On Monday, a group of us met at the Sunshine Academy in Vredehoek, here in Cape Town to do what was essentially a lab experiment. The tools for Dialogue have been around for a little while, having emerged around the 1950’s, but when it comes to utilising them, it’s quite another matter. For the most part, the tools have been expounded upon in books, articles and some long blogs ;) whereas, they are best utilized by experientially testing them out in conversation, where they hold *I think* huge possibility. That said, I hope you’ll bear with me, because I’m about to launch into the challenging task of written verbalization for those who would have liked to be there, but couldn’t or for your interest, if this is the first time you’re hearing about it.
So, wtf is Dialogue anyway?? Simply, Dialogue is a collection of conversational tools designed to intervene into the way we currently discuss things. Our predominant way of discussing things is through debate, where we take positions and try to sway others to our way of thinking. The person with the greatest ability to sway others to their way of thinking, usually holds the greatest power in the particular organisation or instance and others are invariably left feeling wounded, minimized, misunderstood or disengaged because their thinking has not been considered. This is our current human condition. We are socialized to win. The automatic cost is that others must therefore lose, as we stand on each other’s heads to progress up the various rungs in our society. The tools for Dialogue provide a way to attempt to slow down these win-lose style debates, to learn what is really going on. So, in what way are we currently not learning? In the sense that every conversation is an opportunity to understand someone else’s perspective, but usually we are having conversations where we do not listen to each other at all. In fact, whilst the other party is speaking, we are usually ‘reloading’ with our next point. Most of us are also treating others, as though we have a shared basic meaning. But if you drill down, this is usually not so. In fact, 6 billion people in the world, 6 billion perspectives. When we assume that we’re on the same page, we make an error in perception. Through the use of Dialogical tools, we can try to find out what is actually going on.
The part we’re excited about in a Huddlemind context, is the potential to have learning conversations. As for me, I’d love to have conversations where I’m understanding others and being understood in turn. I’m also eager to have some meaty conscious discussions with others. So with all this in mind, on Monday, we took the tools for Inquiry for a spin, starting with a look at the ladder of inference. Jumping into the thick of it, this is how the ladder works (read from bottom up):
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7. I take actions based on my beliefs.
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6. I adopt beliefs about the world.
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5. I draw conclusions.
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4. I make assumptions based on the meanings I added.
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3. I add meanings (cultural and personal)
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2. I select data from what I observe
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1. I observe data and experiences (as a videotape recorder might capture it)
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Let’s bring it to a practical level, and look at an example of how it works:
- The meeting was called for 9am and Peter came in at 09:30. He didn’t say why.
- Peter knew exactly when the meeting was to start. He deliberately came in late.
- Peter came in deliberately late because he’s unhappy that I received the promotion. I bet he was on the applicants list and wanted it.
- I can’t work with Peter on my team, he’s going to undermine me in my new position.
From this we can see how a story is being built up. Take a look at where it is in your own life that you’re making inferences and building stories. Everytime you receive fresh information, keep in mind that there could be any number of things the data could mean. Then, inquiry comes in. Applying inquiry, you can ask: “When you said x, what did you mean?” or “When you took x action, what was your reason?” This gives us the opportunity to understand others and learn about their real intentions and meanings. It can be amazingly freeing when we’re taking something personally, to find out that, actually Peter’s car broke down and he prefers to be a technical expert, because managing people is just so complex.
At any given time, we could be making inferences, so if you’re wondering when this tool is applicable, the answer is all the time…
The Dialogue we’re having a look at is being facilitated as an Intervention. What this means is there’s an attempt to do something differently, rather than adding another behaviour on top of what we already do. It also means that there is some current behaviour which we’re trying to intervene into, with a more positive behaviour. E.g. unsatisfactory conversations resulting in wounded, misunderstood peers. Then we do something differently. We make a set of agreements which enable us to engage in a way which results in shared understanding, engagement and learning. In this sense, Dialogue is fragile, because unless the agreements are honoured, the conversation easily reverts to winning and swaying others to our points of view. But what we’ve also seen, is that with the correct kinds of agreements, we can have some pretty robust conversations putting even aspects of our background conversation on the table for examination and re-interpretation. This is where learning really takes place.
So, what’s next? We had such a super response from people wanting to attend our first group dialogue that we have enough people to create another Dialogue group. On 25 Feb, we’ll be exploring the Art of Inquiry with the 2nd group, eager to see what this next emerging discussion is going to hold. We’re also working on some other offerings and will keep Huddlemind members posted about those via our website.
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