Empowering Shared Leadership and

Conversation with the OBREAU Tripod

Presented byEric K. Kaufman, Virginia Tech

Don Dunoon, New Futures

Objectives for this Session

• Share practical example of empowering students to take control of opportunities to learn from one another.

• Highlight components of OBREAU Tripod as a tool for structuring productive dialogue in a variety of settings.

Desired College Outcomes (Hart Research Associates, 2015)

“Nearly all employers (96%) agree that, regardless of their chosen field of study, all students should have experiences in college that teach them how to solve problems with people whose views are different from their own.”

“Indeed, employers nearly universally agree that to achieve success at their companies, a candidate’s demonstrated capacity to think critically, communicate clearly, and solve complex programs is more important than his or her undergraduate major.”

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Emergence of Eco-Leadership (Western, 2007; Wielkiewicz & Stelzner, 2005)

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Honors Community Seminar

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Residential College Model

Fundamental advantage of the residential college system: “the way students in the

colleges educate one another.” - A Collegiate Way of Living, by Ryan (2001, p. 24)

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UH 2104 Course Description

“Reading based sections within the Honors Residential College in which small groups of students work toward two goals: the practice of discussion, debate, and argumentation; and the art of community building.”

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Overview of Assignments

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Face-to-Face Discussions

Facilitator Role• Select a topic/focus of

personal interest that is likely to provoke discussion & debate

• 5-10 minute intro to spark dialogue• If video, no more than 10

minutes

Participation• Everyone participates• Meet for full hour at least

13 weeks

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What discussion do you want: Vanilla or Neapolitan?

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The OBREAU Tripod: Enabling challenging conversations

• Observation• Reasonableness• Authenticity

Three practices to support challenging conversations for groups and individuals

– on virtually any topic where there are differences of view

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The Tripod is an Antidote, Counterpoint to 3 Default Behaviors

Working from negative and untested assumptions about others

Responding as if “we know” what the issue is

Side-stepping or sugar-coating what needs to be talked about

Video Introductions: Don Dunoon

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Imagine the issue or challenge you face as an iceberg.Observation focuses on what’s more explicit about the issue, what can be seen directly, what’s above the waterline.

Imagining what could be “going on” for stakeholders, presuming they are reasonable, in 4 dimensions: their possible hidden / unspoken assumptions, interests, feelings, and knowledge regarding this issue

Benefits of using the Tripod• Helps get beyond routine, default behavior

patterns• Opens up new ways of seeing and framing issues

(through Observation)• Fosters practical empathy (through

Reasonableness)• Supports modelling of desired behaviors (through

Authenticity emphasis)• Aids in making headway with issues that can

otherwise seem intractable

Student Posters

Student Posters

What Questions Remain?

OBREAU Tripod content licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International. See www.dondunoon.com

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