Incivility Is Everywhere. Now is the Time for Conversational Intelligence.
Incivility is everywhere. You feel it in workplace meetings that devolve into defensiveness. You see it in online discussions where understanding is drowned out by outrage. You experience it in the growing distance between people who should be able to talk, but can't seem to listen.
The numbers tell a sobering story: 69% of us distrust government leaders, 68% distrust business leaders, and 70% distrust the media. In the workplace, incivility costs organizations $14,000 per employee annually. Meanwhile, 70% of digital transformation initiatives fail not because of technology, but because of human factors—our inability to navigate the emotional complexity of change together.
This is the world CivilTalk was created to address.
The Insight That Started Everything
CivilTalk's founders recognized something crucial: we weren't facing a knowledge problem. We were facing a behavioral one. People don't lack opinions—they lack the conversational skills to share them productively. They don't need more information—they need better ways to engage with the information that already exists.
More fundamentally, they saw two forces converging in ways that demanded a new response. First, the rising tide of incivility fueled by social media platforms optimized for engagement over understanding. Second, the rapid advancement of AI technology without corresponding development of the emotional intelligence needed to use it responsibly.
The gap was clear: emotional intelligence and civility were acknowledged as essential life skills, yet there was no systematic way to develop them in real-world conversations, particularly in the digital spaces where most human interaction now occurs.
A Different Kind of AI
What makes CivilTalk unique is what it refuses to do. Clarion AI, CivilTalk's core technology, doesn't generate content. It doesn't edit conversations. It doesn't moderate, judge, or enforce. It doesn't change your words or implications. Your content remains yours, completely unchanged.
Instead, Clarion AI observes. Think of it as a mirror with depth perception—one that reflects not just what was said, but the emotional intelligence (or lack thereof) behind how it was said. Clarion AI timestamps moments of civility, surfaces where consensus emerged even amid emotional intensity, identifies the positions different participants presented, and reframes moments of incivility to show more effective approaches. It provides insight without control, and context without distortion.
This is the synthesis CivilTalk offers: AI + EI = CI. Artificial Intelligence combined with Emotional Intelligence to build Conversational Intelligence—the understanding of how conversations actually unfold, and the skills to make them civil and productive.
The Framework That Makes It Work
Clarion AI doesn't operate in a vacuum. It observes conversational behavior through a comprehensive framework that combines CivilTalk's Emotional Intelligence Model with insights shared in the CivilTalk Blog.
The EI Model focuses on behavior, not belief, identifying the specific conversational patterns that either build or break connection: how people manage their own emotions, recognize emotions in others, navigate disagreement, and create space for understanding even in heated exchanges.
The Blog complements this model by offering practical wisdom about civility, emotional intelligence, and responsible AI use—providing the conceptual foundation and actionable guidance that helps people think more clearly, engage more constructively, and choose civility in their own conversations.
Together, this framework gives Clarion AI the lens through which to observe and analyze conversational content.
Importantly, we practice what we preach. CivilTalk uses Clarion AI to observe our own Podcasts and Sessions, generating Conversational Intelligence Reports that become learning tools for our audience. When you watch a CivilTalk Session on a challenging topic or listen to a podcast conversation, you can see the Clarion AI analysis that reveals exactly where civility created connection, where emotional intelligence navigated tension, and where conversational skills turned potential conflict into productive dialogue.
From Platform to Movement
CivilTalk originally launched in the education market as part of an emotional intelligence initiative, recognizing that institutions needed to prepare students not just with technical knowledge but with the soft skills that account for 85% of job success. Over two years of refinement with students, faculty, and staff, the platform evolved from an educational tool into something more comprehensive.
Today, CivilTalk operates as a next-generation media company with three interconnected properties:
Sessions brings multiple perspectives together on challenging topics—from masculinity and femininity to race, politics, and social change—demonstrating how disagreement can be productive, respectful, and fundamentally human.
The Podcast features one-on-one conversations with thought leaders, psychologists, educators, and innovators who model civil exploration of complex ideas.
The Blog offers insights on civility, emotional intelligence, and responsible AI—written to help people think clearly, engage constructively, and choose civility in every interaction. These insights form part of the framework that informs Clarion AI's observations.
The Podcasts and Sessions generate conversational content that Clarion AI analyzes, creating Conversational Intelligence Reports that demonstrate real-world application of the CivilTalk framework and serve as learning tools for anyone wanting to develop their own conversational skills.
What Success Looks Like
CivilTalk doesn't measure success by the number of conversations moderated or the conflicts prevented. It measures success by something more fundamental: when conversational intelligence becomes habit.
When people naturally manage emotional dynamics with intention—improving civility, clarity, and productivity in their interactions. When difficult topics are engaged constructively through understanding rather than coercion. When the choice to be civil becomes second nature rather than an afterthought.
This is experiential learning at its most powerful. Not lectures about how to communicate better, but real conversations analyzed through the lens of emotional intelligence, showing exactly where civility created connection and where its absence created distance.
In a World Driven by Speed, Outrage, and Polarization
Choosing how we show up matters more than ever.
CivilTalk exists to support that choice—in everyday interactions, online and in person, at work, in communities, and in public discourse. It brings emotional intelligence and responsible AI together to help people pause, reflect, and engage with intention.
Not to create perfect conversations, but to make good conversations more common. Not to eliminate disagreement, but to make disagreement productive. Not to force civility through moderation, but to develop it through awareness and practice.
The vision is both simple and revolutionary: a world where conversational intelligence is as fundamental as reading and writing. Where people can disagree deeply while still treating each other with dignity. Where AI serves human connection rather than replacing it.
This is the CivilTalk story—a story that's still being written in every conversation that chooses understanding over outrage, in every moment of civility that becomes a habit, in every person who realizes their civility matters.
Because in a world where trust is eroding and divisions are deepening, the conversations we have—and how we have them—might be the most important work we do.
Your civility matters. Now we have the tools to make it count.
Ready to see how Clarion AI can transform your conversations? Upload your audio or video content to receive your Conversational Intelligence Report, or explore CivilTalk's Sessions and Podcasts to see conversational intelligence in action.