Dr. Miller explains the World Café method, where groups sit at small tables discussing a carefully crafted question, practice deep listening, then rotate to new tables while one person stays as host. The informal setting includes music and flowers. After multiple rounds, participants discover common ground and possibilities for collective action.
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The World Cafe is a way of having groups of people from 12 to 12,000 or more meet together and we meet in café kinds of settings. So it would be in a café like this with 4 people around each table. We all meet to explore a certain— something that is meaningful. We address questions that are meaningful to us. The questions are very carefully designed. People at each table talk about this one question that's offered, but you talk about it in a certain way. Where you listen, you are not trying to win anyone over, you're not trying to negate anyone, you want to listen, you want, you listen to understand where the other person's coming from, you share your truth from within you, but most of all, everyone listens for what comes up in the middle of the table. It's called the magic in the middle, and it's really magic. And then after about 10 or 15 minutes, people at the table get up and one person stays, and that person stays as the host. Everyone fans out to another table. And as people come and sit down, the host describes what happened in their conversation, and the other people talk about what happened there. And by the way, we have music playing, flowers on the table, a paper tablecloth with colored pens and so forth, because a lot of people like to draw and sketch as they talk. And now we offer another question which takes the group in another direction, and the energy in the room begins to rise. And then we do another iteration, people move around, and then we have people start sharing out, "What are the things that are moving you? What touches you?" What are the new ideas that you hear arising? And before long, we begin to find that all of us have something in common and we can all work together.
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