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The Magic of Dialogue: a Book Review through the lens of Personal Leadership
The Magic of Dialogue: Transforming Conflict into Cooperation
By Daniel Yankelovich
Those of you who know the process of ‘dialogue’ a la David Bohm may already be familiar with Yankelovich’s book. All of us who practice Personal Leadership (PL) will find it a good companion and informative to our journeys.
First of all, for those of you new to ‘dialogue’ per Yankelovich, let us make a distinction between what he is discussing when he uses the word ‘dialogue’ and the way that we use the word within PL. Yankelovich is discussing a process for dialoguing between people; Personal Leadership, and more particularly the Critical Moment Dialoguesm (CMD), is specifically discussing a process for dialoguing with one’s self. To keep clear which we’re talking about in this review, when we use the word ‘dialogue’ in lower case and alone, we’re talking about the process that Yankelovich is discussing. When we specify ‘inner dialogue’ or CMD, we’re obviously talking about the PL process.
We’re organizing what follows into two major sections:
- A Book Review. Here we’ll walk you though the way Yankelovich has laid out The Magic of Dialogue and present some of the key ideas in each section.
- The Relationship Between Dialogue and Personal Leadership. Now we’ll discuss how the two processes differ, parallel, inform, and compliment one another. We’ll include in this section some specific ideas Yankelovich shares about the mechanics of dialogue and discuss the PL application of each.
A Book Review
The Magic of Dialogue is written in three sections: “The Will to Do It,” “The Skill to Do It” and “The Broader Uses of Dialogue.”
The Will To Do It: In this first section, Yankelovich speaks about the absolute necessity of dialogue in our world and offers a selected history of dialogue, focusing on the work of the physicist David Bohm as well as the MIT (Massachusetts’s Institute of Technology) approaches of Peter Senge and William Issacs.
He suggests that some of the forces, in the business setting, that intensify the need for dialogue include:
- The erosion of authority and hierarchy in the workplace in favor of flatter organizations
- The need to stimulate the maximum amount of creativity and innovation and
- The need to form strategic alliances between different corporate cultures, traditions and structures
The Skill To Do It: In the book’s second section, Yankelovich offers strategies for engaging in dialogue. He begins with what makes dialogue, first providing the, by now, rather standard distinction between debate and dialogue. He points out such differences as:
- Assuming that there is a right answer and that you have it VS assuming that many people have pieces of the answer and that they can together craft a solution
- Focus on winning VS focus on exploring common ground
- Defending assumptions as truth VS revealing assumptions for re-evaluation
- Defending your views against those of others VS admitting that your thinking can improve.
Acknowledging that ‘discussion’ can be more difficult to differentiate from dialogue than debate, he offers three necessary features of dialogue. When any one of the following three is missing, it is “some other kind of talk but not dialogue.”
- Equality and the absence of coercive influences
- Listening with empathy
- Bringing assumptions into the open
The third feature, bringing assumptions into the open is, Yankelovich feels, the most striking difference between dialogue and discussion. When dialogue is done skillfully, we learn how to respond to our assumptions coming into the open without needing to defend them/ourselves and without giving in to the anxiety that can arise when our deeply held beliefs are challenged.
The Broader Uses of Dialogue: In this section of the book, Yankelovich becomes political, socially conscious and uses a big-picture view. If you are one who is familiar with the mechanics of dialogue, and you choose to read this book, we suggest going straight to this section.
He suggests that we are living at a time in which there are three major ‘fault lines’ in our culture that lie deep beneath the surface. Dialogue can well ‘compensate’ for these. (Chapters 9– 14) These three are:
- The tendency to depersonalize people, to distance ourselves from each other. Dialogue can assist in moving this ‘I-IT’ relationship into an ‘I-Thou’ relationship (to use the language of Martin Buber).
- The tendency to fragment into subcultures quite removed from each other so that we aggregate into ‘silos.’ Dialogue obviously can create bridges and connection.
- The tendency of the nations’s elites to be separate from the general public. Dialogue can assist leaders and their constituencies to shift the focus from one-way top-down talk to mutual engagement.
Regarding this last point, Yankelovich spends a good bit of time discussing the importance of dialogue “as a lever for moving our society forward toward new forms of public engagement.” Achievement of this goal must surmount a major obstacle, namely the “resistance of elites to doing dialogue with the public.” He names the sources of this resistance as the fear of loss of status and power and the elite’s conviction that the ‘ill-formed public’ can make no significant contribution to the shaping of public policy.
While this may be true in the cases in which this public has not significantly thought about the issue, it is his opinion that “one of dialogue’s great strengths is that it gives people the best possible opportunity to come to grips with issues.” (Pg. 175) Yankelovich clearly advocates dialogue as a ‘path to public judgement.’
The last chapter of the book is entitled, “The Struggle for the Soul of America.” It is challenging to summarize for it is so rich. As a researcher and a polltaker, Yankelovich has been collecting and synthesizing public opinion for many years. He suggests that “what the majority of Americans want is to “civilize” our market economy, to curb its destructive tendencies, to find a way to balance enterprise with the spirit of community and to realize our deepest spiritual values.”
Dialogue can affect this indirectly as it has a ‘civilizing’ influence. It binds us together as communities and strengthens values of civil society such as trust, cooperation and working from common ground. More directly, dialogue enhances respect and acceptance of one another. Engaging in dialogue really does teach us to deeply listen to each other, examine our closely held ‘scripts’ and look with respect at all views of a situation. Mastery of dialogue has the power, and the magic, to move our civilization a giant step forward.
While Yankelovich’s focus is on the broader use of dialogue within the United States, much of what he says is applicable to other countries, certainly to the industrialized world, and absolutely to players on the global stage.
The Relationship Between Dialogue And Personal Leadership
The relationship between dialogue and Personal Leadership may becoming clear to you, even if you are new to the process of dialogue itself. We’ve organized why we think dialogue is relevant to PL into four sections: ‘Keys to Success,’ ‘The Challenge of Practicing,’ ‘The Benefits of Practicing,’ and ‘The Mechanics of Practicing.’
Keys to Success
Of course, as we all know, a core element of PL is the ‘Critical Moment Dialogue’ (CMD). The CMD can be conducted in at least three ways. First and foremost, the CMD is an inner, private dialogue that one has with one’s self. It can also occur in the presence of another, in which case the ‘other’ serves as a witness to one’s private dialogue. It is also possible, as we know from the PL Training of Trainers seminar in March 2004, to lead a group CMD focusing on issues which affect everyone in the group.
In all of these variations, there are several common ‘keys to success.’ These include both the willingness and the ability to:
- Bring forth and clearly see one’s own assumptions about the issue at hand,
- Allow and value surprises and insights that are completely unexpected,
- Place all expectations and desires in the background so that one can listen deeply,
- Be completely honest about personal feelings, sensations and the meaning of emotions,
- Let all meaning and information about the situation at hand construct itself rather than actively engage in constructing the meaning and
- Engage one’s observing self, or witness, so that reactions to the outcomes of the CMD as it unfolds do not block the full completion of the inner dialogue.
Obviously, these keys to CMD success are very much aligned with that which makes for a successful group dialogue as well. It would seem that whether the dialogue is internal or external, the guiding tenets are parallel.
The Challenge of Practicing
“Chewing gum is simple; it is both easy to understand and easy to do. Dialogue is neither easy to understand nor easy to do.... At the present stage of our history, the ability to conduct dialogue is a marginal skill that only a tiny handful of people do well, a large number of organizations do poorly and most people do not do at all because they do not recognize the need for it.”
The experience of holding a general dialogue with group of engineers, statisticians or even the most heart-centered social workers can be challenging. The challenge comes from how unfamiliar it is for people to not only identify deep assumptions and suspend judgments but to conceive of why doing so is valuable in the first place. It is hard for many to see the value in a conversation that seems to go nowhere and have no real outcome. They typically think that it is far better just to get on with the problem solving or the solution finding than to waste time in what can seem like ‘navel gazing.’
There is a parallel here with PL. It is not uncommon for newcomers to PL to be quite dubious about the value of such an introspective stance. Once people start exploring the CMD, however, just as once people have a well-facilitated experience of dialogue, the benefits of the practice begin to make sense.
The CMD is a core process in PL that supports us to return over and over again to our highest and best, to a fully embodied experience of ‘holding presence.’ As many PL practitioners have said, the more we do the practice the more obvious the benefits become.
As the CMD is used there arises, repeatedly, a personal validity testifying to the benefits of the internal dialogue. Over time, there is less need to convince new practitioners of the value of such a dialogue; they acquire the personal experience of their anger perhaps shifting to peacefulness, their sadness to gratitude and their confusion to knowledge about the next steps.
What’s striking is that while people may at first be resistant to the introspection of PL, they are rarely resistant to the CMD itself. Unlike with the external process of dialogue, the inner dialogue of the CMD seems to be an easy bridge to cross. Why might that be? What is it about the CMD that softens resistance and invites even dubious newcomers into an internal dialogue in a welcoming way?
It seems to matter greatly that the CMD is set within the context of mindfulness and creativity. It also seems important that PL—and the practice of the CMD—is framed by the power of that simple question that we all are presented with in the early moments of PL work. “Who are we at our highest and best as we navigate across differences at home and at worl?” This suggests a very critical point: the CMD is seen as a vehicle to get somewhere that the practitioner wishes to go.
Of course, the interest in and commitment to hold a dialogue is just the first step. As the need for dialogue is more understood, there then arises the challenge of actually practicing the skills.
The Benefits of Practicing
Thanks to many who have been practicing PL, we are developing a nice collection of personal stories illustrating the very real-time benefits of cultivating the PL practices and applying the CMD as it fits the particular situation at hand. Most recently, the following comments were offered:
“I am becoming a better practitioner of listening and dialogue instead of exchanging opinions, which was the way I did conversations before.
“I’m able to stay in the moment. I’m able to ask practical questions that shed light on the underlying assumptions, both theirs and mine that are at play. I’m also more able to stay open to possibilities that do not present themselves while viewing a situation from only one angle.
“So I guess I’m saying that the work one does with people whose ways are different and unfamiliar to us is an exiting crossroads of new knowledge created in a raw and creative way and both people will walk away with a richer and deeper understanding of themselves and have a brand new solution or project that neither of them thought possible while working on it alone.”
This illustrates both individual and collective benefits that can arise when we take a learning orientation and focus on inquiry as a primary process.
In a similar way, Yankelovitch addresses the benefits of dialogue; at one particular point he refers to the writing of the late philosopher Hannah Arendt as she tells us about the value of ‘representative thinking.’
“In dialogue, I present my own unique way of looking at an issue. I then heed your way of looking at it. A third and fourth and fifth participant in the dialogue present their perspectives. The judgment of all is enriched by their ability to incorporate all the varied perspectives. We are mutually engaged in representative thinking.
“When people who share a common purpose do dialogue, each participant develops a depth of perspective that is not possible when the issue is examined from a single point of view... judgments add up to something more than a collection of random opinions. Such truth seeking is a joint endeavor in which we actively pool our collective wisdom. The truth of how to live together can, Arendt argues, be gained only by representing reality from this kind of variety of perspectives.”
Obviously the benefits described by the PL practitioner and those offered about dialogue by Yankelovich and Arendt are quite similar.
The Mechanics of Practicing
PL’s CMD and dialogue have some interesting similarities and differences to contemplate in their basic mechanics. As we’ve already noted, a major difference is in the actual focus of the practice. PL suggests that we become very skilled in the internal and personal application of dialogue. Yankelovich only describes and lauds the effects of dialogue with others. While dialogue is an external process always involving others, the CMD is an internal process sometimes involving others.
It is important to note that Yankelovich’s fifth chapter is entitled ‘Transforming Casual Encounters Through Dialogue.’ Here he suggests that “most dialogues do not take place in committees but in an immense variety of encounters.” In these ‘spontaneous dialogues’ the keys are constant readiness, the identification and offering of one’s own assumptions, very careful listening to the other, treating the other as an equal and building an atmosphere of trust. Yankelovich says that dialogue is a lost art and that few of us are ready for such spontaneous dialogues at the grocery store or with our neighbor or spouse.
As PL practitioners, we would suggest that the ability to dialogue within ourselves is a great complement—and perhaps even a great preparation—for the ability to recognize and seize opportunities for such in-the-moment dialogue with others.
Another difference between dialogue and PL’s CMD is that Yankelovich does not suggest the use of designated questions to guide a particular dialogue. The CMD, on the other hand, offers specific questions that we can explore as we go through our inner questioning. It’s important to remember, however, that these questions are offers, not strictures. They are to be used only if we find them useful. Many PL practitioners tell us that they change the order of the questions and that the questions sometimes seem to collapse, in both time and sequence, as the practice becomes more familiar. We also know that some of the questions in the CMD become ‘favorites’ because they seem to consistently open doors to new or surprising information.
As mentioned earlier, in March 2004 at the PL Training of Trainers, we used the CMD as a group to address a common issue. The designated leader took the group through all the questions. It was a very useful way to elicit a range of perspectives and opinions. The group members felt a greater sense of ‘togetherness’ at completion, and we all had new ideas to individually address the matter at hand. To the extent that the group CMD became a bit tedious for some, it re-affirmed that in our individual practices of the CMD we necessarily use the questions more selectively—that, in fact, with each distinct use we make the CMD process our own.
One of the most profound similarities in the mechanics of PL and dialogue practices is summarized in something Yankelovich emphasizes about dialogue: “Dialogue, in any venue, does not happen automatically. You have to make it happen.” (Pg. 76) As PL practitioners, we know this also about PL—it doesn’t just happen, we have to choose to make it happen. That is why, in PL language, we use the words “critical moment’ to name the internal dialogue. It’s not that the situation is critical, it’s that the choice point is critical—the choice to engage the particular moment with intention, mindfulness and creativity.
Yankelovich makes some suggestions about ensuring effective dialogue that pertain well to PL and the CMD. Several stand out; we summarize them here, with their PL/CMD application.
‘Dialogue and Decision-Making Do Not Mix’
PL/CMD APPLICATION: The purpose of the CMD is ultimately to facilitate us in ‘discerning right action’ and to sustain us or return us as necessary to the state of being energized and at our highest and best. It is critical to separate engaging in the CMD from the ultimate step of discernment. If this does not happen, the process of the CMD can be short-circuited and potential value lost. The practice of PL is in total agreement with Yankelovich’s assertion to separate dialogue from decision-making.
In many cases, decision-making follows dialogue because dialogue creates a climate for effective decision-making. That is, those involved will have heard many perspectives, have examined their own opinions and will have heard from the heads and the hearts of all in the group. The two processes are so different however that, if not kept separate, they can easily undermine each other. Without a skilled dialogue facilitator to help participants set and hold the intention of dialogue, an interaction slated to be a dialogue can easily slide into decision-making. If this happens, it is almost impossible to return to true dialogue.‘Err on the Side of Including People Who Disagree’
PL/CMD APPLICATION: When we are engaging in our own inner dialogue, this strategy reminds us to let all our opinions and voices be present. We must not be swept away by the loudest voice, the most logical, the most emotional nor the most quiet.
The power of dialogue does not come in preaching to the converted; the power arises as people with very different perspectives begin to deeply listen to each other, and to themselves.‘Expose old scripts to a reality check.’
PL/CMD APPLICATION: One of the most important opportunities in doing inner dialogue is to fully welcome the surprise and insights that we never could have imagined. In truth, it may be that the more unusual and unexpected the insight, the more we can trust that it is not a replay of the script we have spent years perfecting.
“Each of us sees the world from our highly conditioned perspectives: the web of beliefs, values, assumptions and customs that have shaped our views over decades.” (Pg. 108) These become hardened into scripts, unless we hold the parchment up to the light and see through it.‘Focus on common interests, not divisive ones.’
PL/CMD APLICATION: Remember that the CMD is set within the context of a guiding vision. Our visions have been carefully developed by each of us because of their power to remind us of the energy, the condition of mind/heart/hara (Japanese, meaning ‘gut-level’ knowing), the ‘state’ we wish to hold as we go about our business in the world. Our vision is the beacon that keeps us focused on our own personal ‘common interest’ when the tendency to diverge is strong. Of course, our visions are also dynamic and must evolve. We can tell the difference between when it is appropriate to align with our existing vision and when it is time to change the vision. We notice this difference by the quality of the change we are drawn towards. An integral change is more likely to be authentic than a superficial divergence from our particular path.
In any group dialogue, participants have their own interests to protect and move forward. There may be hidden agendas supporting a focus on these. So, keep the focus on the common purpose.
Conclusion
As Yankelovich describes the essential elements of dialogue, we can see the clear parallels with the CMD processes. His comments about dialogue as an external process offer us broader understanding and deeper trust in the consequences of our internal dialogue.
We also see the power that PL and the CMD have to offer those committed to practicing and facilitating group dialogue. It seems clear that dialogue engaged by people who are also skilled with the CMD will be a much facilitated dialogue!
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Copyright 2006. Sheila J. Ramsey, Barbara F. Schaetti and Gordon C. Watanabe DBA Personal Leadership Seminars
“Personal Leadership: Making a World of Difference” and the “Critical Moment Dialogue,,” are service marks (sm) owned by Sheila J. Ramsey, Barbara F. Schaetti, and Gordon C. Watanabe, DBA Personal Leadership Seminars. Where abbreviations for these phrases are used (for example, “Personal Leadership,” “Personal Leadership Seminars,” “PL Seminars,” “PL”, and “CMD”), it is understood that they are used in the context of these service marks. All right reserved, 2006.
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