Holding the Space

Reflections on dialogue, systems thinking, facilitation and becoming a mentor

Doha Debates · Ambassador, Facilitator & Mentor · 2023–2026

I entered as a participant

Doha Debates · 2024 Ambassador Programme

Featured in Gulf Times, 19 February 2024.

My experience with Doha Debates began with the Ambassador programme. At that point, I was learning the Majlis technique and encountering ideas that would stay with me well beyond the programme itself: wicked problems, systems thinking, systems mapping, the Iceberg Model, nonviolent communication, and the distinction between interests and positions in negotiation. These were not simply tools for completing an activity. They gave me different ways of looking at problems, conversations and the relationships beneath what is immediately visible.

Working with a global cohort also changed the scale at which I thought about dialogue. We were engaging questions around climate change, polarization, education, technology and other complex issues where causes and consequences rarely sit in one place. The systems perspective encouraged me to look beyond individual events and ask what patterns, structures, relationships and assumptions might be producing them. The Majlis offered a different way of entering those questions: not by trying to eliminate disagreement, but by creating enough space to understand it.

Learning to see beneath the problem

Figure 01 · The Iceberg Framework

The Iceberg Framework became one of the ideas that stayed with me because it offered a simple challenge to the way we usually encounter problems. What we see first is often an event. Beneath it are patterns, structures and mental models that are harder to notice but may explain why the event keeps occurring. Systems mapping gave me another way to make those relationships visible rather than treating a complex issue as a collection of isolated parts.

The idea of the wicked problem reinforced the same lesson from another direction. Some problems do not have a single cause, a clean boundary or a final solution that settles the matter. Climate change, polarization and many other global challenges involve competing interests, feedback loops, institutions, behaviours and assumptions. Learning to work with that complexity changed what I considered a useful question. Sometimes the first task is not to solve the problem, but to understand the system in which the problem exists.

From learning dialogue to facilitating it

Virtual Majlis · Climate Change & Intersectional Justice

Ambassador Majlis Facilitation capstone · 29 August 2024

The experience eventually moved from learning the Majlis to helping facilitate one. As part of the Ambassador Virtual Majlis capstone, I worked with a diverse team over several weeks to develop a conversation around climate change and intersectional justice. This involved more than choosing a topic. We had to shape the conversation, refine our story angle, work with guests and coordinate with the technical and production sides while keeping the different perspectives within the team moving together.

I found myself relying on a combination of structure and spontaneity. Structure was necessary because a complex conversation needs direction, but too much structure can leave no room for what participants actually bring into the room. Facilitation therefore became less about controlling the conversation and more about creating the conditions in which the conversation could develop. That distinction became increasingly important as I moved into mentoring.

From being guided to guiding others

Virtual Majlis · Population Dynamics and Climate Change

Mentor cohort · supporting mentees through their capstone

After serving as an Ambassador, I returned to the programme as an Ambassadors' Mentor. This changed my relationship with everything I had previously learned. I was now working with a team of five mentees and supporting them as they navigated the requirements of the programme, developed their ideas and prepared their own Virtual Majlis.

The difficulty was not simply helping people understand the material. My mentees had competing priorities, different schedules and different paces of progress. I had to adapt my own availability, maintain communication, encourage those who were moving more slowly and support the group without taking ownership of their work. The responsibility was to help them become capable of completing the work themselves, rather than becoming the person who completed it for them.

Holding the space without taking it over

Mentoring also changed how I understand empowerment. It is easy to confuse helping someone with directing them. When the outcome matters and the deadline is approaching, taking over can appear to be the fastest solution. But that can undermine the very capability the programme is trying to develop.

My role was therefore to keep the conditions for progress in place while leaving ownership with the mentees. I supported them in developing and delivering their ideas independently, maintained communication across the team and helped keep the group moving toward the final requirements. Eventually, the five mentees completed the programme requirements and delivered their Virtual Majlis capstone. Seeing them facilitate the dialogue themselves was more meaningful than simply seeing the task completed.

When systems thinking meets people

Figure 02 · Climate change as a system in motion

This was where systems thinking became much more practical for me. A programme is a system, but so is a team. Requirements, deadlines, individual circumstances, communication, motivation, relationships and available time all interact. A delay is not necessarily just a failure to act. A person who is struggling may not simply need more pressure. Sometimes the more useful question is what is happening around the person and what conditions are affecting their ability to contribute.

That experience made me more careful about applying frameworks to people. Systems thinking can help reveal patterns, but people are not diagrams. Nonviolent communication, the distinction between interests and positions, and the Majlis approach all became more useful when I had to work with actual people whose circumstances did not fit neatly into a model. The framework could help me ask better questions, but it could not replace paying attention to the person in front of me.

The Majlis changed how I think about disagreement

One of the ideas that stayed with me was the distinction between interests and positions. A position tells us what someone says they want. An interest can tell us something about why that position matters to them. That distinction does not make disagreement disappear, but it can change the questions we ask when we encounter it.

The Majlis gave me a practical setting in which to explore that kind of thinking. Difficult dialogue does not require everyone to arrive at the same conclusion. It requires enough space for people to understand what is being said, what sits behind it and what they may have in common even when their conclusions differ. Nonviolent communication added another dimension to this by making attention to language, needs and the quality of interaction part of the work rather than something secondary to the topic itself.

What I carried forward

I left Doha Debates with more than a collection of facilitation techniques. I left with a different vocabulary for noticing complexity. The Iceberg Model taught me to look beneath events. Systems mapping gave me ways to make relationships visible. Wicked-problem thinking made me more cautious about simple solutions. Interests and positions gave me another way to examine disagreement. Nonviolent communication gave me another way to think about what happens between people.

Most importantly, becoming a mentor gave those ideas a different meaning. I had first experienced the programme as someone being guided, challenged and taught. I later experienced it as someone responsible for helping others navigate the same environment. That movement made me think differently about leadership. Sometimes leadership is not providing the answer or directing the route. Sometimes it is understanding the system well enough to create conditions in which other people can do their own thinking and move forward with greater ownership.

A different view of facilitation

I now think of facilitation less as managing a conversation and more as holding the conditions around it. That includes the structure of the conversation, but also the people in it, their relationships, the incentives affecting them, the information they have, the assumptions they bring and the constraints under which they are working.

That is probably why the experience has remained important to me. Doha Debates gave me methods, but the methods became valuable because I had opportunities to test them with real questions and real people. I learned that a framework can reveal something without explaining everything, that structure can coexist with spontaneity, and that supporting people does not mean removing their responsibility. Those lessons have continued to shape how I think about systems, dialogue and the work of helping people navigate complexity.

The people who shaped this experience

I also want to acknowledge Jennifer Geist, Dr. Brandon Ferderer and Sarah Smith, who supported and guided me when I was an Ambassador and later became coordinators when I returned to mentor the next cohort. Experiencing that continuity mattered to me because it allowed me to see Doha Debates from both sides: first as someone learning the methods, and later as someone helping others work through them. That change in position gave me a different understanding of what the programme asks of its participants, facilitators and mentors.

I am also grateful to Andrew Terku, who was my mentor in 2024, and to Pin Weesapen, who worked with me during the facilitation capstone on climate change. Their support was part of the broader network of people through whom I learned to practice dialogue rather than simply study it. Beyond individual mentors and coordinators, the Doha Debates community itself shaped the experience: the people I learned alongside, facilitated with and later mentored made the methods tangible.

Their guidance and the wider community contributed significantly to how I came to understand the power of the Majlis, systems thinking and dialogue. What I learned from them did not remain confined to the programme. It became part of the way I approach complex questions, conversations and the relationship between people and the systems around them.

From participant to mentor

2024–25 Ambassador Mentors

Featured by Doha Debates and Shared Studios

The most significant part of my Doha Debates experience may therefore be the change in position. I began as an Ambassador learning how to participate in difficult conversations. I later became a facilitator working with a team to create one. Then I became a mentor helping another group develop the capacity to facilitate their own.

The roles were different, but they were connected. Each one made me see something that the previous one could not. Being a participant taught me what it feels like to be guided. Facilitation taught me what it means to hold a conversation. Mentoring taught me what it means to create enough structure, support and space for someone else to take ownership.

I entered Doha Debates to learn how to participate in difficult conversations. I left with a different understanding of what it means to help others hold them.

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