Sometimes it takes an extreme situation to bring us to the table for a real conversation. There is no better example than the epic negotiations for constitutional reform in South Africa.

My former colleagues at the Harvard Negotiation Programme worked on the sidelines with the chief negotiators — Cyril Ramaphosa from the African National Congress, and Roelf Meyer, the Botha Government.

One incident set the tone for what the two men described as the “political chemistry” that enabled them to help to move the country forward. Early on, arrangements were made for them to meet at a remote lake retreat. They were out fishing by themselves when a hook got caught in Meyer’s finger. Notwithstanding race and politics, Ramaphosa did not hesitate to carefully extract it. When people back at the lodge applauded him, Meyer noted: “ ... and I trusted him to take it out”.

They pledged that no matter what was happening in the country, they would keep the “back channel of communication” open. Bouts of armed combat, police torture and necklacing — all fuelling fears of an impending bloodbath — consumed world headlines. Whenever there was a particularly horrifying incident, Ramaphosa and Meyer would quickly telephone to assure each other that the back channel was still open. They say that the “golden thread” that knitted together personal trust and political chemistry was a shared, overriding vision; apartheid had to be dismantled.

It is time for a new conversation in Bermuda. Dialogue must be free and frank. It must also be respectful and humble. This cannot happen if there is only one idea on the table. A rich conversation considers, mixes up and takes out of the box many ideas, from which new permutations can evolve and of which the best can be chosen to forge suitable strategies for Bermuda.

We achieve this by listening and acknowledging the merits of ideas other than our own. We achieve this by insisting on finding the humanity and goodwill in each other.

There are at least two approaches to the economic growth that Bermuda desperately needs: population influx and increases in productivity. Both are valid. While population influx is the easier and more obvious approach, the value of increasing productivity should not be ignored. However, we cannot engage in a widespread, substantive conversation about the components and implications of each approach without a serious change in the way we talk with each other.

If proponents of the population-influx theory are not open to the mere possibility that other approaches are also valid, we are doomed to settle on less-than-optimal strategies. Proponents of this theory cannot sit at the table as equals if they castigate all who question them as emotional, irresponsible, inferior thinkers who do not love Bermuda and who do not have a clue about how the economy works.

If proponents of comprehensive immigration reform operate only from the lens of feeling cornered and embattled, then they cannot see beyond ego and personality to focus creatively on issues and ideas — as Eva Hodgson has urged. They must be willing to suspend the perception that critics can only ever be enemies and that are all arrogant, uncaring, myopic, kneejerk, greedy, not strategic and wilfully blind to Bermuda’s history.

Encounters that disdain, dismiss and demonise ensure only that people retreat into their corners, cement their views, dig into their trenches, batten down the hatches — and whatever other metaphors describe a hardened refusal to engage.

Such encounters are reactive rather than productive. They are about war, not the future. They are about power, not community. Just like hardening of the arteries, the hardening of our communication today will choke the oxygen of innovation, block the lifeblood of our commitment to Bermuda and risk degeneration of our community for decades to come.

A real conversation requires everyone to make Herculean efforts to draw upon individual and collective humility and courage. This entails putting our own entrenched views on hold ... for just a moment. It means recognising that each of us has something to learn.

Ultimately, it means working together towards a common horizon. If South Africa can do it, why on earth can’t we?

• Arlene Brock was the Ombudsman for Bermuda from 2005 to 2014