriers that separate us and to meet “the other” in ways that enable trust and confidence to emerge. We’ve all had a meaningful conversation at some time, but it is a bit of a mystery how that happens.
A ConversationLab is a new social form letting us practice co-creating meaningful conversations that grow in a safe way. We learn by practicing and building on our human tradition of story sharing. Like any lab, there are tasks and time limits to provide form that makes space for freedom.
ConversationLabs are creative and fun! Each is unique as we create unique stories to share and hear about. The more labs we join, the more we learn and connect in a warm-hearted way with “the others.” We learn about our own habits and participants self-correct when the form of the lab gives them subtle and unspoken feedback.
The ConversationLabs are egalitarian: everyone creates a story or shares an experience and has up to 3 minutes of uninterrupted time to share. We learn about listening by practicing and being attentive. The stories are remarkable and unexpected! When we hear someone’s personal experience, our prejudices recede a bit and our interest is awakened. We can break through the outer shells which our culture has told us matter: physical appearance, wardrobe, age, speech, mannerisms, etc.
Where can we use ConversationLabs?
Refreshing existing teams or launching new ones
Onboarding new staff or board members
Supporting young adults trying to find their place
Engaging community groups
Supporting AA and NA groups after their 12-step Meetings
Recovering congregations, post-Covid
Enlivening independent and assisted living centers
Melding faculty, parents, and students
Rehabilitation centers to ease the transition for healing
Addressing trauma, grief and Hospice work
Bringing together polarized community members
Orientation for higher education students
We are in mostly post-Covid societies and organizations. Social awkwardness and avoidance, along with appealing and competitive “stay at home” communication options have eroded our confidence to “meet the other” in person.
Cell phones are like magnets for attention, and it feels as if we are interrupting someone if we begin to converse at all!
ConversationLabs have broad application and the high quality sets can be shared among community groups, departments, and schools.
We hope to see non-profit and community groups able to “check out” ConversationLab sets to use for events – perhaps from Community Foundations or NGO Resource Centers, or libraries.
Within corporations they have wide application to team-building and cross-silo meet-ups. We struggle to trust people we don’t know and if we don’t trust each other, our capacity to cooperate is diminished. For hiring, participating in a ConversationLab enables HR and management to gain unique and valuable insights into the candidates.