I too live in an organization that does not understand dialogue, but they
THINK they accept it. By this I mean the they think they are dialoguing
when they aren't. I commonly hear people say "we had good dialogue on
that" or "we dialogued in the hall this morning" when they really just had
a conversation. With frivolous use of the term many people think that
dialogue is just another piece of jargon.
I try to clarify things by clearly calling attention to dialogue when we
do it and clarifying why we are doing it and how this will be different
from conversation.
I use it selectively. Dialogue can be a real time waster when you do it
everywhere, and leadership hates time wasters. I still find lot's of
opportunities to use it. Here are some guidelines I find helpful in
deciding when dialogue may be helpful:
1. When it is important enough to be sure (difficult decisions)
2. When you are stuck
3. When in conflict
4. When you are interested in exploring/learning from other viewpoints
I've found it important to keep in mind that the real value is in using
dialogue skills productively, not creating the ideal dialogue session. If
you can use and model dialogue skills, helping your organization
accomplish things it could not before, leadership will start to take more
interest.
You might want to read chapter 57 Skillful Discussion in the Fifth
Discipline Fieldbook. It give some good how-to's.
Don, could you say more about what kinds of things you experience in your
organization that lead you to your conclusions? (Maybe we could get a
deeper understanding of the situation by using some dialogue skills
online)
-- Bill Eureka <Bernou11i@aol.com>