Dialogue : The Art Of Thinking Together

Rating:
Summary: Bad take on an interesting subject
Review: I gave up on this book about 50 pages from the end. It seemed like the more I read, the more tedious it became until it felt like masochism to continue. I think a previous reviewer made a definite understatement by saying that this book needs an editor. Quite honestly, I have rarely encountered a book so disorganized as this one. It seems like the author has a hard time telling apart the essential from the superfluous, and so he indulges in endless anectdotes that contain little more than truisms, presents complex concepts with long, drawn-out prose when they could have been more efficiently communicated with tables and graphs, and repeats the same ideas again and again using slightly different wording. I wonder if this book was meant as advertising for the author's services, because otherwise it would have been about a fifth as long and would have suggested procedures and excercises allowing the reader to learn and apply dialogue from his own experience, not the author's. I hope there will be other, more successful attempts to apply David Bohm's and Peter Senge's theories to the field of organizational dialogue.

Rating:
Summary: A Dialogical Dissection
Review: Isaacs' book is at once highly readable, pleasant, challenging, thorough, and dense. The author brings together theoretical works from physics, linguistics and psychology to assess modern communication problems and how, through dialogue, those problems can be overcome. He also uses many of his own experiences and case studies to show how dialogic approaches have helped resolve serious differences between groups in the private and public sectors. This book not only offers us the opportunity to reflect on our own mindsets and practices, it also provides useful frameworks and strategies for those compelled to help groups resolve differences. As someone seeking leadership positions in education, this book will always be kept close at hand.

Isaacs' describes the four 'pathologies' of thought as abstraction, idolatry, certainty, and violence. When we engage in abstraction we separate the parts from the whole and treat them as if they are separate when, in fact, wholeness (interconnectivity and interrelatedness) is a condition of the parts. Idolatry is a problem 'of memory'. It is the acceptance of 'the false gods or images that we unquestionable accept to guide us in the way we operate, and which blind us to other possibilities'. (p.59) Our certainties limit our capacity to think and reflect. We can't learn when we are certain. Violence refers to our tendency to assert and defend our certainties, our views of the world, at the expense of the thoughts of others. 'Thought that imposes or defends is violent. It applies forces to try to make someone different.' (p.68) What is most interesting about Isaacs' pathologies is that they call into question those habits and ways of thinking that we generally consider to be necessary for self-actualization. Perhaps too many of us have come to be consumed by these pathologies. Perhaps, when people have to work together to resolve dilemmas, these pathologies are at once magnified and amplified creating a context in which truths are subverted and humane change is ultimately averted.

The challenge for individuals and groups is less to dispense with these pathologies than it is to recognize and control them. Here, dialogue serves a necessary social function. The problem is that, for whatever reason, dialogue ('a conversation with a center, not sides', p.19) as a theory is not widely understood, and as a practice is not common to most relationships, public or private. For each pathology of thought Isaacs describes a countervailing principle of dialogue ' participation, unfolding, awareness, and coherence. Dialogue taps these principles as critical resources. They are no less necessary to self-actualization than our pathologies, but perhaps because individualism pervades the western consciousness, they are less apparent. Participation refers to the notion that we are a part of the world and the world is a part of us. Unfolding is 'the gradual process of learning to tell the truth'. (p.63) Awareness is the ability to suspend our certainty. Coherence is the process of seeing oneself in others and others in oneself. We participate when we listen, we unfold through voicing, we become aware by suspending our certainty, and we seek coherence through respect. To each of these principles and practices, Isaacs devotes an entire chapter all written, it would seem, to invite reflection and reading aloud to close friends or colleagues.

So how do we turn all these nourishing ideas into food for change? We develop our ability to understand what is happening as it is happening (our 'predictive intuition'). We seek new patterns of action by speaking about what we know while inquiring into what we don't know (balancing advocacy with inquiry). We learn to identify and discuss the contradictory forces ('structural traps'), which inhibit our ability to seek and act on shared realities. We learn to develop and support cultures that produce energy, possibility, and safety. (I believe that Isaacs uses the term 'container' as a synonym for culture.) Central to the development of such a container are the practices of listening, voicing, suspending, and respecting. In this environment, leaders can help groups navigate through the fields of conversation (there are four) to achieve reflective, if not generative dialogue. Isaacs' description of the four fields of dialogue represents a useful model for anyone interested in analyzing and redirecting their professional or personal conversations. He argues for the importance of dialogue in a democracy and in our organizations (we cannot adapt and change without an open system approach to communication), and he provides practical advice and strategies for cultivating dialogue in our society, and within an organization.

This is a book for anyone seeking personal growth and for any citizen or employee who believes that the quest for a more humane world can be achieved through our collective intelligence, or perhaps more significantly, for anyone who needs to see the potential of authentic communication.

Rating:
Summary: A Dialogical Dissection
Review: Isaacs� book is at once highly readable, pleasant, challenging, thorough, and dense. The author brings together theoretical works from physics, linguistics and psychology to assess modern communication problems and how, through dialogue, those problems can be overcome. He also uses many of his own experiences and case studies to show how dialogic approaches have helped resolve serious differences between groups in the private and public sectors. This book not only offers us the opportunity to reflect on our own mindsets and practices, it also provides useful frameworks and strategies for those compelled to help groups resolve differences. As someone seeking leadership positions in education, this book will always be kept close at hand.

Isaacs� describes the four �pathologies� of thought as abstraction, idolatry, certainty, and violence. When we engage in abstraction we separate the parts from the whole and treat them as if they are separate when, in fact, wholeness (interconnectivity and interrelatedness) is a condition of the parts. Idolatry is a problem �of memory�. It is the acceptance of �the false gods or images that we unquestionable accept to guide us in the way we operate, and which blind us to other possibilities�. (p.59) Our certainties limit our capacity to think and reflect. We can�t learn when we are certain. Violence refers to our tendency to assert and defend our certainties, our views of the world, at the expense of the thoughts of others. �Thought that imposes or defends is violent. It applies forces to try to make someone different.� (p.68) What is most interesting about Isaacs� pathologies is that they call into question those habits and ways of thinking that we generally consider to be necessary for self-actualization. Perhaps too many of us have come to be consumed by these pathologies. Perhaps, when people have to work together to resolve dilemmas, these pathologies are at once magnified and amplified creating a context in which truths are subverted and humane change is ultimately averted.

The challenge for individuals and groups is less to dispense with these pathologies than it is to recognize and control them. Here, dialogue serves a necessary social function. The problem is that, for whatever reason, dialogue (�a conversation with a center, not sides�, p.19) as a theory is not widely understood, and as a practice is not common to most relationships, public or private. For each pathology of thought Isaacs describes a countervailing principle of dialogue � participation, unfolding, awareness, and coherence. Dialogue taps these principles as critical resources. They are no less necessary to self-actualization than our pathologies, but perhaps because individualism pervades the western consciousness, they are less apparent. Participation refers to the notion that we are a part of the world and the world is a part of us. Unfolding is �the gradual process of learning to tell the truth�. (p.63) Awareness is the ability to suspend our certainty. Coherence is the process of seeing oneself in others and others in oneself. We participate when we listen, we unfold through voicing, we become aware by suspending our certainty, and we seek coherence through respect. To each of these principles and practices, Isaacs devotes an entire chapter all written, it would seem, to invite reflection and reading aloud to close friends or colleagues.

So how do we turn all these nourishing ideas into food for change? We develop our ability to understand what is happening as it is happening (our �predictive intuition�). We seek new patterns of action by speaking about what we know while inquiring into what we don�t know (balancing advocacy with inquiry). We learn to identify and discuss the contradictory forces (�structural traps�), which inhibit our ability to seek and act on shared realities. We learn to develop and support cultures that produce energy, possibility, and safety. (I believe that Isaacs uses the term �container� as a synonym for culture.) Central to the development of such a container are the practices of listening, voicing, suspending, and respecting. In this environment, leaders can help groups navigate through the fields of conversation (there are four) to achieve reflective, if not generative dialogue. Isaacs� description of the four fields of dialogue represents a useful model for anyone interested in analyzing and redirecting their professional or personal conversations. He argues for the importance of dialogue in a democracy and in our organizations (we cannot adapt and change without an open system approach to communication), and he provides practical advice and strategies for cultivating dialogue in our society, and within an organization.

This is a book for anyone seeking personal growth and for any citizen or employee who believes that the quest for a more humane world can be achieved through our collective intelligence, or perhaps more significantly, for anyone who needs to see the potential of authentic communication.

Rating:
Summary: Insightful!
Review: Sometimes the corporate environment is not tranquil. Managers hate workers, workers hate managers and nobody seems to understand or talk to anybody else. Author William Isaacs believes that's because people don't communicate very well. Companies that succeed have made effective, positive communication part of their culture. Dialogue is a two-way street and negative, ineffective dialogue can kill a company's prospects. Isaacs, a corporate consultant with a doctorate in philosophy, uses a very un-businesslike style to convey his ideas. The book is full of parables and company stories, and the whole mood feels more like a literary narrative, instead of a to-the-point business book. ...

Rating:
Summary: Discover the Art of Thinking Together
Review: This is the most powerful book that I've read in years. The depth of understanding on how to create powerful, meaningful conversations at work, home and in all relationships is here. We are in a society and environment where things are moving so fast that we have lost the patience and trust for carrying on meaningful conversations. Instead we have ping pong ball conversations that barely get below the surface to deep, common insight. Then we try to solve the problem without having agreement of what the problem is. Read this book and understand this lost and important art of dialogue, the art of thinking together.

Rating:
Summary: Discover the Art of Thinking Together
Review: This is the most powerful book that I've read in years. The depth of understanding on how to create powerful, meaningful conversations at work, home and in all relationships is here. We are in a society and environment where things are moving so fast that we have lost the patience and trust for carrying on meaningful conversations. Instead we have ping pong ball conversations that barely get below the surface to deep, common insight. Then we try to solve the problem without having agreement of what the problem is. Read this book and understand this lost and important art of dialogue, the art of thinking together.

Rating:
Summary: Deserves a thorough read. Prepare to slow down and reflect.
Review: When this book arrived on my doorstep, I tore into it as I usually do with nonfiction books of great interest: I read the first and last chapters, dove by intuition into various middle points, eyeballed the diagrams, and sighed. No quick read, here. This was going to require full attention, and a willingness on my part to 'walk' with the author through his description of that most familiar and elusive phenomenon, dialogue.

It has been well worth the walk.

Isaacs both knows his stuff and has done his homework. He participated with David Bohm and others in the early dialogue sessions, and remais quite true to the spirit and intent of Bohm's work. He also brings depth of experience with subsequent dialogue work, and breadth of supporting ideas from eclectic sources to his description of the practice of deepened and enriched conversation. Few have experimented with dialogue in as many settings, and few have linked this current practice with as many related disciplines as Isaacs has.

To me, Isaacs presents dialogue as a world view, moreso than a set of conversational skills and techniques, remarkable moments in communication, group pain relief, or organizational change practice (as I feel other authors have done). Yet dialogue may play an important role in all of the above, and he does offer practical examples and approaches to try.

As practitioner, researcher, and occasional critic of dialogue, I appreciated revisiting its deeper roots. I particularly liked the discussion of dialogue and the senses of seeing and hearing. I hadn't thought of listening as geographic, before! Nor had I thought of 'participation' in quite the way he describes. At several points, I found it helpful to stop, put the book down, and think through the implications. (Indeed, I may be a little slow, but even so, I recommend you read this book reflectively!)

I recommend looking over the diagrams in the appendix, pp. 418-420, and keeping finger or handy Amazon.com bookmark there for frequent reference as you read. I discovered them rather late, and wished I'd gotten to them earlier. They provide the map as you follow Isaacs rather deep into the territory.

There are many gems throughout for learning and reflection. Read, reflect, and be enriched!