Better decisions depend on dialogue

Dialogue is a wonderfully expressive word. It combines the Greek dia, meaning ‘through’, and logos, meaning ‘word’ or ‘meaning’: an exchange of words through which meaning flows and becomes apparent. Remembering its origins is valuable when dialogue is discussed so often but so rarely practised. Dialogue with young people, citizens or employees too often consists of successive monologues in which nobody listens. Yet many formats exist, for small and large groups, that can bring meaning to events.

The Austrian-Israeli philosopher Martin Buber (1878–1965) is one of the most important thinkers on the subject. Encounter occurs in what he called the I–Thou relationship, characterised by immediate presence and reciprocity. As he put it, in translation: ‘I become through Thou; as I become, I say Thou.’ This early insight is supported by modern neuroscience and developmental psychology.

Dialogue is the communicative bridge between I and Thou. Buber meant more than exchanging information, and far more than conversations in which each person ultimately talks only about themselves, effectively to themselves. He called these ‘monologues disguised as dialogue’. The familiar ‘How are things?’ may be no more than a prelude to waiting for the same question in return and launching into a lengthy account. Genuine interest is absent. For Buber, real dialogue is an existential encounter in which participants perceive and recognise one another as whole people. It succeeds when they are present in the moment, interested in truth rather than performance, and withhold nothing essential. He writes, in translation: ‘Where conversation fulfils its nature between partners who have genuinely turned towards one another, express themselves without reserve and are free from the desire to create an impression, a remarkable shared fruitfulness emerges.’

An exchange between two people creates something third: new ideas, deeper insights and greater understanding. In translation: ‘The interpersonal reveals what would otherwise remain undisclosed.’ This leads to a central statement in his philosophy, one that has profoundly influenced my own approach to events: ‘All real living is meeting.’

David Bohm, quantum physicist and philosopher (1917–1992), was the other major influence on modern dialogue formats. In scientific discussions, he noticed mental and cognitive barriers that inhibit free, innovative thinking. One is our tendency to divide and fragment reality without noticing. This helps analysis but has drawbacks, because the real world consists of fluid transitions. Scientific thinking, Bohm argued, understands parts well but the whole poorly. He saw fragmented thinking as a source of many personal and social problems.

The second obstacle is that we think constantly without usually being aware of the process. In translation: ‘We are so accustomed to taking thought for granted that we do not notice it at all.’ Its automatic patterns — prejudices, habits inherited from the past, sometimes from childhood, and unquestioned beliefs — obscure a clear view of reality. A saying attributed to the French writer Anaïs Nin captures this filtering: we see things not as they are, but as we are.

For Bohm, dialogue offered a possible escape from these ‘inner prisons of thought’. Unlike Buber, his focus was not on conversations between two people but on groups thinking together, aloud and silently. He also formulated early ground rules to allow collective intelligence, rather than collective stupidity, to emerge. They include suspension: resisting immediate judgement or opposition, and initially allowing different views to remain open and stand alongside one another on equal terms. He advocated dialogue without an agenda, fixed objectives or pressure for results, preferably without even prescribing a theme. The most pressing subject emerges through the exchange itself.

This text is taken from the recently published book Sinnstiftende Veranstaltungen. Mit kreativem Eventdesign begeistern, bewegen und erfolgreich werden.