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We’re hearing a common theme as teams design their future: “How can we improve our capability of ‘listening to understand our differences’ and together build a future?” Our current study centers on the process of dialogue.
Dialogue and the art of thinking together
by William Isaacs
Isaacs outlines a powerful set of practical tools and practices that address the problem of thinking together. His focus is two-fold — developing a personal capability to listen, as well as developing group capabilities to talk together in honest and effective ways.
Most individuals can't seem to recognize the undercurrents beneath the surface of their conversations, undercurrents that can bring people together or tear them apart. At the same time, however, this is not merely an individual problem. It can’t be “cured” merely by self-help programs or energetic corporate change initiatives. It is a symptom of a larger set of fragmenting forces not just resident in the body politic but in the culture of humanity as a whole.
On Dialogue
by David Bohm
Dialogue as a process was conceived by Bohm, one of the foremost thinkers of the 20th century. His process explores a wide range of human experience — from our closely-held values to the nature and intensity of emotions; the patterns of our thought processes and the function of memory to the manner in which our neurophysiology structures experience moments of interaction. Bohm views thought as an inherently limited medium, rather than an objective representation of reality. The dialogic process explores how thought is generated and sustained on a collective level. It calls into question deeply-held assumptions about culture, meaning and identity.
In a dialogue… two people are making something in common, i.e., creating something new together. Such communication can lead to the creation of something new only if people are able freely to listen to each other, without prejudice, and without trying to influence each other. Each has to be interested primarily in truth and coherence, so that he is ready to drop his old ideas and intentions, and be ready to go on to something different, when this is called for. If, however, two people merely want to convey certain ideas or points of view to each other, as if these were items of information, then they must inevitably fail to meet. For each will hear the other through the screen of his own thoughts, which he tends to maintain and defend, regardless of whether or not they are true or coherent.
For more information, go to www.david-bohm.org
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