Debate to Dialogue

Have you ever been part of a group or team that has an inspirational mission, but every time you show up, you feel worse than when you arrived?

According to Otto Sharmer, developer of Theory U, in order to transform a system - not just do an incredible project, or form a group to do important work, but to actually change how the parts operate and generate new norms - two things are needed:

1 - Enabling Infrastructure

2- A way to move from Debate to Dialogue

Enabling Infrastructure

Enabling infrastructure, as I understand it, means places where different players can interact together. Forums, meeting structures, gathering places, rituals, etc so that different parts of the system can meet and share information. Often this requires a convening organization or group that can connect the parts of the system on some regular basis.

I was once part of a group called the Grand Traverse Stewardship Initiative, which brought teachers and classrooms together with community organizations, businesses and nonprofits to do action learning. The students got to engage in the real world doing projects that engaged their bodies, problem solving, creativity, relationship skills, etc. Meanwhile, participating organizations got important work done while also forming real connections to the community and youth, which they crave.

One person coordinated this collective and there came a critical moment when the whole initiative was under review. When interviewed, teachers and community partners said the same thing was said over and over again: without a coordinator, this wouldn’t be possible.

It’s almost so obvious that it doesn’t need to be said. Without meetings, events, online forums, or the like, the different parts of the system won’t interact in productive ways.

And without some sort of regular schedule for communicating with the group and between group members, the kind of relationship-building, system-sensing, idea-generation, and project-implementation that is needed, just won’t happen.

Often, this requires a coordinator of some kind, who makes it their responsibility to maintain the enabling Infrastructure.

So, that all might be kind of obvious. And for the most part it is attended to.

Debate and Dialogue

The second requirement to transform a system is also not surprising, but it is often under attended to: A way to move form debate to dialogue.

Debate is the kind of conversation we are having when each person has their own ideas and is trying to get everyone else to listen to them, or to join their cause. This type of conversation is unlikely to result in a solution that everyone agrees on or feels good about. It’s all about me and my ideas.

In dialogue however, we set aside about what we want or what we think, and really listen to what the other person is saying, feeling and thinking. We are curious. We are aware that we might have blind-spots in our thinking and we invite inquiry into those blind spots. Dialogue is in service to the ideas on the table, not to the individuals in the room.

You know you are in dialogue when people are asking questions and getting curious.

So, what is required to get to dialogue?

A tale of two meetings

This week, I heard a story about two similar meetings with very differnt qualities.

Its about subcommittee formation in a larger coalition that supports an important community cause.

In one subcommittee they agreed to ground rules, devised structures like parking lots and minute taking protocols, and generally developed a sense of camaraderie and excitement amongst one another.

In the other subcommittee, when ground rules were suggested the individuals balked, they were not interested in developing meeting protocols, and the conversation about goals happened, but it was hard.

This difference, although it doesn’t doom the second committee or mean the first will necessarily function well in the long-term, does suggest that when we come together with a skillet and mindset of collaboration, more can happen, and it can feel better. The first subcommittee had a different attitude and perhaps also set of experiences that made it all a lot easier.

This means to me that we need to put more attention into cultivating the mindsets and skillsets of collaboration.

Enabling infrastructures will not do their best work when the people who show up in them are closed to new ideas, unwilling to agree to ground rules, and unable to truly listen.

We can’t just set meeting schedules and develop forums. We also need to learn how to work together.

Getting to the good stuff

Have you ever been part of a group that has an inspirational mission, but every time you leave a meeting, you feel worse than when you arrived?

This happens because people in the group are focused on their own agendas and ideas, and are not open to the whole. It crushes the sense of possibility and camaraderie that humans need to thrive.

In my work, I support individuals through leadership coaching as they learn to listen more deeply and with more openness. This means they can enter meetings and conversations able to grasp the whole and generate meaning from what is being shared.

I begin group engagements with grounding exercises, weave in embodiment practices, and offer activities that build connection between individuals. All of these are tools that help us open to the collective consciousness that we aim to tap when coming together.

I support teams as they grow their dialoguing skills: listening to others and to their own internal voice; practicing curiosity and dissent; and tuning in to the collective experience in addition to their own motivations.

And I support collectives - networks of individuals and organizations, perhaps from different sectors, but focused on a common, pervasive challenge; collectives that are doing the slow and powerful work of systems change. In these situations it is especially important to return again and again to our skills and mindsets of dialogue.

Too much debate will squash enthusiasm, creativity, trust and collective energy.

Dialogue will do the opposite: generate enthusiasm, creativity, trust and collective energy.

And if we want to build the world we want, which is what I am here for, it’s worth ii to learn and practice the skills of dialogue.