All this week, the Q Kindness Cafe in St. Paul is leveraging the national exposure brought to the city by the Republican National Convention by hosting a series of "Conversation Cafes," facilitated round-table conversations that pose a question related to the RNC's theme-of-the-day.
Lisa Cotter Metwali, co-proprietor of the Cafe and a professional coach in her own right, invited me to lead a conversation on Monday based on the RNC's theme of Service.
Being very interested in the current state of political affairs, I jumped at the chance. Since completing my graduate degree in communications, I have been of the opinion that a democracy needs healthy public debate about the issues affecting our society, our culture, and our world, and I've questioned how well we as citizens are doing in maintaining the health of our democracy.
So I asked the group in attendance, "As members of a community, we're all challenged to be aware of current events, form opinions about them, and communicate those opinions. What is the relationship of that challenge and the concept of service to the rest of the country?"
To be honest, it was an abstract question that took a little while for people to digest. After some discussion, the group helped me reduce the question to, "Does it serve our community for each of us to speak our mind about issues? If so, how does it serve the community?"
The process of going through the conversation was a fascinating one that Lisa facilitated. She took us through three rounds of each person in the room delivering their response to the question in 2 minutes or under. I had the pleasure of speaking at the end of each round, which gave me the opportunity to digest the thoughts of everyone else before speaking.
My favorite insight from the whole event came from another professional in attendance whose focus is on facilitating professional connections, named Marianne Badar Ohmann. Marianne said that expressing our opinions does indeed serve the people that we speak with, but that soliciting the opinions from these other people provides even more value to them.
I was just bowled over by that remark. And as I process it now, I realize that her input provided a great deal of value and service to me, and that the whole process of the Conversation Cafe did as well. Thank you, Lisa, Marianne, and everyone else in attendance today! It was a pleasure to have served, and to have been served by you all!
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