Introducing a Culture of Dialogue Not Debate

There are times within any organization that communication become stuck or distorted on a lack of mutual understanding, different points of view, and the parties taking a defensive posture by not revealing their true feelings. When this occurs within an organization there is a need to identify an affirmative topic in order to commence the Appreciative Inquiry change process and continue forward. When a team comes together to discuss the change and/or challenge the desire is to focus on abundance not scarcity and look towards possibilities not barriers. This results in the importance of how communications occurs and decisions are made.

Edgar Schein in his work "On Dialogue, Culture, and Organizational Learning" talks about the two paths that communications can be taken:

• debate and discussion
• dialogue

Debate and discussion is a straight line conversation which provides a speedy decision with minimal conflict resulting in the following participant characteristics:

• no time to waste
• talk more than listen
• focus on self-interest
• defensive listening
• assume self- right answers
• persuade, sell, rush to decision

Which often results in:

• retain fixed mindset
• short-term solution
• support your position
• other options suppressed

Dialogue threads together divergent and convergent thinking helps to bring about multiple perspectives, opinions, and answers. This approach often results in the following participant characteristics:

• slow down and think through
• listen more than talk 
• focus on the whole
• seek common ground
• many people have pieces of the answer
• everyone is heard and there for a reason

Which often results in:

• focus on the bigger picture
• long term innovative solution priority
• fix the bigger issues
• brings all the people on board

The culture of the organization gets shaped by language and the methodology of dialogue or discussion/debate.