The Magic of Dialogue: Transforming Conflict into Cooperation

An exploration of the benefits of effective dialogue for leadership within contemporary business structures, containing a less hierarchical structure, and offers strategies for developing the disciplined communication

A believer in communication celebrates the obvious. Yankelovich (Coming to Public Judgment, 1991) is so giddy about dialogue his cheerleading is irritating. The promise of dialogue is certainly appealing: ``long-standing stereotypes dissolved, mistrust overcome, mutual understanding achieved, visions shaped and grounded in shared purpose, people previously at odds with one another aligned on objectives and strategies,'' etc. But does anyone doubt that listening carefully and sympathetically to each other, genuinely trying to understand the positions of others, then incorporating what we have learned into our own pronouncements is more likely to produce good things than if we refuse to do so? This behavior may be rare, but surely not because people honestly believe narrow-mindedness is superior in conversations. According to Yankelovich, ``the most frequent reason that dialogue fails is simply that it is not done well'' (of course, few activities succeed when done badly), and based on this truism, he proceeds to lay out three core requirements for dialogue (equality and the absence of coercion, listening with empathy, and bringing assumptions into the open), 15 strategies for achieving it, ten potholes that hinder it, and three cultural fault lines dialogue can overcome. Rarely has common sense been presented so systematically. The first strategy, for example, is to check for the three core requirements of dialogue and learn how to introduce any that are missing; the first pothole is that people hold back because they lack the trust to participate freely in the interaction. While no one could question the truth of these statements, there is reason to wonder whether a book featuring them needed to be written. Yankelovich and his readers would have been better off if he had applied his dialogic skills to a substantive problem like the topic of his final chapter, the ``struggle for the soul of America,'' rather than writing this naive primer. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.