Dialogue is the best way to become effective in your business communication. Dialogue is a way to rediscover and nurture connections with others, addressing some of the fragmentation you experience in modern life. Dialogue will improve your interpersonal relationships and foster an environment of appreciation. You can then listen and be listened to, ready to go into new territory.
How to use the guidelines for dialogue
The building blocks and behavioral guidelines outlined below are concepts that form a scaffolding for Dialogue. Like the scaffolding used in construction to aid in the initial stages of building, they are meant to help provide a safe environment where the process of dialogue can unfold.
Rather than a set of rules, you might think of them as reminders of the level of attention which lies at the core of Dialogue. Attention to your thinking, feelings, communication, assumptions and judgments. Attention to the unfolding meaning of the group. Attention to the spirit of inquiry and the pauses for reflection that lead to learning and understanding.
Held lightly, these guidelines and building blocks will help you enter into Dialogue. Held too firmly, they will trap you in just one more structure and limiting system. Dialogue is a living process and requires the willingness of all participants to be open. You need to let go of the known in order to discover new perspectives and understanding. You need to be willing to give up your ideas of who you are to discover all you may become.
So, by all means, use these guidelines to help you begin your exploration of Dialogue, and in each moment, be prepared to release them and let your attention guide you to the next level of learning.
Definition
Dialogue: A cycle of conversation that encourages change through a process that allows new ways of understanding and making sense to emerge. It can lead to higher-quality collective thinking and real transformation.
Dialogue comes from two Greek words dia meaning across or through, and logos meaning word or study. The image that this derivation suggests is a stream of meaning flowing among us, through us, and between us.
When we engage in Dialogue we let meaning come up from the group. People can learn to reflect and talk together, even in the heat of challenging moments. They can explore the hidden meanings, assumptions, values, traps, voices, and forces of their interactions.
When you partake in dialogue, you engage your whole being in an active living relationship with others. The relationship is full of possibilities for newness, meaning-making, and understanding.
Dialogue requires a commitment to speak and listen more deliberately. This allows for deeper understanding to emerge and encourages a sense of shared meaning.
General Guidelines for Dialogue
Listening: How do you listen? What does it mean to you to hear someone? In Dialogue you should listen to hear meaning emerge both from individuals and from the group. You need to listen for common assumptions and for the voices that question those assumptions.
In listening you let meaning unfold in the conversation as a whole. You will then hear the shared meaning that can evolve only when many individual meanings are shared and heard.
The Chinese character for listen contains the sub characters one heart, eye and ear- all of which you must use to truly listen. Listening is the first step in making dialogue effective.
Honesty and sincerity: In dialogue you must speak the truth as you see it, be sincere. You have to assume that the other person is also sincere and telling the truth. This develops trust. You can then engage in dialogue with confidence.
Awareness: The capacity to see the living processes that underlies all things. It is to become aware of yourself and the impact you have--right in the moment it occurs. It includes letting go, or "suspending" your certainty, to see things from another point of view.
With awareness you can entertain multiple points of view at once, even if they are opposed or in contradiction with one another.
Suspension: Means that you stop your assumptions from interfering with your listening. You neither suppress what you think nor advocate it. In the words of Isaacs, you “change directions, stop, step back, see things with new eyes.”
You allow differences to be present – not moving immediately to agreement or debate, but developing the skill for bridging across the diversity of opinions, assumptions, backgrounds and ideas.
The word suspend comes from the Latin root suspendere, which means "to hang below." It has to do with drawing out, or stretching. It refers to displaying your thinking in a way that lets you and others see and understand.
When you practice suspending your judgments, you learn to hold your opinions lightly. You consciously open yourself to hearing and understanding each person's point of view. You create a space between your judgments and your reactions so that you can hear the other person in a new way. This is key to building a climate of trust and safety in a group.
Identifying Assumptions: Your assumptions play a large part in how you view the world and behave towards others. Yet assumptions are often invisible. Your assumptions are so habituated that you "know" the world agrees with them.
Inquiry and Reflection: When you are unclear about what someone means, you ask a question. In Dialogue the intent of questions is twofold. One purpose is to draw the other out in a safe and supportive way. More importantly, questions allow for digging deeply into ideas and perspectives that are novel.
Questions can give room for reflection and develop the understanding of the entire group. Questions should never belittle or criticize. They are instead a way to learn and understand.
Learning to identify our assumptions allows us to see the world in a new light. By identifying your assumptions you learn to build common ground and consensus. You learn to respect others and their contributions, regardless of the fact that these contributions may contradict things you have long held to be true.
Mutuality: In dialogue, there is a mutual search for understanding. Each regards the other as a partner in a shared inquiry. You see your partner in conversation as someone whose point of view is valued, someone with whom to explore the familiar and develop the new.
You are open to the possibility that the meanings of one may cause those of the other to be revised or changed. The conversation develops together. Yet, everyone is individually responsible for whatever they feel is needed and relevant.
A Safe Space: You can’t change human behavior by command, resolve, or even good intentions. But you can create a safe, holding environment for a group of people. When people feel safe, they can be more aware of their thinking, their conversations, their interrelationships, and their potential for better action. This is what Isaacs calls "a strong container."
Growth through crisis: As you address difficult issues, the crises that break out are essential parts of your development. You learn from them and build with them. You need to stay with the dialogue until a new level of understanding develops.
The magic of dialogue occurs when a group wanders into new territory - discovers new meaning - that can only be discovered by the entire group. This is meaning that no individual formed alone - rather it flows from the group as a whole. For the group, this can be a powerful experience because it is the creation of shared meaning. Creating shared meaning is a step toward creating community and working collaboratively.
You too can learn to use the magic of dialogue for more effective business communication. To find out more, click here.Selected Quotes about Dialogue
Fragmentation is like a virus that has infected every field of human endeavor. Dialogue’s purpose is to create a setting where conscious collective mindfulness can be maintained. -David Bohm
Dialogue is a process in which one can experience the connectedness and wholeness that is always present, yet is mostly invisible. -Sarita Chawla
Dialogue is a mode of exchange among human beings in which there is a true turning to one another, and a full appreciation of another not as an object in a social function, but as a genuine being. -Martin Buber
Through dialogue we learn how to engage our hearts. Dialogue provides a means by which we can learn to maintain our equilibrium, cultivating a mature range of perception and sensibility. It let us reconnect and revitalize our emotional capacity because it compels us to suspend our habitual reactions and frozen thoughts. Dialogue requires that we take responsibility for thinking, not merely reacting, lifting us into a more conscious state. -William Isaacs
Dialogue is a shared inquiry, a process of forming, saying, and expanding the unsaid and the yet-to-be-said--the development of new meanings, themes, narratives, and histories--from which new descriptions may arise. -Harlene Anderson