Dialogue for collaboration
Dialogue for collaboration
Bringing together stakeholders, people with a common interest but who do not necessarily share mind-sets or world views, can create an opportunity for reflecting on and questioning one’s own and others’ beliefs and assumptions. A prerequisite is that the space in which they meet is non-judgemental and indeed, appreciative.
Methods enabling this constructive communication to take place include Appreciative Inquiry, Deliberative Communication, and Appreciative Dialogue. Bohm Dialogue.
They can each be seen as a form of positive enquiry, as opposed to the negative enquiry that is central to most problem-solving approaches.
- Appreciative Inquiry rejects deficit-oriented thinking and embraces life-generating forces
- Deliberative Communication focuses on eliminating artificially imposed constraints
- Appreciative Dialogue offers a more empowering alternative to the commonly-used SWOT analysis
The power of these methods is in the learning opportunity they offer, leading to
- New perspectives on the patterns underlying perceived problems
- A wider selection of solutions
- Consensus-building around prioritised solutions
Learning — about and through language-based expressions of beliefs, thoughts, and actions — emerges from relationships. Through their day-to-day interactions, people co-construct the organisations, communities, and societies they co-inhabit, thus forming and reinforcing beliefs and assumptions. The dialogue methods outlined here make it possible to challenge those beliefs and assumptions in a non-threatening environment.
A conversation deficit
In a paper called ’Living Well on One Planet’, Mathis Wackernagel makes the point that we need much more discourse on the subject of sustainable development: ”We have a conversation deficit — the physical limiting factor is the regenerative capacity of the earth, but a societal limiting factor is the appetite for sustainability; it is essential to get people ‘hungry’, to build the appetite for sustainability, and the permission to make the decisions to work towards it.”
A related Basic Tool: Meaningful Conversation.