ArticlePDF Available
“What is key here is not just individual creativity, but even more so, the ability to be
co-creative together with multiple stakeholders, including internal staff as well as
external customers...”
Co-Creative Dialogue for Meeting
Practical Challenges
New Approaches
By Rosa Zubizarreta Several decades ago, during an earlier 
lifetime in education-related work, I was 
hired as a writer at an education reform 
non-profit. This organization promoted 
constructivist approaches for improving 
students’ academic learning and develop-
ing their socio-emotional intelligence. My 
own background as a teacher had been in 
language arts, so I was well-versed in using 
dialogic approaches for helping students 
engage with texts and explore questions of 
values and meaning. Yet I remember being 
genuinely puzzled at first by this organiza-
tion’s mathematics department: how might 
one engage in constructivist dialogue, in a 
field where it seems obvious that there is 
one right answer? 
I offer this story in connection with the 
initial reluctance some of us may feel when 
considering dialogic approaches within 
certain hard realms, whether with children 
or adults. There has been much fertile 
growth in the realm of Dialogic OD in the 
last several decades (Bushe & Marshak, 
2009). This includes a growing number of 
emergence-based dialogic methods, each 
with its own gifts, niches, and applications. 
Some of these emergence-based methods 
have applications in realms that may, at 
first blush, appear to be an unlikely fit. 
In that long-ago initial encounter with 
constructivism in mathematics educa-
tion, I was given an article to read that 
contained an enlightening description of a 
classroom dialogue, where various teams 
of students were offering their solutions 
to a given math problem, and describing 
aloud the various ways they had arrived at 
such. As the students gave voice to their 
divergent thought processes, they became 
aware of a diversity of valid approaches to 
arrive at a given solution. In addition, they 
also had the opportunity to discover their 
own misunderstandings and self-correct 
their own thinking as needed, all within a 
supportive climate of experimentation and 
respect—thus encouraging the emergence 
of a deeper understanding of the underly-
ing concepts at work. 
While this example opened my 
mind to the possibility of using dialogic 
approaches in other realms, it also made 
it clear that this kind of learning requires 
skillful facilitation, and is not reducible 
to letting students loose to learn on their 
own. The connections between this story 
and new dialogic approaches for facilitating 
groups addressing practical challenges will 
be developed further below. Next, I want to 
briefly consider the subject of co-creativity.
Creativity and Non-Linearity
In the realm of business, creativity has 
been recently heralded as “the most 
important leadership quality” for success, 
an “essential asset” that must “permeate 
the enterprise.” Leaders are encouraged to 
“practice and encourage experimentation 
at all levels of the business” and to “equip 
their entire organization to be a catalyst for 
creativity” (IBM, 2010). What is key here is 
not just individual creativity, but even more 
so, the ability to be co-creative together 
with multiple stakeholders, including 
internal staff as well as external customers 
(Ramaswamy & Gouillart, 2010). 
Yet there are many ways that our 
47Co-Creative Dialogue for Meeting Practical Challenges: New Approaches
organizations and methodologies con-
spire against creativity. For example, while 
we know about the non-linear nature of 
creative thought (DeBono, 1992), many 
collaborative design/collaborative problem-
solving methodologies are still struc-
tured in a linear fashion. This includes 
interest-based stakeholder consensus 
methodologies as well as group problem-
solving processes that begin with getting 
agreement on defining the problem, then 
on all of the solution requirements, then 
ask participants to prioritize all of those 
requirements; only in the last stage do we 
get to begin looking at actual solutions.
Of course, even when attempting to 
follow a linear model, most of us acknowl-
edge that real-life processes are seldom 
quite so neat and tidy. Nonetheless, the 
conventional model is one of step-by-
step progression (Figure 1). In contrast, a 
contemporary example from the field of 
software development can help us envision 
other alternatives (Figure 2). Agile method-
ologies have been developed as alternatives 
to the conventional waterfall approach, 
partly based on the key understanding that 
early solution attempts or prototypes can be 
crucial for deepening our understanding of 
the problem itself. 
What might our collaborative 
approaches look like if we incorporated 
this agile insight regarding the value of 
initial solutions? One initial example along 
these lines is the concept of rapid-cycle 
proto typing (Senge et al., 2004; Scharmer, 
2007), which is a component of the 
Change Lab process (Bojer, Roehl, Knuth, 
& Magner, 2005). Next, I will describe 
two other facilitation approaches that also 
incorporate this key insight, albeit in a dif-
ferent manner than the Change Labs.
Dialogue Mapping and
Dynamic Facilitation
I first encountered the above charts in 
2002, in a Dialogue Mapping workshop 
led by Jeff Conklin, who was illustrat-
ing cognitive science research findings 
on opportunity-driven problem-solving. 
In fact, he did not mention “agile” at all; 
his green line was labeled “Designer/
subject process.” His intention was to 
help workshop participants understand 
why the approach of welcoming initial 
solutions was such an effective element of 
his non-linear, software-assisted facilitation 
approach, designed specifically for address-
ing wicked problems (Conklin, 2005).
Unlike the math class described 
earlier, wicked problems are not ones that 
have a single right answer. Yet these highly 
complex problems call for actionable, real-
world solutions. Thus, they also fall into 
the realm of hard problems that are typi-
cally (albeit ineffectively) addressed with 
waterfall approaches (Conklin, 2005). 
At the same time, there seems to 
be a growing appreciation of the need to 
address complex problems in creative and 
iterative ways (for example, see Innes and 
Booher’s 2010 description of collective 
bricolage, pp.136-138). Non-linear meth-
ods are beginning to gain greater traction. 
In their recent work, Culmsee and Awati 
(2011) illustrate Dialog Mapping in action 
by describing powerful case studies of 
multiple-stakeholder projects in Australia. 
In this article, I will be sharing 
some brief case examples from Dynamic 
Facilitation, a low-tech dialogic approach 
designed to reliably evoke creative break-
throughs (Rough, 2002a, 1997). While 
also incorporating the key principle of 
welcoming initial solutions, it does not 
require any software. Some basic ways in 
which Dynamic Facilitation differs from 
Analyze data
Gather data
Problem
Solution
Linear
Time
Implement solution
Formulate solution
!!
!
!
Figure 1: Traditional Group Problem-Solving Process
Problem
Solution
Linear method
Agile method
Time
Analyze data
Gather data
Implement solution
Formulate solution
Analyze data
Gather data
Implement solution
Formulate solution
Figure 2: Comparing Linear Method and Agile Method
OD PRACTITIONER Vol. 45 No. 1 201348
conventional approaches to facilitation 
include: a) welcoming initial solutions 
rather than postponing solutions; b) facili-
tator multipartiality rather than neutrality; 
c) protecting the emergence of a creative 
field through spatial redirection rather 
than temporal constraints; d) retroactively 
organizing information rather than using 
an agenda; and e) holding space for emer-
gent convergences rather than facilitating 
toward convergence. Next, we will see what 
this approach looks like in practice.
First Case Example
The setting for this meeting was a small 
winery experiencing both record growth 
and ensuing growing pains. The sales 
and the warehouse department had been 
experiencing some friction among them. 
During this particular joint meeting, the 
intention was to explore a frustrating situ-
ation regarding truckers who often arrived 
late. These truckers delivered cases of 
wine to stores and restaurants, the win-
ery’s customers. Customers, in turn, often 
bought their wine via a broker, an outside 
middleperson who interfaced with the 
sales department.
After a brief introduction to the 
facilitation process, we began by invit-
ing someone to jump in, and sketch out 
the situation as they saw it: “This is not a 
small company anymore… we deserve to be 
treated as a large corporate business… we 
are at a point now where we could choose 
to do things differently, but we are bent 
over a barrel, because we don’t have any 
repercussions in place for truckers who 
are late.” 
This initial solution of establishing 
repercussions evoked different perspec-
tives: “We should treat our customers, the 
way they treat us…. if it is a particularly 
valuable customer who has placed a last-
minute order, it may make sense to go 
many extra miles… we should still bend 
over backward, as long as it doesn’t get in 
our way.” 
Other participants proposed additional 
possibilities: “whatever policies we create, 
we need to make sure the brokers know 
about them... we could charge the truckers 
for being late… we could have customers 
pay a ‘rush charge’ for late orders… we 
could ‘ding’ the brokers, whenever the 
truckers are late.” 
Concurrently, participants were also 
surfacing concerns with regard to one 
another’s solutions: “It could affect our 
image negatively if we start charging 
truckers who are late. It would change it 
to a more corporate image... not sure we 
can charge truckers for being late. It would 
need to be directed at the distributor… a 
‘late charge’ to the truckers would take lots 
of manpower to create and enforce, and 
could cause a lot of frustration…if we were 
going to institute a ‘late charge,’ we would 
need to give the truckers advance notice.”
Other relevant information—histori-
cal, procedural environmental—was also 
surfacing: “Sometimes we have in fact 
turned away truckers who were late. They 
in turn billed us, and when we didn’t pay 
them, they short-paid us on other stuff, to 
get back at us… Currently we give truckers 
a few hours’ window. If we were to create a 
harder policy, first we’d need to get upper 
management to commit to it, and then 
we’d need to let the customers know… 
Other companies turn away truckers. 
They don’t care—we are different because 
we do care about the customer getting 
their wine.” 
During this part of the conversation, 
the main facilitator interventions consisted 
of listening to and drawing out each par-
ticipant (“Can you say more about that?”), 
inviting them to shift their complaints into 
creativity (“How would you address that 
issue, if it were up to you?”), checking for 
meaning, and recording each contribution 
on one of four charts: solutions, concerns, 
data, and problem-statements. At one point 
the facilitator asked a manager to wait 
until a participant had finished speaking, 
before voicing her concern regarding that 
idea. Whenever a concern arose regard-
ing a proposed solution, the facilitator had 
the participant redirect that concern to 
the facilitator, instead of toward the idea 
originator.
After exploring a variety of possible 
solutions with no easy answers in sight, 
participants began shifting into a more 
reflective mood. At this point the facilita-
tion role consisted of “just listening” while 
participants experienced the challenge of 
their current situation. Teresa, a warehouse 
employee was describing how frustrated 
she had been about the most recent inci-
dent of lateness, where she’d had to stay in 
the warehouse for six hours past the end of 
her shift. Suddenly Sally, a sales associate, 
jumped into the conversation: “What?!! You 
had to wait here, for how long?” 
Other participants were shaking their 
head; this was not news to anyone. Yet it 
seemed as though Sally was just hearing 
this for the first time. “I told you,” said 
Teresa, “I told you I had to miss my after-
noon class, and call around like crazy for a 
babysitter.” 
Sally looked deeply chagrined. “I 
knew there was a problem, but I thought 
you warehouse people were sort of 
exaggerating.” 
Allan from the warehouse chimed in, 
pointing to the charts: “Well, there really 
is a problem, and that’s what we’ve been 
working on here.” As Sally’s gazed floated 
over the charts, suddenly she brightened 
and said, “Well you know, the brokers are 
Many of us experience being able to think more clearly, beyond
our usual limitations, whenever we are fortunate enough to be
listened to in a non-judgmental , supportive way. Meanwhile,
current brain science supports the crucial role of a supportive
listener, through its findings regarding how quickly our
physiology can shut down from an expansive creative mode,
to a protective and defensive one, especially in response to
minute social cues...
49Co-Creative Dialogue for Meeting Practical Challenges: New Approaches
the ones who hire the trucking companies. 
Next time anything like this happens, I 
need to know about it, so that I can give 
this feedback to the brokers. And if it’s a 
pattern, I will definitely be encouraging the 
brokers to hire a different company.” 
Exploring the Story
There’s always more to a story, and any 
story can be read in different ways. Below, 
I will explore some of the key principles 
of this approach, as illustrated by this 
example. Yet first, I want to clarify what I 
am not saying.
 I am not claiming that we would 
not have arrived at a similar result, had 
we used another method. Sometimes we 
obtain results in spite of our methods, 
while other times our methods more 
directly support our outcomes. So the point 
is not that what happened here would 
not have happened otherwise. Maybe it 
would have!
At the same time, I have found great 
value in using approaches that work with 
and encourage creativity, rather than 
constrain it with attempts to over-manage. 
Just as Open Space Technology fore-
grounds, optimizes, and supports what 
tends to happen in any conference during 
coffee breaks (or what tends to happen at 
the office, around the water cooler), some 
open meeting technologies serve to fore-
ground, optimize, and support co-creative 
flow and meaning-making. These large-
group and small-group emergence-based 
methods can be combined in synergistic 
ways; for example, Howard, Galarneau, 
Perez and Shaw (2005) explore how Open 
Space Technology can be combined with 
Dynamic Facilitation. 
Returning to the winery, here are some 
key principles I would like to highlight:
Eliciting creativity by welcoming initial
solutions. From a theoretical perspective, 
we can understand the need for people 
to “empty themselves” or “download” the 
solutions they already have, before some-
thing new can be created. Indeed, we often 
hear from practitioners that the energetics 
of using Dynamic Facilitation appears to 
embody the Theory U model (Scharmer, 
2007); for an intriguing story that paral-
lels the pause at the bottom of the “U,” see 
Rough (1991). 
However, the benefits of welcoming 
initial solutions are not just limited to 
downloading. They also include honoring 
participant’s individual creative work to 
date; helping participants begin to listen 
better to one another, through the experi-
ence of being fully heard; and giving par-
ticipants the opportunity to realize, as they 
compare notes, the various assumptions 
and incomplete perspectives that were 
embedded in their initial solution attempts 
(Zubizarreta, 2006). 
At the same time, this key principle 
runs counter to most conventional facili-
tation wisdom (including interest-based 
negotiation), which typically asks partici-
pants to restrain themselves from jumping 
to solutions with the positive intention of 
helping them detach from their own initial 
strategies. From the viewpoint of Dynamic 
Facilitation and Dialogue Mapping, we 
support the intended outcome of broaden-
ing perspectives, yet offer a different and 
paradoxical approach for getting there.
Taking all sides. The stance of active multi-
partiality is different from the conventional 
facilitator role of being neutral. Instead of 
a transactional view of communication, 
where each speaker is conveying a discrete, 
pre-formed cluster of meaning, we can 
invoke a more relational process, where 
meaning is actively co-constructed between 
people (Pearce & Pearce, 2000). This is not 
only applicable for interactions between 
participants, but also between a participant 
who is speaking and the facilitator who is 
listening; we find much common ground 
with Pearce’s perspective that the role of 
the facilitator is to “shape emerging pat-
terns of communication so that multiple 
voices and perspectives are honored, and 
the tensions among them are maintained” 
(Pearce & Pearce, 2000).
Yet viewing the role of the facilitator as 
an active, co-creative listener is not only a 
postmodern perspective; from a construc-
tivist stance, Vygotsky’s “zone of proximal 
development” in children (Vygotsky, 1978) 
may well be a phenomenon that contin-
ues on throughout adulthood. Many of us 
experience being able to think more clearly, 
beyond our usual limitations, whenever 
we are fortunate enough to be listened 
to in a non-judgmental , supportive way. 
Meanwhile, current brain science supports 
the crucial role of a supportive listener, 
through its findings regarding how quickly 
our physiology can shut down from an 
expansive creative mode, to a protective 
and defensive one, especially in response to 
minute social cues (Rock, 2008). 
From any of these perspectives, we 
have a significant opportunity as facilita-
tors to support each participant by actively 
engaging with them in the meaning-
making process, letting each person know 
what sense we are making of what we are 
hearing—not as a mirror coldly reflecting 
back, but as active participants in receiving 
the gift that each participant is seeking to 
offer. Jean Rough, one of the founders of 
Dynamic Facilitation, calls this we-flection
(Zubizarreta, 2012).
Actively protecting the emergence of
creative field. We saw one example of this 
when the manager at the winery was inter-
rupting her staff member, and the facilita-
tor intervened. Continually re-directing any 
concerns toward the facilitator is another 
aspect of this active protection, and is key 
for creating a field where creative thinking 
and critical thinking can co-exist. 
We are all familiar with brainstorm-
ing, where creative idea generation and 
critical idea evaluation are separated in
time. Another example is the brilliant Six 
Thinking Hats model (DeBono, 1992, 
pp. 77–85) where there are different times 
for “green hat thinking” and “yellow 
hat thinking,” as distinct from “black 
hat thinking.” In  contrast, in Dialogue 
Mapping and Dynamic Facilitation the 
facilitator protects participants’ creativity 
in space. In Dynamic Facilitation, we ask 
the  participant to direct their concern 
to the facilitator, who writes it on the 
concerns chart. In Dialogue Mapping, 
the concern is placed on the growing 
logic tree of the  electronic shared display, 
visibly supplementing (rather than 
supplanting) the idea that provoked 
the concern. In both approaches, the 
spatial redirection serves to minimize 
OD PRACTITIONER Vol. 45 No. 1 201350
interpersonal anxiety, while maximizing 
creative tension.
Second Case Example
This second case example portrays a longer 
process, a two-day strategic planning 
retreat. The client was an accounting soft-
ware reseller, servicing small-to-mid-sized 
firms. The cast included the founder and 
CEO, as well as nearly all of the remaining 
employees of this small company where a 
recent economic downturn had resulted in 
a string of layoffs. 
When the CEO of the firm initiated 
a request for a strategic planning retreat, 
he acknowledged that during the last year, 
he had not called any whole-staff meet-
ings since “I only had bad news to share.” 
However, now they had “hit bottom,” were 
fully lean, and “had nowhere to go but up.” 
So he felt it was time to rebuild morale by 
involving the staff in a collaborative plan-
ning process. At the same time, the CEO 
was very clear about retaining his final 
decision-making authority, and saw the 
purpose of the two-day meeting as solely 
that of input-gathering.
Not having worked with this company 
previously, our conversational arc included 
initial individual interviews with each 
staff member. This was an opportunity to 
establish rapport by exploring organiza-
tional strengths (“What’s working well?”), 
organizational challenges (“What do you 
see as the main areas that need attention?”) 
as well as individual creative initiatives (“If 
it were up to you, what do you think needs 
to be done about it?”) while at the same 
time, reaffirming the agreed-upon frame 
of input-gathering. Unlike a typical action 
research process, however, I did not do any-
thing with this information, instead I asked 
each person if they would be comfortable 
offering their input to the whole group dur-
ing the upcoming two days. 
During the first day with the whole 
staff, I proceeded as described above 
in the first case example; drawing out 
participants’ initial solutions, redirecting 
any concerns, checking for understanding, 
and recording their various perspectives, 
creative solutions, and concerns on chart 
paper. During the course of the first day, we 
thoroughly covered the walls. 
That evening, after typing up a raw 
version of the notes, I also did a light 
sort. Our day-long, free-ranging conversa-
tion clustered easily into a set of themes. 
Placing the corresponding solution ideas, 
concerns, and perspectives under these the-
matic headers, resulted in a document that 
clearly highlighted how much the group 
had accomplished.
Day two started with handing out both 
sets of notes, the raw as well as the light 
sort, and inviting participants to correct, 
modify, or add anything that was needed. 
From there, participants jumped into the 
conversation again, now at a deeper level. 
During our mid-morning break, the CEO 
called me aside. “This is great!” he said. “I 
know originally I said I just wanted input. 
But I think the way the conversation is 
going, I’ll be able to make a quick sketch 
of a plan over lunch, and then bring it back 
to the group this afternoon to get their take 
on it. It just seems really obvious, what the 
next steps are that we need to be taking.”
Exploring the Second Case Example
Again, there are many ways we might read 
this story. For now, I’d like to highlight two 
main themes: 
Retroactively organizing information.
Rather than using an agenda to keep 
participants on topic, we can consider the 
agenda to be the creative process of the 
group, as it emerges through the creative 
process of each individual within the group 
and their interaction with the whole. All 
of the information that is gathered can be 
then organized retroactively.
Clarity around decision-making. I often 
invite clients to engage in creative dialogue 
as a “tilling the soil” in preparation for their 
customary decision-making process. At the 
same time, it’s quite common for much of 
the need for subsequent decision-making 
to evaporate, as the way forward becomes 
clear and obvious to all involved. When 
outcomes are arrived at as a result of an 
emergent process, there seems to be much 
higher levels of alignment, motivation, and 
follow-through; hence the value of evoking 
outcomes through co-creativity and emer-
gence rather than negotiation. 
Challenges and Limitations
In this section I will focus on some of the 
challenges encountered by new practitio-
ners, as well as by those of us seeking to 
share this work with our colleagues.
Given an adequate orientation to 
the sometimes disorienting nature of a 
non-linear method, participants seem to 
generally appreciate and find value in this 
approach. Yet as with any method, a great 
deal depends on the initial contracting 
work with the client. Also, as we saw in the 
second example, dialogic processes can be 
effective for inviting greater participation, 
Given an adequate orientation to the sometimes disorienting
nature of a non-linear method, participants seem to generally
appreciate and find value in this approach. Yet as with any
method, a great deal depends on the initial contracting work
with the client. Also, as we saw in the second example, dialogic
processes can be effective for inviting greater participation, and
even co-creation, when authority structures are clear. However,
like many other processes, they work less well when leadership
is unclear or disputed—likely due to the greater difficulty of
engaging a group in a creative flow when there is a high degree
of basic anxiety in the background.
51
Co-Creative Dialogue for Meeting Practical Challenges: New Approaches
and even co-creation, when authority struc-
tures are clear. However, like many other 
processes, they work less well when leader-
ship is unclear or disputed—likely due to 
the greater difficulty of engaging a group in 
a creative flow when there is a high degree 
of basic anxiety in the background. 
One challenge often encountered from 
fellow practitioners is the perspective that 
“this isn’t dialogue, since you can’t have 
dialogue when you’re talking about solu-
tions!” As I described in the beginning of 
this paper, dialogue can serve worthwhile 
ends even in the context of a mathematics 
classroom, where there may be multiple 
ways to obtain a given solution. Co-creative 
dialogue is even more useful in situations 
where the solutions need to be created 
freshly, through the participation and col-
laboration of everyone involved. 
Practitioners are sometimes also 
uncomfortable with the initial phase of the 
process, where participants are intention-
ally asked to talk to the facilitator instead 
of directly to one another, especially when 
voicing concerns. This runs directly coun-
ter to what has conventionally been taught 
as good practice.
Having a more active facilitator role 
during the initial phase allows participants 
to “come as they are,” without any initial 
training in dialogic conversation. Rather 
than laying out norms, we are creating a 
developmental container where attitudes 
are caught, not taught. Yet this also points 
to a limitation of these kinds of practices. 
To allow untrained groups to engage in a 
free-ranging creative exploration, while at 
the same time arriving at shared under-
standing and powerful results, requires 
a certain level of skill on the part of 
the facilitator. 
The practice of actively taking all sides, 
recording participants’ contributions, and 
holding space open for creative possibility, 
might best be described as “simple, but 
not easy.” For those used to more directive 
approaches, some unlearning may need to 
take place. One of the greatest challenges 
can be to refrain from efforts to manage 
convergence, which is key for allowing a 
different kind of convergence to emerge. 
Instead of focusing on the majority per-
spectives, dot-voting, and so on, we are 
continually listening for the voices at the 
edge, complexity theory’s weak signals that 
can help us shift together into new ways 
of understanding the situation at hand 
(Schoemaker & Day, 2009). 
Wrapping Up and Going Further
In this paper, I have pointed to the value 
of co-creative dialogue in situations where, 
due to the nature of the subject matter, 
we often default to more linear, control-
oriented approaches. Two case examples 
have illustrated the value of welcoming 
initial solutions, while also showing how 
an emergence-based process can interface 
productively with established authority 
structures. We have seen how an active 
facilitation role creates an environment 
where both creative thinking and critical 
thinking can co-exist simultaneously, and 
how organizing information retroactively 
can allow us to engage in a more open-
ended process moving forward.
What has not been explored here, and 
thus remains implicit, is the developmental 
potential of having people work on practi-
cal and challenging issues in a co-creative 
and dialogical manner. While we have 
anecdotal evidence of this (Atlee, 2012, 
pp.108-109; Rough, 2002b), more research 
is needed on how using this approach with 
task-oriented groups creates conditions 
where participants can shift from what 
Shepard called “primary mentality,” or “me 
vs. we,” to the perspective of “secondary 
mentality,” or “me AND we” (Shepard, 
1965). Harrison (1995, 1987) has another, 
more direct yet controversial way to talk 
about this kind of shift; “releasing the 
power of love in organizations.” 
This brings us full circle to the math 
department mentioned at the beginning 
of this paper. In line with the mission of 
the larger organization, this department’s 
focus was not limited to helping teach-
ers teach mathematics in a constructivist 
way; it also sought to tap the potential for 
fostering socio-emotional development that 
is inherent in a collaborative, discovery-
oriented math classroom. 
As a species, we are only just begin-
ning to tap into the power of dialogue 
(Eisen, 1995; Kahane, 2012; Seikkula & 
Trimble, 2005). In parting, I want to leave 
my readers with these questions: What if 
our pressing practical challenges, including 
ones where we find ourselves polarized due 
to a divergence of multiple and often clash-
ing perspectives, could became opportuni-
ties for greater creativity and interpersonal 
growth? And, what if we already have 
much of what we need, to help this come 
about?
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53Co-Creative Dialogue for Meeting Practical Challenges: New Approaches
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