The use of DIALOGUE as a means of CONFLICT RESOLUTION

The following are recent headlines from major news sources:

CHIEF, MINISTER, CALL FOR DIALOGUE

DIALOGUE BEGINS BETWEEN TWO KOREAS

POWELL CALLS FOR INDIA-PAKISTAN DIALOGUE

GOVERNOR GENERAL ENCOURAGES DIALOGUE TO END DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

FUTURE DEPENDS ON DIALOGUE, POPE TELLS MUSLIM DIPLOMATS

UN CALLS FOR DIALOGUE BETWEEN CHINA AND JAPAN

CMA WANTS DIALOGUE ON HEALTH CARE

BUSH, ABBAS TO KEEP PEACE DIALOGUE GOING

Dialogue.  What all these headlines have in common are the word dialogue.  Dialogue in the sense that something important is occurring or could occur.  A process.  It is a dialogic process -- a critical process of communication and problem solving.

Listen to leaders, to the wisest of the wise, and they will tell you that dialogue is a way to find resolution of conflicts between individuals, is a way to resolve conflicts between groups and government, is a way to resolve conflicts between countries, and is a way to resolve conflicts between religions.  Quite the promises.


Dialogue is held out as having the capacity of solving the most difficult problems we face, it holds the promise of undoing misunderstandings, the promise of allowing for resolution of long standing conflict, the promises of healing, building and re-building.


Can dialogue stand up to these promises? Yes.

Does it?  Not often enough.

This leads to the question of "why?".  If dialogue has the potential to do what these headlines suggest, then why do the problems remain?  One answer is that dialogue is too often done poorly, and it is often done poorly because many of us do not know the characteristics of good constructive dialogue.

We need to consider what constitutes the kind of dialogue that leads to real meaningful constructive results.

Let's first identify and list what good constructive dialogue is not.  Dialogue is not just the sharing of information or opinion.  Dialogue is not the process of  being talked at or lectured to on a subject.  Dialogue is not just a matter of the parties presenting their positions and fighting for those positions at all cost.

According to Cissna and Anderson (2002), good dialogue has the following elements:

1. Immediacy of presence - This refers to the parties to a dispute having the ability to act as partners for the purpose of searching for solutions.  The different partners identify the common ground, and then they “speak and listen from a common place or space from which they experience access to each other.”

2. Emergent unanticipated consequences – In good dialogue there is an honesty born out of spontaneity.  This spontaneity results in important gains that include the building of trust, and the identification of solutions that otherwise remain buried when the conversation is predetermined and/or manipulated.  “The parties are willing to invite surprise, even at the expense of sacrificing strategy at times.”
   
   
3.  Recognition of strange otherness – Many times when we meet the “other side” for purposes of resolving disputes, we focus only on those things that are familiar and similar to ourselves. Yet it is often the differences that resulted in the dispute in the first place, or often prolong it. Instead of reducing the otherside to a version of ourselves, what we need to do is to put work into understanding the otherside, -- confront the strange. “[C]onfronting the strange implies imagining an alternate perspective. Such strangeness is not necessarily a threat, but is as often an invitation for learning.”

4. Collaborative orientation – Many of us still think of compromise when we consider how we are going to resolve our disputes. Collaboration is different.  With collaboration you have identified your needs and wants, and go to the table prepared to stand your ground, and the same time that you are open to listen to the needs and wants of the other side.  Through speaking and listening (dialogic collaboration) you explore each other’s suggestions for resolution, and you identify new ones (collaboratively).
   
   

5. Vulnerability –  This does NOT mean weakness.  This does NOT mean you give up your power.  What it does mean is that you and the other side are prepared to change your positions.  It is important to defend your ground, but if you do it from the position of “win at all costs”, then that is what happens – high costs or losses with very few or no gains. What parties need to do instead is come to the stable prepared to be persuaded by the other side.

6. Mutual implication – In good dialogue, the parties are listening actively.  Many of us know this phrase, but here is another twist.  According to Cessna and Anderson, in dialogic collaboration the listeners incorporate the messages of the speakers.  They write, “In a dialogic process, speaker and listener interdepend, each constructing self, other, and their talk simultaneously.”  Many communication experts have identified this same characteristic of the dialogue process, pointing to the fact that at all times both the speakers and the listeners voices are very much present and affecting the results.
   
   

7. Temporal Flow – This is the important recognition that every dialogue, whether it involves a dispute or not, has a past, a present and a future – all of which impact how the interaction flows and where it flows to.  Parties must work at allowing this flow, acknowledging the past, the present and move toward the future – one that is not pre-determined.

8. Genuineness and authenticity – Simply put, parties must believe that the other side is acting with integrity and honesty.  Words are spoken, actions taken – and the parties must be shown that the actions match the words.  Some of us call that, walking the talk. Without this there can be no good constructive dialogue.

Is this type of best praxis dialogue possible in the context of conflict  resolution? Do some people have these skills? Can other people learn these skills?

The answer to each of these questions is the same: yes.

Some of us are natural dialoguers and are already applying these dialogic characteristics in resolving disputes – and do so successfully.

However, for most of us good constructive dialogue is difficult.  It is not something that we have been taught.  But it is possible to learn.  And that is what we must do.  We need to learn how to dialogue, -- and we need to learn how to do it welll.

We need to teach our leaders, and we need to teach our children -- we ALL need to learn how to dialogue well as a means to finding solutions to the conflicts we all face.

We learn through skills training, through facilitation, and through practice.

And, we do it because the results are worth the effort.  As discussed, the dialogic process done well offers very real promises and the possibility of a different set of headlines that bring our needs for resolving conflicts and our wants for a better future into the present.

*with reference to:  Kenneth Cissna and Rob Anderson, Moments of Meeting: Buber, Rodgers and the Potential for Public Dialogue, 2002

Watt Communications, President’s Corner May 7th, 2007 ©

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