exercise · all tools
Discovery & Action Dialogue (DAD)
Depth · what it can open●●○○2 — reflective
Holding · facilitation2 — facilitator
Trust · group readiness★any
Disclosure · what is sharedoptional
A facilitated dialogue built on positive deviance: through seven fixed questions, a group discovers who among them is already solving a chronic problem against the odds, what they do differently, and what the group will now try. Solutions come from insiders who face the same constraints — not imported best practice.
Hold with care
- Chronic problems carry blame histories; the questions work only while the tone stays genuinely curious, never auditing
Practical
- Time
- 35-80 min
- Group
- 2–∞ · small-group
- Settings
- in-person, online
- Materials
- Groups of 5–7; the seven questions displayed
- Mechanisms
- dialogic-encounter, systems-sensing, behavioral-rehearsal
- Change scope
- state · repeatable
Origin & where it lives
Henri Lipmanowicz & Keith McCandless — Liberating Structures; grounded in Positive Deviance (Jerry & Monique Sternin)
Instructions: open online · CC BY-SA 4.0
In this directory via Liberating Structures
status: checked · added 2026-08-25