Dialogue at Work

Citation

(1999), "Dialogue at Work", Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Vol. 20 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/lodj.1999.02220daf.001

Dialogue at Work

Nancy M. DixonLemos & Crane,London,1998,137 pp,ISBN I -898001-41-3£12.99 (paperback)

Keywords: Organizational learning, Face-to-face communication, Interpersonal skills training

Dialogue has become an increasingly important process in organisations in recent years, and has also been featured in the OD literature. Much of the written work on dialogue to date has been an extrapolation of the work of David Bohm. Nancy Dixon, whose previous book on organisational learning was well received, has now produced an accessible and readable book on dialogue at work.

After an Introductory chapter, Chapter 2, Talk and Development, reflects the underlying assumption of the book, which is that both individual and organisational development is dependent on how members of organisations engage with one another, particularly through talking. The author’s argument in this chapter is that development depends on people being able to act authentically when engaging with others.

Chapter 3, Five Perspectives on Dialogue for Development, presents five approaches to learning. Each approach is associated with the work of particular theorists. The first approach is the well-known organisational learning approach associated with Chris Argyris. Argyris’ focus on uncovering errors in reasoning and defensive routines is through combining advocacy with inquiry and subjecting one’s own reasoning to public testing. The second is David Bohm’s approach to dialogue which focuses on how to create shared understanding using minimally structured dialogue groups. The third approach is Jack Mezirow’s work on emancipatory adult learning which aims at freeing individuals from the distorting assumptions which come through institutions, such as corporations, education and government. The outcome is to be able to weigh evidence and assess arguments. The fourth approach is the work of David and Roger Johnson on cooperative productivity in which individuals encourage each other to achieve and complete tasks. The final approach in this chapter is the work of the Brazilian educationalist, Paulo Freire, and his work on liberation from the tacit assumptions which keep people oppressed, and enables people to talk in equal relationships without differentiating teaching and learning roles. In Chapter 4, the author provides her own synthesis of the five approaches described in the previous chapter. She defines dialogue as ‘‘a special kind of talk that affirms the person-to-person relationship between discussants and which acknowledges their collective right and intellectual capacity to make sense of the world’’ (p. 59). Dialogue thus involves going beyond the instrumental relationship which typically characterise organisational relations. Dialogue takes place in groups. People have don’t necessarily need to learn techniques or skills; the capacity for dialogue is inherent in people.

Chapter 5, How Dialogue Can be Incorporated into Work Practices, addresses the need to create the conditions in which dialogue can take place. In the author’s experience, it cannot be fitted into the regular Monday morning meetings; rather a forum for dialogue needs to be set up. In order for such a forum to succeed, four conditions need to be present: (1) the group is empowered to make decisions; (2) there is equality among participants; (3) the group has the collective intelligence to understand and resolve the issues; and (4) there is a mixture of large and small group interaction. Following on from the presentation of core conditions, several forums are outlined – large group interventions, such as future search, open space, real time strategic change and also action learning and team syntegrity. Whatever the forum, their success depends on (a) acts of speech: making one’s own reasoning explicit, voicing the perspective of others, and publicly testing one’s inferences, and (b) situation variables: freedom from coercion, equal opportunity to participate and a cooperative context. The final chapter provides some practical suggestions regarding structuring, creating and timing dialogue, the role of facilitation and how to improve dialogue.

Dialogue is an important subject, and Nancy Dixon has provided a very readable and well structured book. Managers, consultants, facilitators and students of organisational behaviour and development will find this a valuable and useful source of the theory and practice of dialogue.