Turning Toward Each Other: Insights from the TogetherUp Interview with John Sarrouf

In this rich conversation on the Be The Change series, John Sarrouf of NCDD Member, Essential Partners explores how dialogue can act as a powerful antidote to polarization and social fragmentation. He shares how practical tools—like “keeping a question in your pocket”—help shift mindsets from judgment to curiosity. Highlighting the importance of embracing complexity, rebuilding trust, and re-humanizing relationships, Sarrouf outlines how communities can become resilient in the face of future conflict. The work of Essential Partners offers a hopeful roadmap for transforming division into connection—starting with everyday conversations. Read more in the blog post below.

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​In a recent episode of "Be The Change," John Seru from Essential Partners shared insights on how dialogue can transform polarized communities into resilient networks capable of turning toward each other rather than away. His conversation with Nicole Argo and Scott Hutcherson reveals practical approaches for implementing dialogue skills that anyone can learn and apply.

Essential Partners' Core Mission

​Essential Partners operates on the fundamental principle that our differences should be our strengths rather than sources of division. The organization focuses on helping communities build trust and hope for the future through facilitated conversations that promote understanding and recognition of mutual need. Their work centers on providing tools and training that enable individuals and communities to have necessary conversations for building thriving relationships.

Understanding True Dialogue

While regular conversations often fall into patterns of convincing, defending, or attacking, dialogue serves a different purpose: mutual understanding. When people feel threatened, they naturally respond with fight, flight, or freeze behaviors that shut down productive communication. Dialogue intentionally steps back from these patterns, creating space where participants focus not on convincing others but on understanding why people believe what they believe and what those beliefs mean in their lives.
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The key distinction lies in moving from debate to curiosity. Rather than trying to win arguments, dialogue participants seek to understand the stories and experiences that inform different viewpoints.

Embracing Complexity Over Polarization

One casualty of polarization is complexity. When communities become divided, people lose sight of the nuanced, multi-faceted nature of individuals and issues. Dialogue works to restore this complexity by encouraging deep exploration of specific situations and circumstances.
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This complexity allows people to see more of themselves in others, recognizing shared values or overlapping beliefs despite different conclusions. Polarization simplifies differences and makes it easy to label others, while dialogue reveals the three-dimensional humanity in everyone.

Practical Tools: Keeping Questions in Your Pocket

​Essential Partners teaches a practical skill for difficult moments: keeping a question in your pocket. When faced with viewpoints that seem unreasonable, the natural impulse is often judgmental. Instead, dialogue encourages moving from judgment to curiosity.
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Seru's go-to question exemplifies this approach: asking people to say more about why something is important to them. This simple phrase cues curiosity and supports staying in relationship rather than breaking connection. The phrase "tell me more" has proven remarkably effective, serving as an invitation to go deeper and signaling that the other person's voice is valuable.

The Polarization Process and Its Dangers

Polarization occurs when communities move from healthy interaction into distinct camps. While this can be part of normal democratic processes, it becomes dangerous when groups minimize internal differences and view opponents as monolithic entities. This escalation leads to viewing others not just as opponents but as enemies, fostering conspiracy theories and toxic environments.
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A significant consequence is the loss of ability to return to community-level interactions where people share various identities and activities. Many people withdraw entirely, leaving only the loudest voices in public discourse.

Dialogue as De-escalation and Re-humanization

​Dialogue serves as a method for bringing people back to recognition of their many shared identities and beliefs. Conflict flattens people into one-dimensional caricatures, while dialogue restores them as living, breathing human beings with overlapping needs and desires.
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The goal is bringing color and three-dimensionality back into relationships, particularly crucial in situations where people cannot walk away from each other, such as family or neighborhood relationships. Even in polarized settings, individuals share countless identities beyond points of contention, and dialogue helps uncover these shared aspects.

Foundation for Collaboration and Action

A common criticism of dialogue is that it represents "just talk" without leading to action. Essential Partners argues that dialogue serves as the foundation for any successful collaboration. While groups can attempt collaboration immediately, difficulties arise when trust, relationship, and understanding haven't been established first.
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Dialogue establishes new relationship patterns including deep listening, meaningful sharing, reflection, and asking good questions. These dialogic skills should be maintained even when moving to collective action. For groups who initially feel they have nothing in common, dialogue provides a less threatening entry point by taking agreement off the table.

Scaling Deep and Wide

Essential Partners employs a two-pronged approach to expanding dialogue practice:

Scaling Deep involves training individuals within communities to facilitate conversations and integrate dialogue into existing roles and structures. This focuses on community cornerstones like schools, interfaith organizations, libraries, and local associations. The approach recognizes that any lay person can develop these skills, and as capacity deepens, communities become better equipped to handle conflicts before they escalate.

Scaling Wide creates networks of communities that have successfully implemented dialogue, sharing approaches and resources. Essential Partners aims to serve as a hub for this learning, connecting communities and spreading best practices.
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The organization focuses on small municipalities as units of change where tangible differences can be made, with successful local implementations inspiring and informing others.

Building Wildfire-Resistant Communities

Seru uses a powerful metaphor to describe their ultimate goal: redesigning communities to be resistant to wildfires of division and conflict. When the next polarizing issue arises, these communities become barriers to the conflagration that would normally spread, because residents know how to turn toward each other rather than away.
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This resistance comes from ingrained practices of dialogue and relationship-building that become part of everyday community life, integrated into school meetings, book clubs, and civic discussions.

Accessibility and Getting Started

Essential Partners operates as a non-profit committed to making their work widely accessible. They offer extensive free resources on their website, open enrollment trainings with scholarships for those who cannot afford fees, and encourage anyone feeling inspired to reach out about becoming agents of change in their communities.
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The organization's approach recognizes that conflict transformation and facilitation skills are fundamental capabilities that anyone can learn - basic requirements for being good community members, neighbors, and family members.

The Vision Forward

Essential Partners envisions dialogue becoming part of everyday community life, creating resilient networks that naturally turn toward each other during challenging times. Their work addresses the fundamental need for tools that help people remember their best selves and existing capacity for connection, particularly during moments when division seems most tempting.
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By focusing on local community transformation and creating networks of learning and support, Essential Partners offers a practical pathway for building the kind of resilient democratic culture our society needs.

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Learn more about Essential Partners and access their free resources at whatisessential.org. Watch the full "Be The Change" interview at: https://whatisessential.org/be-change-togetherup-interview-john-sarrouf

YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fwhatisessential.org%2F&embeds_referring_origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwhatisessential.org&source_ve_path=Mjg2NjQsMTY0NTAz&v=U5Bo5D5AZTU&feature=youtu.be