Participation
The Principles
To take part, you'll be asked to accept these principles. Share your point of view, and expect others to do the same.
The prompts we send in the lead up to the event are aimed at helping you to identify interests, incentives, and tradeoffs associated with a position so that your conversation can take you beyond an exchange of opinions.
- 01
Challenge the premise, not the person
Criticise ideas, assumptions and reasoning. Character, intelligence or motives are off limits. Disagreement is healthy. Disrespect is not.
- 02
Show your reasoning
Bring experience and instinct, but be ready to say how you got there. Be clear about what you know, what you’re inferring, and what you simply value.
- 03
Understand before you rebut
Some people lead with logic, while others are brimming with imagination — a point can arrive in unfamiliar packaging. Aim to restate someone’s point fairly before you disagree with it. Comprehension first.
- 04
Share the air
This isn’t a stage. Don’t score points, don’t perform for an audience outside the room, and don’t take more than your share of it. Watch how much space you’re using.
- 05
Sit with the complexity
Hard questions rarely have one clean answer. Hold the tension rather than forcing it closed.
- 06
Push through the groan zone
Between everyone’s opening opinions and anything like shared understanding sits the groan zone — the stretch where the mix of perspectives feels overloaded, repetitive and slow. It’s meant to. Quick, easy agreement suggests groupthink. Don’t push for closure; stay in the muddle a little longer than is comfortable.
- 07
Be open to revision
You don’t have to give up your position. You should be willing to sharpen it, qualify it, or change your mind about part of it.
- 08
What’s said here stays here
No recording. No names outside the room. Share the ideas, not who said them. No pressure to disclose anything about yourself — no personal probing, no coercive questioning.