This course is unique every time it is held. The course is unique as our talents, dreams, concerns, aptitudes, experiences and opportunities before us are unique. The course is based on the specific challenges that participants encounter in their daily lives in reaching agreement, resolving conflicts and overcoming contradictions. Through role-playing, joint discussions and simulations, the course helps participants to see contradictions, paradoxes and conflicts in a completely new light. During the course, participants develop their skills to more clearly realize what values ​​stand behind specific opinions, positions or actions. All values ​​​​have their undeniable positive aspects, but also their negative manifestations. All values ​​​​are in a polar value pair with another value, which also has positive sides, but also negative aspects. When one value is taken to an extreme neglecting its opposing polar value, then abuse, acute tensions and conflict usually result. If we want to develop ourselves, our organizations, communities, and societies, we must develop the ability to recognize value polarities and leverage these polarities.

For example, breathing is a precondition for living. Inhale now, hold your breath, and see how long you can last. What happens? But neither inhalation nor exhalation alone is enough. Our bodies naturally manage the polar pair of inhalation and exhalation in order to live. In the same way, we must consciously leverage sets of polar values ​​in order to develop our organizations, communities, and societies. Are you personally for freedom or for authority? For universal human rights or for responsibility to local communities and their cultures? For direct or for representative democracy? Of course, these dilemmas are artificial. The question is not “either-or”, but “and” – how to learn to move between value poles, so as to increase the positive effects of each pole and limit the negative ones in order to achieve more justice, mutual understanding, respect and prosperity.

The course is based on the theory of the polarities of democracy of Prof. Bill Benet. The authors of the course participated in a seminar in Washington DC and completed the course on polarities management of the Polarities of Democracy Institute. Prof. Benet conducts annual visits to Bulgaria to disseminate the theory of the polarities of democracy among academic circles, civil society organizations and local communities.

The training modules are designed to introduce participants to the theory of leveraging value polarities and to help them develop their own skills to recognize values; to discover polar value pairs; to reveal the positive and negative manifestations of each value. The training uses specific examples from the participants’ own experience in the fields of education, organizational management, civic activism, public policies, local community work, etc. The course is organized into 90-minute sessions (usually two or three per day), promoting skills in understanding others, negotiating, reaching agreements, organizing joint initiatives, and shifting between the poles of value pairs.

TRAINING OUTCOMES

Participants who complete the course:

• will develop their skills to recognize the values ​​that stand behind different opinions, positions, plans, actions and conflicts;
• will be able to perceive values ​​in polar pairs that at first glance contradict each other, but have the potential to balance each other if managed successfully;
• will learn to distinguish between “problems to solve” and “polarities to leverage”;
• will understand how to identify the positive and negative aspects of each value;
• will be able to develop indicators through which to determine when a given value is favored to the extent that its opposing value is neglected and this can lead to conflicts;
• will be able to read and prepare polarity maps for the purposes of their own organizations, institutions, communities and societies;
• will be able to manage polarity pairs themselves in the name of development.

LANGUAGE

The course can be conducted in English and/or Bulgarian.

REGISTRATION

Please register here or contact a foundation's representative. A minimum of 10 participants is required to run the course.

PROGRAM

The course could vary between one and seven days. The most detailed variant is presented here. The classes include an introductory online meeting and 7 days of face-to-face training (in Sofia, at the host organization/institution or elsewhere in Bulgaria or abroad), with two 90-minute sessions per day.

COURSE SCHEDULE

Day 0

Arrival day.

Day 1

“Why is the world full of crazy people who believe in complete nonsense?”: an introduction to the theory of polarities; sharing of experiences and challenges from participants.

Day 2

“Why do people do what they do?”: where do values ​​come from, can values ​​change, do we choose our values ​​or do they choose us - identifying values ​​in polar pairs through role-playing games.

Day 3

“Why do some problems have solutions and some solutions create problems?”: simulation games to distinguish a “problem to solve” from a “polarity to leverage”.

Day 4

“Lost in translation?”: Reading a polar map; role-playing games to develop early warning indicators and an “action plan” to change course.

Day 5

“The werewolf game”: how to distinguish “bad players”, how to overcome power imbalances and get out of “dead ends” of polarity management.

Day 6

“A culture for leveraging polarities”: exercises for applying the theory of polar management in practice.

Day 7

Feedback, evaluation of the training, plans for future activities after participants return home and departure.