WORKSHOP: Listening Politics

One of the first things people ask us when they hear about Crossing Party Lines is how we get politically divided people to listen and speak respectfully to each other. Our response is that we’re about listening politics, not arguing politics.

Listening politics refers to listening in a way that supports dialogue instead of debate. Rather than the typical listening we see in political discussion that is all about listening for a chance to argue or to defend, CPL’s listening promotes curiosity, respect and connection; it enables an open-minded search for discovery, the kind that detectives use.

But it doesn’t come naturally because we’re conditioned to pre-judge and to defend our point of view.

In this workshop you will:

• Learn how our intentions in joining a conversation dictate how we listen.
• Cultivate curiosity about views that are different from yours.
• Learn about Active listening as well as how and when to use it.
• Practice skills that make it possible for us to listen and speak across our differences in a way that moves us all forward.

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ABOUT CPL Workshops

Get the training you need to effectively cross party lines.

Crossing Party Lines provides a series of FREE classes teaching the skills we use to talk across differences. We teach proven, science-based techniques to foster curiosity, invite listening, and connect across differences.

We designed these techniques based on recent discoveries in such fields as cognitive science, neurobiology, and evolutionary psychology. Because understanding the partisan brain is central to the work of Crossing Party Lines, our workshops cover both the skills and some of the basic science behind them.