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RTT’s toolkit builds the skill sets and mindsets that enable leaders, institutions, and communities to manifest pluralism-in-action.
Seasoned mediators and conflict resolution experts describe RTT’s training as “best-in-class” and the most effective they have experienced in decades of work. Our framework empowers leaders with tools to overcome patterns of destructive conflict— including confirmation bias, animosity, and avoidance—and to disseminate these tools in their own institutions and contexts. Our intensive training and hands-on coaching are unparalleled in the bridge-building field.
Driven by research on how tipping point change occurs, we scale by training norm-shapers— individuals with social capital who are trusted within their regions, sectors, or institutions and influence how others think and behave. Norm-shapers include faith leaders and administrators in higher education as well as TV writers and journalists. Longitudinal research shows that our programs create downstream impacts for years to come in the communities and networks of those we train.
Our methodology enables us to build trust and overcome suspicion of dialogue work itself. We successfully draw to the table rural, working class, progressive activist, and religious conservative people whose communities and voices tend to be rare in bridge-building efforts. We enable even adversarial parties to achieve trust and breakthroughs more quickly and robustly than they believed possible.
We enable participants to engage the thorny issues that matter most to them directly. Unlike many bridge-building efforts, we do not steer participants toward common ground. Our work is premised on the insight that opposing parties often reach greater trust, collaboration, connection, and even basic rehumanization when they’ve investigated their differences openly and come out the other side.
Our team of experts draw from decades of experience in mediation, conflict transformation, trauma therapy, and social research. We have innovated an extensive toolkit supporting parties entering the room with suspicion, trepidation, and distrust to achieve mutual recognition while addressing their differences head-on.
Seasoned mediators and conflict resolution experts describe RTT’s training as “best-in-class” and the most effective they have experienced in decades of work. Our framework empowers leaders with tools to overcome patterns of destructive conflict—including confirmation bias, animosity, and avoidance—and to disseminate these tools in their own institutions and contexts. Our intensive training and hands-on coaching are unparalleled in the bridge-building field.
Driven by research on how tipping point change occurs, we scale by training norm-shapers—individuals with social capital who are trusted within their regions, sectors, or institutions and influence how others think and behave. Norm-shapers include faith leaders and administrators in higher education as well as TV writers and journalists. Longitudinal research shows that our programs create downstream impacts for years to come in the communities and networks of those we train.
Our methodology enables us to build trust and overcome suspicion of dialogue work itself. We successfully draw to the table rural, working class, progressive activist, and religious conservative people whose communities and voices tend to be rare in bridge-building efforts. We enable even adversarial parties to achieve trust and breakthroughs more quickly and robustly than they believed possible.
We enable participants to engage the thorny issues that matter most to them directly. Unlike many bridge-building efforts, we do not steer participants toward common ground. Our work is premised on the insight that opposing parties often reach greater trust, collaboration, connection, and even basic rehumanization when they’ve investigated their differences openly and come out the other side.
Our team of experts draw from decades of experience in mediation, conflict transformation, trauma therapy, and social research. We have innovated an extensive toolkit supporting parties entering the room with suspicion, trepidation, and distrust to achieve mutual recognition while addressing their differences head-on.
Resetting the Table’s framework has been refined over decades of innovation, research, and application. Our interventions are designed to overcome patterns of destructive conflict and build generative discussion and problem-solving in their place.
Conflict produces three broad tendencies: self-absorption, rigidity, and reactivity. At a societal level, toxic conflict produces echo chambers, perception gaps, motive attribution asymmetry, exaggerated perception of threat, and attack-defend cycles that become hard to reverse.
The heart of our methodology at RTT is a series of interventions and practical tools designed to shift parties from toxic to constructive conflict.
Self-absorbed
Rigid
Reactive
Recognition
Receptivity
Centeredness
1This framework is most influenced by the theoretical and practical insights of Transformative Mediation. Transformative Mediation observes that often parties turn to mediators less to broker deals or find shared interests than to get out of the painful and destabilizing experience of being in conflict, and restore their own capacities to relate and communicate well.
We train facilitators and design our processes to produce these shifts proactively and restore them when they’re undermined.
We create the conditions to shift rigidity into receptivity, even in the face of animosity, distrust, and fear.
We tackle contentious issues directly, knowing doing so makes bridge-building more durable, effective, and likely to reach the people who most need to be reached.
Our methodology enables us to build trust and overcome suspicion of dialogue work itself. We successfully draw to the table rural, working class, progressive activist, and religious conservative people whose communities and voices tend to be rare in bridge-building efforts. We enable even adversarial parties to achieve trust and breakthroughs more quickly and robustly than they believed possible.
We train facilitators and design our processes to produce these shifts proactively and restore them when they’re undermined.
We create the conditions to shift rigidity into receptivity, even in the face of animosity, distrust, and fear.
We tackle contentious issues directly, knowing doing so makes bridge-building more durable, effective, and likely to reach the people who most need to be reached.
Our methodology enables us to build trust and overcome suspicion of dialogue work itself. We successfully draw to the table rural, working class, progressive activist, and religious conservative people whose communities and voices tend to be rare in bridge-building efforts. We enable even adversarial parties to achieve trust and breakthroughs more quickly and robustly than they believed possible.
I left RTT’s training genuinely less afraid and more motivated to lead conversation about issues that tear my community apart.
So many communities feel fractured and demoralized. With RTT's masterful guidance, they can build the courage and skills to face each other's fears. RTT helped me—who had been doing mediation work for years—have comfort dealing with differences and not running away from them. We don’t have to get everyone to agree. We can have a profound transformative impact by helping people to hear differences, understand them, live with them, explore them, and honor each other in the face of them.”
This was the most in-depth and professional-level facilitation training I have encountered.
RTT staff clearly have developed a quality methodology deeply grounded in the most essential conflict management practices and theories. Immersing myself in this methodology was incredibly valuable… After completing this training, I feel empowered to hold conversations across some of our deepest divides, and as a result, hopefully help foster a more resilient and thriving community.”
The training experience is intensely practical and skills-based—immediately applicable to any context where receptivity is essential for a dialogue to take place.
As a mediator, leadership coach, and restorative justice practitioner working in all kinds of organizations—often on charged issues of identity and inclusion—I found the hands-on practice components to be among the most rigorous I've ever encountered. I would be hard-pressed to recommend a better facilitation training than this one!”
Learning to be the person who allows others to ‘be seen and heard the way they want to be seen and heard’ is like having a superpower. It will benefit your life and your communities. I'm so appreciative of the opportunity to participate in this training, and this is work that will benefit the rest of my life.”
I've been trained over the years as a mediator in the court system, as a spiritual director, and as a chaplain. RTT's process is the deepest, most intense, and most vital training in listening and conversation skills I've experienced. I'm determined to use this work to try to make my little corner of the world one where people hear and understand each other despite real differences.”
These sessions have helped me to carry out the work of racial reconciliation in my conservative community. I would invite anyone who is interested in breaking through the cultural gridlock in which we find ourselves to participate in this training. These techniques create space for meaningful conversation on the most enduring divisions in American history.”
At first glance, it would be easy for a skeptic to write off Resetting the Table as wishy-washy, trite, or “both-sidesy.” But that couldn’t be further from the truth—our fellowship was rigorous, deeply thoughtful, and rooted in a clear understanding of both psychological and social realities.”
