What a great title for a conference! Last week 80 of us, from across the world, gathered at Roffey Park in England to talk about the many ways organizations are using dialogue to address problems.
One of the most interesting was the prison system in Virginia, which is holding dialogue meetings that bring together prisoners, guards, probation officers, family, police, administrators and many others to improve the prison system. Jane Ball talked about it as the “Offenders Resettlement Journey” that helped everyone in the dialogue see how their role in that journey impacted other parts of an offender’s experience- a powerful dialogue.
Peter Hill explained how he brings the indigenous people of Canada together in dialogue with The Canada Border Services Agency to find ways to fulfill the Canadian government’s commitment to engage, respect, co-operate and partner with Indigenous Peoples.
Jonathan Drury told about an on-going dialogue among people who are autistic, that also includes family, and researchers. He called it “a safe, civilized, and mutually respectful way to engage with the subject and each other.”
Beth Macy talked about her work in nursing homes that brought together administrators, temporary workers and full-time employees to find ways to give better employment to low paid workers who must provide 24-hour care for patients.
Per Hilding explained how a municipality in Sweden used dialogue to help work teams become aware of their responsibility for setting goals in the organization.
The definitions of dialogue varied among the twenty examples, but all involved the four basic practices of:
- Voice (participants use their genuine and authentic voice)
- Listening (following what is meant and being able to paraphrase what was heard)
- Respect (for the person, their history and their situation; attending even when you disagree)
- Suspension (revealing your thinking so that the assumptions that you bring to the dialogue can be confirmed or corrected)
All were face-to-face dialogues, many meeting numerous times to achieve their goal.
This group of 80 practitioners, including myself, were convinced by these twenty examples, that when people come together in dialogue, even long-standing problems can be successfully addressed. Dialogue is not the answer but is a critical way to explore and co-create answers.
I’m always interested in how conferences are designed. How can we meet and learn from each other without endless PowerPoint presentations? The Academy of Professional Dialogue that sponsored this conference used many interesting design elements that made that possible:
- Leading up to the conference, a select group of 20 participants wrote papers about their dialogue work in organizations. The papers went through a thorough editing process and were made available to all the participants two weeks before the conference.
- Participants were asked to read the articles before coming to the conference so we could discuss them, rather than listening to presentations.
- The conference was limited to 80 people. That enabled us to get improve the discussions by getting to know each other. Over the three days, everyone was in more than one discussion with everyone else.
- We had time to reflect on what we were learning in “home teams” that met periodically and were comprised of six participants each.
- Four sessions (papers) were held concurrently with members of the home team attending different sessions. We had some choice of which sessions we attended, while still keeping participation relatively evenly divided among the four papers.
- The conference rotated between the paper discussions with 20 participants, full group meetings of the 80 participants sitting in concentric circles, and reflections in our home team of six.
For me, both because of the design and the topic, it was one of the best conferences I have participated in. I left renewed in my belief that The World Needs Dialogue.