What a Room Full of Strangers Taught Me About Bridging Divides
I didn’t know what to expect from joining my first Braver Angels Red/Blue workshop. But something in me knew it mattered to be there, to witness it.
Braver Angels is a nonprofit dedicated to renewing civic health by bringing people of genuinely different viewpoints together to talk. It's grassroots citizenship at its most courageous, and this particular workshop was something rare: all day and in person.
Right away, as we began, I was moved. I looked around at the volunteers who had given hours to make this possible. I saw participants who had shown up willing to be vulnerable, and I felt genuinely humbled. I was there only to observe, and yet, something was already happening in me.
The Stereotype Exercise: The First Shift
One of the first exercises made a huge impression.
Each group — Red and Blue — gathered separately and was asked to name the stereotypes the other side holds about them. Not to defend or debate them. Just to name them. And then, crucially, to find the kernel of truth.
Watching those words go up on a big board in marker was uncomfortable. You could feel the weight of them in the room. These weren’t abstractions. They were the kinds of things many of us have thought—sometimes privately, sometimes out loud.
Then each group was asked to offer corrections: here's how that stereotype misses the fuller picture of who we are.
What surfaced was something no one quite anticipated: self-awareness on both sides. People were surprised to see it in each other. And in naming the kernel of truth — the part of the stereotype that does reflect something real — there was an opening. Not agreement, but what felt like first contact.
I've long felt, and it became very clear here, that we're never going to get to problem-solving or policy while we're sitting in pure criticism and judgment of each other. Bridging divides happens relationally first. And that requires being willing to step out of evaluation mode long enough to actually see someone.
The Doorway Is Closer Than You Think
Here’s what I kept turning over in my mind as I watched that exercise unfold: the work happening in that room is the same work I point to in my coaching practice.
And it’s work we can all begin, quietly, on our own.
We all have reactions that rise fast — the urge to dismiss, defend, or shut down. If we can pause and ask what this reaction is protecting? Instead of just acting on it, something shifts. We move from automatic to intentional. From reactive to curious.
That's exactly what the stereotype exercise asks of a room full of strangers. And it's what we can ask of ourselves in any difficult conversation.
When we encounter a view that bothers us, the real question isn't just whether it's accurate. It's worth asking: where does this hit a nerve in me — and why?
The kernel of truth exercise works because it doesn't let anyone fully off the hook. When we look honestly, we often find that what we most criticize in others — the rigidity, the self-righteousness, the willingness to write people off — has some version living in us too. Just in different forms.
That's not a reason for despair. It's actually the doorway.
When we can acknowledge this — when we stop placing all the "bad" onto the other side and recognize it as part of our shared human complexity — something shifts. The person we've been opposing becomes less monstrous. And we become more honest. We move from they are the problem to this is a human problem, and I'm human too.
Questions to Sit With
If the Braver Angels workshop gave me one lasting gift, it was this: a felt sense that the inner work and the outer work are the same work, just at different scales.
Here are some questions worth sitting with — whether you're preparing for a difficult conversation, feeling a strong reaction to someone whose views differ from yours, or simply trying to understand yourself a little better:
What stereotype or criticism am I holding about this person or group?
Where is the kernel of truth — and what does it reveal about my own blind spots?
What reaction am I feeling right now, and what might it be protecting?
What need do I share with this person, even if our strategies look completely different?
Can I get curious about the fear underneath the position — in them, and in me?
The people in that room universally wanted personal freedom, dignity, and connection. Their strategies differed. Their fears differed. The underlying needs? Remarkably similar—freedom, dignity, a sense of being heard and respected.
The Ripple Effect
What I believe — and what that workshop confirmed for me — is that depolarization doesn't begin in Congress or on cable news. It begins in us.
When we can hold our own complexity with compassion — when we stop waging war on the reactions and impulses we don't like in ourselves — we become less reactive to the complexity around us. We show up steadier. More curious. Less threatened.
And that steadiness is contagious.
When people in that workshop felt safe enough to speak and be heard, something visibly softened in the room. One phrase I heard more than once: "Once you start talking, you realize — if we could just keep talking, we'd be able to solve this."
I believe that. And I believe the path to more of those conversations runs right through the middle of us. Not as something to fix—but as something to become more aware of, one moment at a time.
If you’re curious about how this shows up internally—how we work with these reactions, tensions, and “parts” of ourselves—I’ve written more about that in a companion piece: Depolarization Begins Within.