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Conversation on four feet

As explained in Collaborative Software Design: How to facilitate domain modeling decisions

A Lewis Deep Democracy exercise in which participants physically position themselves in relation to a statement and explain their perspectives.

Conversation on four feet is a Lewis Deep Democracy exercise for making an unclear or unrecognized polarity visible. Participants physically move in response to statements, explore both sides, and practice listening to understand rather than listening to react. The aim is a both/and outcome instead of a majority-driven either/or decision. section 10.3.2

Facilitate the exercise by:

  • Creating enough space for the group to stand and move around. section 10.3.2
  • Inviting one participant to present a statement and standing beside them to clarify it through active listening. section 10.3.2

Exploring depth versus width

When repeated interruptions and heated debates about going wide or deep stalled a group’s progress, facilitators paused the session and used conversation on four feet to explore the deep-versus-width polarity. section 10.3.2

How Collaborative Software Design: How to facilitate domain modeling decisions covers it

How deep it goes
Explains the rationale, setup, opening statement, active-listening role, and agreement-disagreement movement, but not the complete facilitation script.
Examples
Uses a stalled debate about going deep versus wide as the exercise’s concrete facilitation scenario.
What it assumes
Assumes a group is willing to stand, move, state positions, and examine disagreement with facilitator support.
What you can do after
Apply the method to surface both sides of a group polarity and support dialogue before decisions become binary.
How it connects
Connects polarity management with active listening, climate reports, both/and thinking, and majority-driven either/or decisions.
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Related concepts

This explainer was generated by Manning's knowledge graph from the text of Collaborative Software Design: How to facilitate domain modeling decisions. The section links point to the parts of the book it draws on.