Build Skills for Inclusive Communication with Glenn Moss

Join alumnus Glenn Moss, Esq and learn how to communicate more inclusively. This session will engage you in evaluating case studies and how you would craft messaging in these cases. This session is great for students considering exploring media and law careers as well as those who want to enhance their communication skills in a diverse society. The focus of this "crash course" is on the issues and challenges of communication in a diverse and ideologically charged society. This is an outgrowth of the negotiations workshop I do that focuses on the centrality of being as clear and understandable with respect to whatever the issue may be (in a business, social, community setting), and the challenges that arise not only from making yourself understood, but also truly listening to and considering the response from people or an entity representing a culture, an ideology, a racial/ethnic reality different than yours.

At its heart, this is about recognizing that much of life (personal and business) is not a debate but exchange; not about winning on all points but about finding some common ground, even as that ground may shift and evolve over time. Finding ways to effectively get your ideas across in awareness of and respect for your audience, an audience that will likely be different from you in many ways: including experience, knowledge, culture, goals. Accepting that "victores" are not what you may think and may be only stepping stones in a relationship. Realizing that communication does not happen in a vacuum or echo chamber; that belief does not and should not create boundaries that can't be crossed or even broken. Again, there are scenarios that can be created that different groups can work on and then come together to see how different people can and will communicate and resolve differently, yet each can still be seen to work. As we enter an overheated-- and even acidic-- political season, coupled with judicial decisions on affirmative action and women's rights, the issue of how we communicate with each other becomes even more crucial and in danger of fracturing beyond repair.

Designed to provide a participatory and learning experience, I alsp propose a scenario to be presented to the folks showing up for class that is based on one I've used for this purpose when teaching negotiations. It is designed to have people of strong but very different beliefs meeting (or, confronting) over an issue of how a community should use an abandoned house.

While the scenario, including differences in religion and specific group rights and interests, was originally intended to highlight certain difficult issues in negotiating, it is fundamentally designed to show how, while acknowledging the reality of opposing faiths and beliefs, we can communicate and live together in the profound challenges of listening and respecting people and ideas who are different.

The scenario has no "right" answer or solution...it is designed to highlight the behavioral process of communication with people who are different in a diverse society. There are specific background facts and guidance for certain roles to allow for some prep and participants to think through how best to inhabit the roles they select.

While I believe an intro and overview of this topic will open the class, with examples I can bring from my life both in business and simply growing up in a neighborhood and city undergoing deep stress from racial and economic change and conflict, and have discussions around this, the scenario is intended to be a centerpiece that generates an environment intended to be uncomfortable, but in a managed way, and then be a source for class observations and reactions.

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