AMERICANS FOR DECENCY IN GOVERNMENT
A Nonpartisan Nonprofit
Americas for Decency in Government
Decent Citizen's Guides to Difficult Conversations
Practical habits that help citizens talk through hard issues.
Whether you're at the kitchen table, in a community meeting, or chatting with a coworker, these guidelines are built for real conversations that matter the most.
The Guides
A Citizen's Guide to Difficult Conversations
Practical habits that help citizens talk through hard issues.
Whether you're at the kitchen table, in a community meeting, or chatting with a coworker, these habits are built for the real conversations — political, personal, and everything in between — where staying in the room matters more than winning the point.
A Family Conversation Guide
Habits for talking through hard issues with the people you love.
Disagreements with family can be the most painful kind — because the relationships matter most. Whether it's a holiday dinner, a phone call with a parent, or a conversation with a sibling whose politics have drifted from yours, these habits are built to help you stay connected even when you don't see eye to eye.
A Workplace Conversation Guide
Habits for handling hard conversations on the job.
Workplace conversations have their own rules. Power dynamics, professional consequences, and the simple fact that you didn't choose your coworkers all change what it means to talk through difficult issues. These habits are built to help you handle hard conversations at work with bosses, peers, reports, and customers in a way that protects both your professional standing and your basic decency.
A Community Meeting Guide
Habits for speaking and listening in public forums.
School boards, city councils, town halls, HOA meetings, neighborhood associations — these are the rooms where local democracy actually happens. They're also rooms where small acts of decency or indecency get amplified, because everyone is watching. These habits are built for the public setting: how to speak well, listen well, and represent yourself and your neighbors with credit.
An Online Conversation Guide
Habits for staying decent on social media
Online conversations are different. They're public, permanent, and designed to reward outrage. The other person feels less real, the audience is larger than you can see, and the stakes for getting it wrong — personally, professionally, relationally — can last for years. These habits are built for the particular challenge of being decent on a platform engineered to make decency hard.
A Conversation Guide for Hard Moments
Habits for talking with someone who is hurting.
Sometimes the difficult conversation isn't about politics or policy — it's with someone who is grieving, scared, or in pain. The instincts that work in other settings (making your case, finding common ground, debating ideas) often backfire here. These habits are built for the conversations where the goal is not understanding an issue, but accompanying a person.
A Faith Community Conversation Guide
Habits for talking through hard issues with the people you worship with.
Faith communities are bound together by something deeper than agreement on any one issue. They are also, increasingly, places where political and cultural divisions threaten to fracture relationships that took decades, sometimes generations, to build. These habits are built for the particular gift and challenge of disagreeing with people you worship alongside.