Anecdote: The importance of dialogue

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10/07/06 |

The importance of dialogue

By Mark. Filed in Complexity, Sensemaking.

Shawn’s series of posts on finding expertise has reminded me of one of my favourite quotes: an anthropologist’s description of an agricultural North American tribe from David Bohm’s book On Dialogue:

From time to time, (the) tribe (gathered) in a circle. They just talked and talked and talked, apparently to no purpose. They made no decisions. There was no leader. And everybody could participate. There may have been wise men or wise women that were listened to a bit more - the older ones - but everybody could talk. The meeting went on, until it finally seemed to stop for no reason at all and the group dispersed. Yet after that, everybody seemed to know what to do, because they understood each other so well. They could get together in smaller groups and do something or decide things.

Dialogue provides shared meaning and empowers people. With the number of meetings in most organisations it is not unreasonable that we should expect high levels of shared meaning and empowerment…but this doesn’t appear to be the case. What is it that prevents our meetings from enabling us to engage in dialogue?

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