This course has been canceled.

Elected officials today must navigate a host of diverse political perspectives when confronting challenges in their communities. To foster productive conversations and create policy solutions to local issues, they must learn to find commonalities amongst differences of opinion with their neighbors, build a consensus rooted in a shared desire to improve communities, and find ways to translate that consensus into real governing change that truly improves the communities that make up North Carolina.

Attendees of this program will leave with a new perspective on finding common ground in divisive conversations and the skillset to build productive policy out of this perspective. Rather than framing issues around opposition language, bringing people together for open discussion about differences of opinion is possible, and can be productive when framed around common values specific to a community. 

This class provides a framework for hearing diverse political perspectives and creating productive conversations about important policy issues that matter to communities. You will learn how to think about the points of difference and shared values between North Carolinians. 

In this class, you will learn the following effective leadership skills:

• Respecting differences of opinions: reframing divisive issues so that different perspectives are considered legitimate.
• Listening to diverse points of view: practicing techniques for engaging in difficult conversations and building consensus out of it.  
• Proposing local solutions: creating policies that considers local perspectives to address local problems.
• Discovering strategies to move forward in the context of those different perspectives.

Instructor Christian O. Lundberg, of the UNC Department of Communications, is also a Consulting Principal with Vocable Communications. He has more than 15 years’ experience in debate coaching, public persuasion, and analysis of public and political speech.