OUR APPROACH
At Civic Synergy, we focus on collaboratively tackling our collective challenges to foster relationships and produce new, practical ideas to move our country forward.
With a vanishing middle ground, we’ll need to move beyond compromise or simply meeting in the middle. Because we believe that young Americans care deeply about our country’s future and the ability to work with those who are a part of it, we must move toward collaborating in the face of conflict.
To facilitate collaboration and innovative consensus-building, participants use a method called the Mutual Gains Approach, or MGA. The Mutual Gains Approach (MGA) is rooted in identifying the reasons behind someone’s position, and working from this foundation to creatively design mutually beneficial solutions (Thomas-Lamar, et. al. 1999).
Other key components of our approach:
Thomas-Kilmann
Equipping tomorrow’s leaders with the skills and experience to build bridges in pursuit of our path forward.
Working collaboratively relies on trust. In politically diverse groups, Civic Synergy participants share laughs and discuss their backgrounds and influences to build trust, empathy, and a muscle memory of working across differences.
To understand their common hopes, participants establish shared goals, inspired by Podziba’s Civic Fusion. When issues are simplified into one-dimensional, liberal-conservative positions, this encourages more negative feelings towards those on the other side of the political aisle (Hare 2021).
Participants are encouraged to be curious, learning about and researching issues in multiple dimensions.
Working together collaboratively provides a unique opportunity to solve our complex problems in new, innovative, and efficient ways.