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Weekly Tribes Jan 2017: Perspective and Understanding

What a week, here in the U.S.A.

In light of the current mood and moodiness…and in the spirit of the Tribes process, this may be an appropriate and insightful activity.

The objective here is to effectively build communication skills and support understanding of differing viewpoints.  This is not to change minds, but simply to model and support understanding of opposing viewpoints.

Use a real and current issue in the news or in the classroom…or practice with a hypothetical situation.  An easy one to start with is to have students think of a celebrity or football team or personal hero….someone or something they really like (could even be a food!).  Once everyone has their ‘favorite’, they get with a partner and, instead of sharing why and how this is their favorite, they must share why and how someone might actually NOT like their favorite.  Not so easy!

Once they have shared the ‘opposing’ viewpoint, invite each to share (still in partners) why this IS their favorite.

Reflect.  Reflect.  Reflect.

BTW – this is also all about ‘Influence’…and there is a lot of that going around these days.

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