Dialogue

"we engage in conversation in the belief that it holds possibility"

(N Burbles, 1993, Dialogue on Teaching, Therory and Practice - Teachers College Press).

it's perhaps a bit much to make such a generalisation and it's certainly not in the forefront of everyone's mind, but there is the potential of possibility in 'learningful' conversations. There can be a freedom in some types of dialogues - where thoughts, feelings and ideas are fluid, explored, where there is uncertainty, where you do not know where it is going to lead. This is the opposite of what Peter Senge described as 'ping pong' conversation where each comment is tossed out and not even 'received' before the next is tossed out. No-one really listening and no-one receiving.

Just the act of being prepared to listen can provide the right space for someone to come to 'see' what they didn't 'know' before, to allow something to emerge. That may be enough for a decision to become clear.

Some conversations stay 'on the surface' - they can tend to follow well furrowed patterns. They have a predictableness about them. These allow people to hold onto their view, their perceptions.

In "The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook" (Peter Senge et al) , Isaacs and Smith describe creating environments that promote collective inquiry (from the Latin, inquarere, meaning to seek within). These, by contrast, encourage people to approach dialogue with no results in mind, but instead with the intention of developing deeper inquiry, wherever it leads you. To do this requires a willingness to touch on what is 'difficult', to allow conflict, to allow confusion, to allow painful letting go of tightly held structures/beliefs - or in other words, "a willingness to touch the dangerous".

The conductor Benjamin Zander encourages his music students when they have made a mistake to welcome it with an attitude of "how fascinating"! In meaningful dialogue where deep inquiry happens, the moment of disagreement is likewise cause for celebration - an opportunity to see what is below the surface, to welcome it in and to see what happens by exploring it further in a collective way. In Action Learning terms, it is the recognition of the need for an optimum amount of 'challenge'. It happens when there is a degree of trust - where people feel safe enough to expose some side of themselves they might normally protect (whether from others, from themselves, or both). In this way, there can truly be a sense of possibility.

Starting from the End

Yesterday was the Film Preview of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" - the last of the eight films. One film commentator said "it is beautiful that we knew it had to end". There is indeed a 'sweet poignancy' of that knowledge - that knowing increases the richness of the tone and experience.

This reminds me of the interview with screen writer Dennis Potter in the last few weeks of his life when he described the beauty of seeing the cherry blossom, an experience enhanced by the knowledge it was the last time he would see it. The intensity coming from "the impossibility of further possibility" (Heidegger).

I have had a recent personal experience of this. My US friends Margo, Mark and Adrienne have performed as a band (Mad Agnes) for the last ten years and I have had the joy of hearing them play live on a number of occassions (including having them play at my 50th birthday party). A year ago Adrienne came to the difficult decision to stop, tired of being on the road and touring. They honoroured the process of that ending (not just for themselves but for their fans as well) by planning a final year - four seasons of concerts including their final UK tour last month. I went to one of the gigs and had both a smile and tears on my face for most of the time - relishing the exquisite sound of their music, lyrics, voices and harmonies and at the same time feeling sadness for the knowledge I would not hear that rich live sound again. In their final newsletter to their fans they quote T.S. Eliot - "What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from".

C.S. Lewis, in his book 'A Grief Observed' intimately describes his experience of loss after the death of his wife. He says "we think of this as love cut short: like a dance stopped in mid career.... something truncated and therefore lacking its due shape" but moves on to say " it is not a truncation of the process, but one of its phases, not the interruption of the dance, but the next figure".

These different things lead me to think of endings being transitions. Any period of change is an ending, a transition and a beginning. Organisations end, bands break up, relationships end, people leave a job after many years, old ways of doing things are replaced by new structures ...even newspapers (News of the World closing at the end of this week). Beginnings and endings are happening all the time - and sometimes we can feel the beauty in that.

Potential

I was at the Bovey Guild of Craftsmen last week to meet up with the Director of Streets Alive (http://www.streetsalive.org.uk/) to talk about my new role with them as one of their Associates, facilitating street events in Devon. I arrived slightly early so was enjoying a look round the Summer Exhibition - works by members of the Guild.

One of the featured artists is tapestry weaver Kirsten Glasbrook (see http://www.kirsten.glasbrook.com/) who has a couple of pieces called 'Tempus fugit' (time flies) and Tempus Ludendi (a time for playing).

Beside these two tapestries was a comment by the artist about her work - I was taken by this description....
"Time: the continuous passage of existence in which events pass from a state of potentiality in the future, through the present, to a state of finality in the past".

There is so much here - the continuous movement ('time stops for no-one' - the unceasing nature of existence) coupled with the idea of time being a precise moment. It throws me off beam, mixing the sequence of starting from the future (where the momentum is forwards - we face the future), then a jump back to the present ( described as a moment in time - or more precisely, a very short period), and moving forwards to ending with a reference point located in the past. This gives me a giddy sense of the forward and backward motions that make up the process of a weaver's art.

Then there is this 'finality of the past'. A finished art work starts as a 'potential in waiting' (I think of a stone mason or sculptor who chisels out an object that already lies within that block of stone, bringing a 'piece of work' into existence which wasn't there/seen before. When I visited the Carrera marble mines in Northern Italy a few years ago, I picked up a small piece of marble from the ground, struck by the thought that Michelangelo's statue of David was once a block of marble from this very mine - what, I wondered, could potentially lie within that piece of marble in my hand?

Likewise, working in the art of developing people - do we know what huge potential and capacity there is within a person or team which, at the present time, may not be seen and is not yet realised? Managers, supervisors, teachers, coaches, trainers, instructors have to start at least with a belief in the potential development of the people they hold a responsibility to. If that belief is missing, the progress of that team or individual is limited, is held back. The statue of David may rest inside, never to be seen.

Which is where the art of delegation comes when working with managers. People need an opportunity to grow and develop skills - and delegation provides a framework and opportunity to people to acquire and develop skills. A skilful manger (or teacher) will combine attitudes, beliefs and behaviours - the belief in potential, having an attitude of trust, a committment to another's learning and development, abilities in assessment, listening, encouraging, and giving of sensitive feedback.

So, the description by the weaver of time as a linear process when talking about a crafted piece of work becomes a developing cycle when working with people - where there is the rhythm of development, reaching and extending towards new plateaux.

(above image is of 'Land Definition One' by Kirsten Glasbrook)

the art of writing

I was in Belgium this last weekend with a group of Europeans who all have an interest in adult learning, and in informal learning in particular. We spent a weekend living together, cooking together, walking, talking, using art and music - and learning together in the process.

We were cut off from news during the 3 days and heard on our return that Alan Sillitoe had died at the weekend. He was quoted as saying "the art of writing is to explain the complications of the human soul with a simplicity that can be universally understood.".

Something to aspire to!

(Photo - beetroot juice abstract - Laura Crichton)

Conflict - talking about what matters

First, let's talk dirty. I should qualify that, I mean talking about our rubbish (as in 'garbage'). Obscure, I know, but there is a point at the end!

I recently took a morning walk where I live on the weekly rubbish collection day. Here, the recycling rubbish is separated, with paper put in a black bin, and plastic containers and glass bottles put into a green bin. As I wandered by, I noticed the different ways people sort their rubbish. In the black bins, some just throw it all in, some make neat piles of the papers, some cover the bin and contents from getting wet by putting the papers in plastic bags, some use a special bin cover available from the Council and some just leave it open to the elements. In the green bins, some just chuck everything in together as it comes, and others line their bottles up neatly.

The point here is..? That this is a simple task, how it is done is a personal thing, and it doesn't affect the outcome. Whichever way you do it, it doesn't matter - you put your rubbish out and then it is collected.

Managers have to deal with conflict in teams - it happens just because we interact. Sometimes people who work together make things that don't matter into an issue. S/he does it differently and it becomes a 'battle' over whose way is best.

You need to separate diversity (individuals differ) with times when something really does matter. Teams need to work together, but we also need to determine when there is a need to adapt/change how we do what we do, and when we don't.

Is there art in rubbish?

(photo by Andy Hughes)

Questions

"Do you never stop questioning?" (Ingmar Bergman, The Seventh Seal)

I am fascinated by what happens when you ask 'good' questions. As an Action Learning facilitator, coach and trainer, they are integral 'tools' to the process of some one's learning and development. What is revealed can become an insight for the 'speaker' , the 'asker' and an 'audience' if there is one.

But they play a part in so many aspects of professional and personal lives. Take 'interviewing' -Desert Islands Discs, In the Psychiatrists Chair, Shrink Rap, Jeremy Paxman, Fern Britton... let alone police interviews, job interviews and others - all very different styles and each has its own way of revealing something new.

What might unfold also depends on the level of 'listening'. Winifred Robinson (R4 Today programme presenter), when asked about her job by a group of school students, acknowledged the guidance she received from John Humphreys " all the best questions come from listening".

In his book "Callings" by Gregg Levoy, he describes a Quaker tradition of 'clearness committees' to help a member who is struggling for clarity over an issue. After a moment of silence, the process is simple - the group simply ask questions, nothing more. It works "by assuming the answer is in the focus person seeking clarity and that we help by listening, not by fixing".

Which reminds me of the 'Time to Think' process work of Nancy Kline which works on exactly the same premise - that someone can find their own 'answers' by giving them complete and full attention, listening, and asking insightful questions that free up their limiting thinking.

Now, what's the question?

Being away

I have been away from my blog for 4 months - for all sorts of reasons, including both physically away and also a period of intense 'doing' has got in the way of my 'reflecting' - and, in turn, from turning my reflection into writing.

Distance - going away - looking from a different place - coming back - looking again. Different perspectives and taking ourselves 'out' of our usual viewpoint gives us opportunities for new learning and insights. It happens frequently in all aspects of living.

I have been listening to friends' recent travel tales - people who have visited cultures very different to ours, and those who happened to be in Santiago during the earthquake in Chile. These intense experiences, these 'culture shocks' prompt us to re-examine, re-consider, re-evaluate, re-shape our own 'world' as we 'know' it (construct it).

A therapist may help a client to create family 'groupings' in representational space, and by 'stepping out' of their own view and into the 'place' of others, can open up new explanations and understandings of dynamics and situations.

Narrative mediation, based on social constructionist theory, engages people locked in conflict to shift/let go of an attachment to their own view as an absolute truth to a shared understanding of a situation from different places.

In personal development, by standing back, changing your role from being 'taken over' by an emotion/reaction/limiting thought, to one of an observer gives an opporunity to 'see' what is going on, and enter into a different dialogue.

Football coaches watch from the sidelines - they have a bigger view, a bigger picture and encourage and help individuals to change and work better as a team. An 'overview' conjures up rising above a situation - looking down on it to see it in a new way.

Taking people out of their work environment in training, learning or development to give space, time, and opportunity to stand back and look at what they are 'doing' in a new way.

There are many more.

Being 'away' can give rich learnings.

(photo: Laura Crichton)