Genuine dialogue

Jul 27, 2013 Editorial

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Dialogue is both a kind of conversation and a way of relating. It is a communication process in which participants may say or hear something they never said or heard before, and from which they may emerge irrevocably changed. The approach emphasises listening, learning, and the development of shared understandings. Dialogue differs from other central modes of communication, including mediation, negotiation, discussion and debate. In discussion, for example, parties try to persuade each other of the accuracy of a particular point of view.
The goal is to bat ideas back and forth, evaluate multiple perspectives, and select the best one. Parties try to justify and defend their assumptions and convince one another that theirs is the right opinion. In discussion, disputants have a tendency to become defensive and reactive.
Dialogue, on the other hand, seeks to inform and learn rather than to persuade. It is a conversation “animated by a search for understanding rather than for agreements or solutions.”
One is concerned not only about oneself and one’s own position, but also about the other party and the position that that party advances. Participants focus on their relationship and the joint process of making sense of each other, rather than winning or losing.
Dialogue has no fixed goal or predetermined agenda. The emphasis is not on resolving disputes, but rather on improving the way in which people with significant differences relate to each other.
The broad aim is to promote respectful inquiry, and to stimulate a new sort of conversation that allows important issues to surface freely. While opponents in deep-rooted conflict are unlikely to agree with each other’s views, they can come to understand each other’s perspectives.
The following conditions help to ensure productive dialogue:
People speak openly, and listen respectfully and attentively. Derogatory attributions, attacks and defensiveness have no role in dialogue. Participants do not make assumptions about the motives or character of others. Questions are sincere, and driven by curiosity.
As they listen to one another and relate in new ways, participants learn new perspectives, reflect on their own views, and develop mutual understanding. In dialogue, when one person says something, another person’s response expresses a slightly different meaning.
This difference in meaning allows parties to see something new, which is relevant both to their own views and those of the other party. The conversation moves back and forth, with the continual emergence of new meaning.
Through inquiry and conversation, parties try to integrate multiple perspectives and unfold shared meaning. This involves uncovering and examining their assumptions and judgments.
When people enter into conversations with others, they bring with them basic assumptions about the meaning of life, their country’s interest, how society works, and what is most valuable. Most of these basic assumptions come from society and are rooted in culture, race, religion, and economic background.
As a result, people coming from different backgrounds have different basic assumptions and values, and these clashing views and perspectives often lead to conflict.
Dialogue attempts to expose these assumptions and the thought processes that lie behind them. It calls on participants to pay attention to their thinking, feelings, assumptions, and patterns of communication.
Their patterns of thought include feelings, desires, and ways of interpreting information. Individuals typically have a sense that their way of interpreting the world is the only way that it can be interpreted. They are not immediately aware of the degree to which their conception of reality is biased and influenced by their personal needs and fears.
In dialogue, participants explore the presuppositions, beliefs, and feelings that shape their interactions; they discover how hidden values and intentions control people’s behaviour and contribute to communication successes and failures.
However, this can happen only if people are able to listen to each other without prejudice and without trying to influence one another. Because its broad goal is to increase understanding about parties’ concerns, fears, and needs, dialogue centres on inquiry and reflection. Participants refrain from assuming that they already know the thoughts, feelings, and intentions of the other.
Instead, they assume that the other is speaking honestly from experience and listen closely.
This process of deep listening and reflection typically means that to be fully open to new ideas, participants must be ready to abandon their old ideas in the face of new and better ones.
They must be willing to change their minds and emerge from the dialogue as altered people. If they instead strive to convey their own points of view and defend their positions, genuine dialogue will not be possible.
We, in Guyana, particularly our decision-makers, seem oblivious to this fact.

 

 

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