Reasonableness is not moderation: a lesson for facilitators : Conferences That Work
Many facilitators assume that their job is to help groups find a middle ground.
Often it is. But not always.
After reading Nikhil Krishnan‘s New Yorker review of philosopher Krista Lawlor‘s Being Reasonable, I was struck by an important distinction. Reasonableness is not the same thing as moderation. A reasonable person does not necessarily end up in the middle.
This matters whenever a group includes people with fundamentally different views about what should be done.
One of a facilitator’s most important jobs is helping groups engage in reasonable disagreement.
Common facilitation traps
Facilitators can make mistakes if they confuse reasonableness with moderation. For example, they may:
- unconsciously privilege compromise, treating anyone unwilling to move as “difficult”;
- assume that passionate disagreement makes productive discussion impossible;
- equate emotional intensity with unreasonableness; and
- assume every disagreement has a compromise solution.
These mistakes confuse the position someone holds with how they hold it.
What being reasonable looks like
A participant may believe there is only one morally acceptable answer and still be reasonable.
Reasonableness isn’t a position. It shows up in how people engage with those who disagree with them, for example, by:
- accurately representing opposing views;
- acknowledging uncertainty where it exists;
- recognizing legitimate competing values;
- remaining open to evidence;
- distinguishing facts from values; and
- accepting that sincere, intelligent people can reach different conclusions.
Conversely, someone proposing a compromise may refuse to hear objections, caricature opposing positions, insist that everyone should “just be practical,” or dismiss alternatives as “just common sense”. That is not reasonableness.
What facilitators should optimize for
When a group faces substantial disagreement, a facilitator’s goal is rarely to move everyone toward the center.
Instead, it is to increase the group’s capacity for reasonable disagreement.
That means designing conversations where participants can:
- explain the values underlying their positions;
- demonstrate they understand opposing arguments;
- identify genuine rather than superficial disagreements; and
- discover genuine areas of agreement without pretending consensus exists where it does not.
If reasonableness is a way of engaging rather than a position, facilitators can design processes that encourage it.
Useful interventions
Several facilitation techniques become especially valuable.
Separate interests from conclusions
Ask participants to explain why they hold their position before discussing what should be done.
Steelman before responding
To avoid straw man arguments, require participants to summarize the previous speaker’s position to that person’s satisfaction before offering criticism.
Surface competing values
Many “black-and-white” disagreements actually involve different value priorities rather than different facts.
Explore the depth of disagreement
Before trying to resolve disagreement, understand how widespread and deeply held it is. Simple tools like Roman voting can quickly reveal the distribution of views and identify those with concerns or objections.
Make room for principled disagreement
Sometimes the best outcome is not consensus but a clearer understanding of why disagreement persists.
Use structured consensus methods when needed
If a workable consensus is an important outcome of a group discussion and progress stalls, consider structured processes such as Indaba or concordance.
A shift in facilitation
Facilitators should spend less energy trying to make people more moderate and more energy helping them become more reasonable.
These are different goals.
Facilitators should cultivate standards of reasonableness rather than encourage moderation.
Moderation seeks to change where people stand. Reasonableness changes how they engage with each other.
Facilitators cannot determine where participants will end up, but they can design conversations that help participants disagree more reasonably.
