Facilitating Community Dialogue: A Practical Framework for One-Time Sessions

What to Expect

Have you been asked to hold space for an important group conversation and aren’t sure where to start? This session gives you a simple, visual framework for planning and leading a group dialogue, especially one-time sessions. We’ll walk through a facilitator’s role covering preparation, community guidelines, context, questions, active listening, and closing on a tight timeframe. Then you’ll work in small groups to draft your own agenda for a realistic scenario, so you leave with something usable. Designed for people in the Resilience Learning Community who want practical tools and confidence to facilitate conversations that matter.

Learning Objectives

• Name the six core moves of a dialogue facilitator (prepare, community guidelines, context, question, dialogue, closing) and what each one is for.
• Draft a timed, high-level agenda for a 90-minute one-time dialogue session, including how you’ll open, invite quiet voices, and close.
• Walk away with 2-3 concrete moves to try the next time you facilitate, even if you’ve never done it before.

More about Rhonda

Rhonda oversees the reach of the Sustained Dialogue model to new communities. Under her leadership, she grew the SD Campus Network’s reach through partnering with the 7,000 alumni of SD programs.

Rhonda is facilitator of multiple peace processes, with over 10,000 hours facilitating conflict using the formal SD 5-stage process on race, hierarchy, ethnic mistrust, disability, religion, and resource and land conflicts. She works with a variety of organizations, hospitals, agencies, and nonprofits.

Rhonda is an alumna of Princeton University, where she was introduced to dialogue and transformative deep listening as a first-year in an SD group on race, which was the first time she experienced conversations that built trust and collaboration across ethnic tensions.