Everything I needed to Know About Seminar I learned at Evergreen

I came back to Evergreen largely because I believe that Evergreen is a place where people can learn to be effective communicators and problem solvers. As a student, and in my professional career at Evergreen, I've collected what I think are good tennants for fostering effective communication. Most of these I learned from my faculty in the late 80's but some of them have come to me from just working here (and a couple of other places).

• When talking about your opinions, speak in the first person.
• It is much harder to listen than it is to talk, so work harder at listening than talking.
• Righteous indignation is not an effective means of convincing anyone of seeing things your way.
• If you truly cannot understand why a person can possilbly think or act the way they do, its probably because you don't understand their situation or their culture.
• If you are questioning someones reasoning and/or motivations don't forget to actually phrase it as a question. You can never ultimately know why someone thinks the way they do. Listen to the answers. More often than not, they will be different than you anticipated.
• Rhetorical questions are not questions..
• Ultimately all reasoning can be traced back to a leap of faith. They are this way because I BELIEVE that they are this way. This is as true of scientific arguments as it is for philosophical ones.
• Generalizations are a dangerous tool. Use them sparingly. Handle them with the same care that you would handle explosives or sharp objects.
• Conflict is neccessary to solving difficult and complex problems.