[Dialogue] Guernica & Conversation Roots & Shoots

[Wayne Nelson]

Skilled Use

Stilted, scripted conversations and manipulated outcomes are not good for anyone. They do bad things to the human spirit. They should not happen.  We've all seen things worse than have been mentioned. These are neither flagrant fouls committed on purpose nor are they fundamental flaws in the methodology itself.  I think all of those things and a host of others are very resolvable issues. There are, built into the methodology itself, ways to successfully address all of those concerns.  We've been working pretty intensively on it for years.

Some have to do with the stance and intent of the facilitator. As Tracey says, there's nothing to teach in a conversation.  People can smell an agenda across an ocean. Ideology stinks and ours has gotten somewhat rank. Let it go. There is no particular way people ought to be or think or act. they have to figure it out themselves and to think you know better is nothing but hubris of the very worst form. There is no reason to manipulate a group toward a particular end - indeed that is, I believe, highly unethical. 

When you are preparing to go to a group, it is only that very group, who they are and what they need to achieve is what you look at.  Tools bag stays closed. If you think you already have a script for this, you are likely headed for a crash. There can be no conversation - no model for one without a grounded understanding of what the conversation must do for, to or with the group. 

Your ideas about who they should be or what they should think, believe or do are dangerous impediments to success.  Your beliefs about self and relations and society are yours. Your job is not to get people to be like you. It is to get them to work things out for themselves.  There are no eternal truths that they must key into - no great secret. Life is a journey that can only be taken by the specific pilgrim and every traveler's way is different.

One of the concerns I think is quite relevant is our underuse, misuse, and fear of the existential aim.  We know that every human and every group faces life questions all the time. There is no single set of "deep spirit problems" that one can just tick. You have to suss it out every time and when you do, every conversation is a unique adventure into enabling authenticity. If all they can say is,"It sucks to be us", you aren't asking enough questions. If it seems like the point is to make people feel good about a session and have lots of fun and wuv each other, it might just be time to read Kirerkegaard again. 

We've chosen to work these issues  through; so we can use the Focused Conversation Method / Art Form Method in ways that enable our clients to move forward. We've seen a lot of really good conversations. We have experiences similar to John's quite often. People tell us they use the conversations in The Art of Focused Conversation pretty much straight out of the book with success that amazes them. 

Correspondences

There are a lot of facilitation, consulting formats that are similar to the O-R-I-D process. Piles of them. They are, as John said, natural enough that lots of people discover them.  I've poked around and done some research in this area, because correspondences are both intriguing and dangerous. The first thing I discovered is that every corresponding approach was developed many years after the Focused Conversation Method / Art Form Method was already old. I have also found that the overwhelming majority of these corresponding approaches are based on individualism and psychology.  

I just downloaded an article on one called Authentic Conversation from the ToP network.  It's interesting that the approach uses four stages that have very similar names. That's where the substantial similarity ends. The assumptions are different. The purpose is different.  The style and questioning are different. I can only imagine that the results must be very different.  Perhaps not bad - maybe even really great, but very distinctly different in every way but the titling of the levels. I'm just saying that looking at the diagram and reading the text told me much different stories.  

It's nice to see similarities and it is great to affirm things holus-bolus (all is good and no 2 ways about it) , but each thing that uses similar words is not  the same.  



Those who want to make this methodology work can be confident that these concerns related to application and use can be resolved. It does not need to be stilted and if it is, there are ways to deal with a variety of these problems.

Those who find they can't  or are unwilling to make the effort to make it work well should be looking for other approaches. It's OK. No apologies needed. You need something - Go for it. Find something that will do what you believe this methodology should do. 

Those who want or need different approaches in order to do different types of idea processing should explore and experiment and find new stuff. Getting stuck in a single approach is kind of counter intuitive if you are trying to accomplish something. 





Fair enough. The point is to do good in the world, I think.  


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- - - - - - - - - - Wayne Nelson
wnelson at ica-associates.ca
O - 416-691-2316
M - 647-229-6910