New NCDD-ALA Facilitation Guide on Leading Polarizing Conversations is now live!

​The National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation partnered with the American Library Association’s Public Programs Office to produce “Leading Polarizing Conversations: Facilitation Guide,” a 45-page resource by NCDD Executive Director Keiva Hummel and Director Emeritus Courtney Breese. It provides libraries with practical tools for convening community conversations on divisive issues through planning, conversation design, facilitation best practices, and follow-up strategies. The guide integrates NCDD frameworks, including the Engagement Streams Framework, to help facilitators clarify conversation purpose and address challenges like distinguishing productive discomfort from harm, navigating misinformation, maintaining impartiality, and establishing group agreements for psychological safety. NCDD’s collaboration with ALA extends dialogue and deliberation practice to a trusted civic institution, encouraging libraries to access NCDD’s public member map for co-facilitation support and recognizing the emotional labor of facilitation through grounding techniques and self-care practices, especially for libraries with limited capacity. This project advances NCDD’s mission by positioning libraries as civic institutions that strengthen community resilience through structured dialogue, demonstrating how NCDD’s practices help model respectful engagement across divides, inspire listening and empathy, counteract echo chambers, strengthen civic trust, and provide templates for other institutions navigating polarization.

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The National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation has partnered with the American Library Association's Public Programs Office to produce a comprehensive facilitation guide supporting libraries as conveners of community conversations on divisive issues, marking a significant expansion of dialogue and deliberation practice into public library settings nationwide. "Leading Polarizing Conversations: Facilitation Guide," authored by NCDD Executive Director Keiva Hummel and Director Emeritus Courtney Breese in collaboration with the ALA and Knology, provides practical tools for facilitating discussions on contentious topics while prioritizing understanding over consensus. The 45-page resource covers planning and preparation, conversation design, facilitation best practices, and follow-up strategies, drawing on NCDD's decades of expertise in dialogue and deliberation to equip library workers with skills for navigating polarization. The guide positions libraries as uniquely suited "third spaces" where individuals can gather outside homes or workplaces to engage in meaningful dialogue across differences, emphasizing that community conversations prioritize cultivating empathy and strengthening civic capacity rather than immediately resolving conflict.

The guide integrates NCDD frameworks throughout its approach, including prominent use of the Engagement Streams Framework to help facilitators clarify conversation purpose—whether exploration, conflict transformation, collaborative action, or decision making. NCDD's expertise in dialogue design shapes key chapters providing detailed guidance on conversation structure, from opening questions that invite personal experience to deeper exploration of values and assumptions, alongside strategies for responding to disruption, addressing dehumanizing language, and knowing when to intervene versus letting groups work through tension. The resource addresses fundamental challenges facing facilitators including distinguishing productive discomfort from harm, navigating misinformation, maintaining impartiality without false equivalency, and establishing group agreements that create psychological safety. The guide includes specific facilitator language for pausing conversations, regrounding in shared agreements, and managing moments when participants violate norms, while incorporating NCDD's understanding of how dialogue differs from debate—cautioning against over-prioritizing civility at the cost of truth-telling and avoiding framing someone's identity or humanity as debatable perspective.

NCDD's collaboration with ALA extends dialogue and deliberation practice to one of America's most trusted civic institutions, with the guide encouraging libraries to access NCDD's public member map of experienced practitioners for co-facilitation support and mentorship. The resource recognizes the emotional labor inherent in holding space for difficult conversations, offering co-facilitation strategies, grounding techniques for facilitators, and self-care practices particularly important for libraries with limited staff capacity. The guide situates this work within libraries' broader mission as civic institutions strengthening community resilience, noting that libraries hosting these conversations help individuals understand one another better while helping communities learn to navigate differences constructively—outcomes central to NCDD's vision of a more just, innovative, and collaborative world. By modeling respectful engagement across divides, libraries can inspire individuals to carry listening and empathy skills into daily life, counteract echo chambers, strengthen civic trust, and provide templates for other institutions, demonstrating how dialogue and deliberation practices transform communities. The project was made possible by the Ford Foundation, with the guide released as part of ALA's Libraries Transforming Communities: Libraries as Leaders in Bridging Divides initiative.

Download: "Leading Polarizing Conversations: Facilitation Guide" is available through the ALA Public Programs Office at www.ala.org/ppo

Learn more: The guide references NCDD's Engagement Streams Framework and member practitioner network at www.ncdd.org
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