"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less."

"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."

"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master – that's all." (Looking-Glass 6.63-65)

As William Issacs notes (Issacs, 1993, p.24), “Dialogue, the discipline of collective learning and inquiry, is a process for transforming the quality of conversation and the thinking that lies beneath it.”

Business as usual is a lot of busyness buzz. The buzz of; meeting deliverables, attending meetings, taking decisions, planning for the future etc. The nature of busyness is about continuous thinking and doing with no time spent on coming up for air. In conversations, we share ideas which stem from our: assessment of experience and the quick decision / idea thereof. These show up in conversations with others, in the different perspectives shared, where ideas collide with each other.

Partnering with executive teams, I have been experimenting using a dialogic (coaching) process. This enables teams to; create their collective understanding, bring their whole in the form of (tacit) knowledge, intuition (honest conversations) and being aware of the dynamics. The enhanced collective understanding, engagement and ownership enables aligned actions thereby increasing the probability of success.

Given the changes, challenges and uncertainty, teams need to find a new way of thinking together. This involves listening wholly which is suspending the need to share what I want to say and listen to what is being said. This enables emergent learning and behaviour through dialogues.

Coming together in dialogue involves:

• a respectful relationship with those with whom we are talking
• acknowledgement that each person has a right to their own truth and has the intellectual capacity to make sense of their world
• a willingness to examine our own thinking process to understand how we have reached the assumptions we hold
• a willingness to hold our assumptions lightly
• the courage and humility to speak our own truth
• the acknowledgement that there can be no predetermined outcome of a dialogue
• the recognition that our talking together must support a moral purpose, as well as a practical one.

“Dialogue is not so much a difference in technique or skills as it is a difference in relationship and humility.” (Nancy Dixon - https://www.nancydixonblog.com/2021/02/the-promise-of-dialogue.html)

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