You're Invited: "Our Minnesota" Cascading Conversations Tour 2015 Advance Team Orientation

While we're thrilled to have recently released the 2014 analysis of the "Our Minnesota" Cascading Conversations Tour, this conversation for our generation is only still beginning, and we'd love you to be a part of it! We invite you to participate in a cascading conversation and/or to to serve on our 2015 Advance Team and help to host 3 - 5 other young Minnesotans in hour-long conversations this summer. Mark your calendars for the 2015 Advance Team Orientation and RSVP to the eddress below to let us know to save you a seat. Hope to see you there!

#mnrising 2015 Advance Team Orientation
Monday, June 15, 2015
5:30pm - 8:00pm
Grassroots Solutions
RSVP to minnesotarising[at]gmail.com 

"Our Minnesota" Cascading Conversations Tour 2014 Analysis: Theme 6 of 6

In honor of our sixth anniversary celebration, Minnesota Rising is excited to release the initial six findings from the "Our Minnesota" Cascading Conversations Tour! Check out this month's blog posts to see what we've learned about how this group of emerging leaders views and does leadership in Minnesota. You can read more about the report methodology and participant profiles in the first post of this series. Thanks so much to the leaders of our Design, Advance, and Analysis teams, especially Jenny Hegland, Heidi Smith, Nick Stuber, Eriks Dunens, Taylor Vollmer, and Alexis Walstad!

And as the name implies, we are looking to continue cascading these conversations across the state this summer - and invite you to join us. Let us know if you'd like to be invited to participate in a conversation and/or join our Advance Team and help host 3 to 5 conversations this summer!

Theme 6 of 6: Emerging Leaders are deeply motivated to live life in accordance with their values, which manifests itself in lifestyle decision and community involvement

Emerging leaders expressed what other researchers studying this generation have shared – that Millennials are deeply motivated by values. One participant who had a comfortable job switched careers to align her values to her work, explaining, “It's also important for work to have meaning. [I] needed a role that [I] felt invested in.”  

Each of the five preceding themes represents some of those values. Emerging leaders in our conversations described how it impacts where they shop, what they eat, and how they choose to spend their time. They expressed the importance of being purposefully engaged in their communities, helping to advance the causes and policies they believe can shape a better future for Minnesota. “I see people ... trying to make sure [they] are not just going into communities to do service but they are thinking critically about their service. Thinking about who [sic] they are, what they're trying to bring to their organizations or communities, how that might be perceived or received by their organizations or communities, and trying to give them a sense of whether they can live out their values in this nonprofit work and what that actually looks like.”

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"Our Minnesota" Cascading Conversations Tour 2014 Analysis: Theme 5 of 6

In honor of our sixth anniversary celebration, Minnesota Rising is excited to release the initial six findings from the "Our Minnesota" Cascading Conversations Tour! Watch the blog in the coming days to learn about how this group of emerging leaders views and does leadership in Minnesota. You can read more about the report methodology and participant profiles in the first post of this series. And as the name implies, we are looking to continue cascading these conversations across the state this summer - and invite you to join us. Let us know if you'd like to be invited to participate in a conversation and/or join our Advance Team and help host 3 to 5 conversations this summer!

Theme 5 of 6: Emerging Leaders value working within and across generations 

Referring to both those who have come before and those who will follow after, emerging leaders told stories about successes and the enjoyment they have had working with other generations. They viewed these relationships as essential since there are lessons to learn from older and younger generations. “New generations will continue to emerge and we must continue to engage them and connect them with older generations.  Older generations must continue to embrace and respect the contributions of younger generations, and we must all embrace change.” 

And, with an eye towards the sustainability of programs and resources, there is an ongoing need to bring younger people in to shape, refine, and continue the work “[to] create pipelines for Minnesota... [that] give resources back to the youth.” 

Many leaders shared stories about the importance a mentor had played in their life and the joy they have found in mentoring others. Participants from the second round of conversations specifically cited the importance of having mentors and role models with a shared identity, in order to diversify and expand the definition of a leader.

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"Our Minnesota" Cascading Conversations Tour 2014 Analysis: Theme 4 of 6

In honor of our sixth anniversary celebration, Minnesota Rising is excited to release the initial six findings from the "Our Minnesota" Cascading Conversations Tour! Watch the blog in the coming days to learn about how this group of emerging leaders views and does leadership in Minnesota. You can read more about the report methodology and participant profiles in the first post of this series. And as the name implies, we are looking to continue cascading these conversations across the state this summer - and invite you to join us. Let us know if you'd like to be invited to participate in a conversation and/or join our Advance Team and help host 3 to 5 conversations this summer!

Theme 4 of 6: Emerging Leaders place high value on welcoming and valuing difference in order to strengthen and connect communities in a rapidly diversifying Minnesota

Emerging leaders referenced throughout their conversations their awareness that Minnesota continues to diversify rapidly, most commonly citing ethnicity, race, and sexual orientation. “Our communities are only becoming more diverse, which is just a wonderful treasure. Lately, I've heard RT Rybak talk about closing the achievement gap in the sense of not just closing the gap but also elevating the population. Our global populations are an asset, not just a gap to close. There's no way we'll be able to do this without having the really hard race conversation. Minnesotans and many Americans are scared to have this conversation and we need to get over the hard stuff to start trusting each other.” 

Beyond the inherent need to care for each other, participants repeatedly stated that embracing whole people – their identities, beliefs, perspectives, talents, knowledge, histories – will ensure Minnesotans and their communities will thrive into the future. They desired inclusive communities that value individuals and groups leveraging what make them distinct while actively bringing groups to a common table. “[We need to] represent values and voices of community, support others but not disappear.” 

Participants in the second round, which contained a greater diversity of voices in terms of race and ethnicity, added that creating this condition may entail adapting our existing power structure to engage and actively support voices and experiences that are not traditionally dominant. Specifically, emerging leaders need to create and sustain spaces for people to feel comfortable and emboldened to actualize their identity fully. “My children are Muslim but look white and it’s their religious views that get called into question a lot. By the time my grandchildren are born, I hope Islam in Minnesota is normalized enough that it doesn’t overshadow their own identities.”

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"Our Minnesota" Cascading Conversations Tour 2014 Analysis: Theme 3 of 6

In honor of our sixth anniversary celebration, Minnesota Rising is excited to release the initial six findings from the "Our Minnesota" Cascading Conversations Tour! Watch the blog in the coming days to learn about how this group of emerging leaders views and does leadership in Minnesota. You can read more about the report methodology and participant profiles in the first post of this series. And as the name implies, we are looking to continue cascading these conversations across the state this summer - and invite you to join us. Let us know if you'd like to be invited to participate in a conversation and/or join our Advance Team and help host 3 to 5 conversations this summer!

Theme 3 of 6: Emerging Leaders use critical thinking and dialogue as key tools to address society’s complex and contentions public issues

Emerging leaders identified several complex issues that we will need to collectively address, including improvements in inclusion, equity, and the environment and eliminating disparities in education, employment, and income. In order to explore and tackle these challenging multi-generational issues, we will need to view them with clear eyes and seek out additional and representative voices in order to have a more expansive dialogue. One participant noted the value in “being asked to give my opinions on things. Sharing my ideas, communicating with everybody else in the group, made it feel like a shared effort because of all the different levels of positions. It's important to get people from all different levels, if it's applicable, getting an outside perspective” to solving issues. It means broadening who gets to be a part of policy discussions, being open to different frames on a topic, and working together to make it a reality. “[I]t is important to be mindful of the fact that nobody sees the whole picture, so it is vital for us to keep an open mind about strategies, goals, and the like.”

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"Our Minnesota" Cascading Conversations Tour 2014 Analysis: Theme 2 of 6

In honor of our sixth anniversary celebration, Minnesota Rising is excited to release the initial six findings from the "Our Minnesota" Cascading Conversations Tour! Watch the blog in the coming days to learn about how this group of emerging leaders views and does leadership in Minnesota. You can read more about the report methodology and participant profiles in the first post of this series. And as the name implies, we are looking to continue cascading these conversations across the state this summer - and invite you to join us. Let us know if you'd like to be invited to participate in a conversation and/or join our Advance Team and help host 3 to 5 conversations this summer!

Theme 2 of 6: Emerging Leaders express a common desire to connect through shared values and shift the focus of public discourse to broad community benefit.

Throughout the conversations, emerging leaders repeatedly expressed frustration with the current political state, which they characterized as partisan and laden with rhetoric. They expressed skepticism regarding the collective ability of Minnesotans to address significant issues under these kinds of conditions. In its place, participants commonly desired to connect via shared values in place of positions or arguments. “For me, a lot of it comes down to talking to people, talking to each other. Coming into conversations and different spaces knowing we may disagree about a lot of things but that we come to talk because we're in this together. When we talk and listen, we learn. Come in with the agreement that I will listen to you and you will listen to me and then that we will try to figure out what to do. I'm okay with compromise, which doesn't seem too popular these days. I know that if my opinion should be heard, I need to do the same for others. We sink or we swim together as communities.” 

The hope would be to elevate conversations past the yes/no binary to shared community concern. Participants named what some of these values could be, including integrity, empathy, intentionality, and respect across difference. Emerging leaders that participated in the second round of conversations expressed with a greater frequency than the first round of conversation participants that the time is now to become a generation that works for the benefit of all Minnesotans. One participant stated it in terms of geography, “With Minnesota that would be paying attention to what is going on in Greater Minnesota and making an effort to impact the lives of people who live there.” Another mentioned it in terms of racial and ethnic diversity, “We're better than the racial disparities in our state. They don't align with Minnesotan values. [I] hope people are getting to a point of not accepting them anymore. Let's get real about inequality and come up with solutions."

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"Our Minnesota" Cascading Conversations Tour 2014 Analysis: Theme 1 of 6

In honor of our sixth anniversary celebration, Minnesota Rising is excited to release the initial six findings from the "Our Minnesota" Cascading Conversations Tour! Watch the blog in the coming days to learn about how this group of emerging leaders views and does leadership in Minnesota. You can read more about the report methodology and participant profiles in the first post of this series. And as the name implies, we are looking to continue cascading these conversations across the state this summer - and invite you to join us. Let us know if you'd like to be invited to participate in a conversation and/or join our Advance Team and help host 3 to 5 conversations this summer!

Theme 1 of 6: Emerging Leaders believe that listening and spending time together is at the core of building trusting relationships

Whether to build more inclusive and welcoming communities, bridge political differences, or resolve conflicts, emerging leaders highlighted the central importance of trusting relationships. In order to build trusting relationships, participants noted the necessary ingredients as listening and spending time together, highlighting the importance of face-to-face interaction. “These days, communities are so large that you’re not going to be able to have one-to-one conversations with 20,000 people. But if you talk to your neighbors, your neighborhood, start on that smaller level, you can keep building up and up and up. Express the ways that you want to improve the community, present some ideas and others can give you feedback and you can trust-build from one-to-one, face-to-face conversations. Not just giving words, but also giving actions. Words are important to build upon with actions, but without action, the trust doesn’t really have a foundation." 

They emphasized it is the way that emerging leaders can learn about people, share in their wisdom, and build common experiences. Participants expressed that building trusting relationships will create spaces where people can have difficult and necessary conversations about topics like race, gender, and socioeconomic status, and their implications for how we live and work together. “Within Minneapolis and just in the Twin Cities in general, we have a really hard time talking effectively, openly, and honestly about all sorts of things. Especially things like racism and sexism and homophobia and transphobia. I think we're really afraid to talk about race in particular in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Oddly enough we're okay talking about gender, at least for white women and white men. We haven't learned how to talk about race or class effectively yet, and we'll need to learn to do that well in order for there to be more trust within communities."

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"Our Minnesota" Cascading Conversations Tour 2014 Analysis

May 2015 marks Minnesota Rising's 6th anniversary! We're excited to look back at the powerful work we've helped to catalyze over the past six years, including publishing 1,337 blog posts, hosting five annual Un/Conferences, developing four Collaborative Competence Learning Labs to help young leaders navigate and shape the emerging future, and launching LOCUS to emphasize identity-driven leadership for emerging leaders of color.

One of our proudest accomplishments is having collaboratively designed the "Our Minnesota" Cascading Conversations Tour and hosting young Minnesotans in conversations across the state about their values and visions for the future. While we cannot develop a strategic plan for our generation, we can be strategic about our intentions for the Minnesota we will create together. The Cascading Conversations Tour is an attempt to discover what we have in common, to learn about what’s working in Minnesota that we can build on, and to uncover how we can work individually and collectively to achieve the future we desire.

In celebration of our anniversary, we're excited to share with you over the coming days about the report and our initial findings. To start, today we'll share about how we conducted the research and the demographic background of Tour participants. Keep an eye out next week to learn how this group of emerging leaders views and does leadership in Minnesota! And as the name implies, we are looking to continue cascading these conversations across the state this summer - and invite you to join us. Let us know if you'd like to be invited to participate in a conversation and/or join our Advance Team and help host 3 to 5 conversations this summer!

Methodology and limitations

The “Our Minnesota” Cascading Conversation tour began in 2011 with question development. Influenced by practices from the Art of Participatory Leadership, designers crafted open-ended questions that first focus on individual stories and preferences before shifting the orientation towards communities and the state.

The initial round of conversations came through a convenience sample that in total yielded 157 responses. Conversations were held between November 2011 and December 2013. Individuals conducting interviews were guided by instructions at the start of the conversation guide and those interviewed were invited at the end of the conversation to interview someone else. Two individuals trained in qualitative analysis provided the initial study to iteratively identify the common themes across participants. Little demographic information about respondents was captured during this time. Interviewers anecdotally reported that the majority of participants appeared to be white, college-educated, and employed.

A desire to reach a broader audience led to a revision of the feedback form which asked for participants to identify gender, race/ethnicity, highest level of educational attainment, work situation, and sexual orientation. The conversation questions remained the same. Organizers planned a second round of conversations to more intentionally collect responses that better represents the diversity of Millennials in Minnesota. They assembled an advance team of individuals who identified across a range of identities and provided training on holding the conversations and reporting the responses. Their charge was to conduct conversations with individuals from their communities.

Between June and November 2014, the advance team conducted and reported results from fifty conversations. The same two individuals who had conducted the qualitative analysis from the first round of conversations did the same for the second round. They used the emergent codes from the 2011-2013 sample in addition to identifying new themes unique to the 2014 data set.

It is important to note that the data presented in this report are not representative of all Millennials in Minnesota. Rather, these data are meant to be a starting point for dialogue about the thoughts and opinions regarding the future of Minnesota. Minnesota Rising is continually focused on seeing whose voices are missing from the conversation and working to invite greater participation. Additional conversations will continue to engage a variety of participants in an effort to broaden the pool of responses and reflect the state’s diversity (e.g., racial, ethnic, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic, and geographic).

Findings: Demographic profile of conversation participants

Looking at the 50 participants from the second round of conversations (demographic data were not collected from the first round of conversations), they are primarily between the ages of 23 and 32, are well-educated, and employed full-time. Eighty-four percent of respondents had completed a bachelor’s or higher. For employment, 80 percent had a full-time position at the time of the conversation. About 38 percent of Minnesota residents age 25-34 have earned a bachelor’s degree or higher. Of all entry level and early career-age adults (age 16-34), 73 percent are working.[1]

Figure 1: Percentage of respondents by age in years (N=50)

Figure 2: Percentage of respondents’ educational attainment (N=50)

Figure 3: Percentage of respondents’ current employment status (N=50)

Seventy-four percent of respondents identified as female, 24 percent as male, and two percent as gender queer.

Out of the 49 respondents who provided information about their sexual orientation, four out of five identified as heterosexual.

Figure 4: Percentage of respondents’ identified sexual orientation (N=49)

All fifty participants provided their race and ethnicity in an open ended question. The two tables below show all responses. The first table includes responses which came up more than once and the second includes those that only appeared once. The three most common responses were Caucasian or white (32%), African-American or black (18%), Hmong (10%), and Asian (10%).

Table 1: Race and ethnicity responses identified more than once (N = 50)

Category	Number	Percent
African	3	6%
African-American or black	9	18%
Asian	5	10%
Asian-American	3	6%
Caucasian or white	16	32%
Chinese	2	4%
Hmong	5	10%
Latino/a	2	4%
Multiracial or biracial	3	6%

Table 2: Race and ethnicity responses identified only once (N=50)

Category	Number	Percent
Cuban	1	2%
Guyanese	1	2%
Haitian	1	2%
Hmong-Ojibwe	1	2%
Indian	1	2%
Indigenous	1	2%
Italian	1	2%
Korean-American	1	2%
Mexican-American	1	2%
Norwegian	1	2%
Sri Lankan	1	2%

In Minnesota, one in four millennials is a person of color, so this set of respondents over samples that demographic.[2]

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[1]  Compiled by Minnesota Compass in March 2015 from U.S. Census Bureau, Decennial Census (2010) and U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey (2013) The calculation does not include residents in the armed forces.

[2] Minnesota Compass, 6 surprising trends about Minnesota’s millennials, March 2014

You're Invited: Minnesota Rising Cascading Conversations Cafe!

Minnesota Rising invites you to a Cascading Conversations Café on September 30th to share your experiences and ideas with other emerging leaders! The “Our Minnesota” Cascading Conversations Tour has connected hundreds of young Minnesotans and sparked fun, engaging opportunities for people to discuss their values and visions for Minnesota’s future and to share how they could make that future a reality. 

Join us for a full-cycle Cascading Conversations Café, including a light dinner, a one-on-one conversation with another emerging leader, and a large-group analysis of the themes arising from the evening’s discussion. It’s sure to be an energizing and inspiring dialogue! 

Minnesota Rising Cascading Conversations Café

Tuesday, September 30, 2014 

5:00pm – 7:00pm 

Grassroots Solutions 

Please RSVP to minnesotarising[at]gmail.com by Monday, September 29 at 3:00pm. We hope to see you there!

Building the mental rolodex with cascading conversations!

I wanted to take a minute to reflect on my experience participating in Minnesota Rising’s Cascading Conversations Tour, so far.  The Cascading Conversations Tour was designed to help build trust between two people through one-on-one conversations. I have been fortunate enough to have Cascading Conversations with all kinds of people – friends, colleagues, complete strangers, acquaintances, etc., and needless to say: no two conversations are the same. 

Using the Minnesota Rising Blueprint as my guide, each conversation starts out the same, but that is where the similarities end. To be perfectly honest, I cannot recall off hand exactly how many people I have hosted in a Cascading Conversation, but I can tell you that each conversation has provided me an opportunity to learn, grow, and understand other people’s perspectives. Every single conversation has had an impact in my daily life.

Sharing stories is one of the most effective ways to build trust. Even when I have a Cascading Conversation with people that I already know, I am always surprised by their answers and I find that I always learn something new about the person. Throughout the conversation, people share stories from their past, their hopes for the future and advice to take away. I store these take-a-ways in my mental rolodex, and apply these words to live by as I need to. The part that is truly unique about these conversations is how deep they go and how invested you become with what the Tour is creating.

If you have not had a chance to take part in the Cascading Conversation Tour, I want to personally invite you to join in the Conversation! Email me at heidismith2002[at]gmail.com.