The Magic of Dialogue: Transforming Conflict into Cooperation [Paperback]

For some time, the decision theorists have been focusing on ways to structure joint decisions (such as those involved in negotiations) to help the people involved perceive the shared interests they have, and how to serve them. In books like Getting to Yes, Getting Past Now, Smart Choices, and (most recently) Beyond Winning, we are encouraged to open up the scope of our considerations with others to find solutions that serve both sides well. Those books appeal to the intellect and are quite valuable for defining the game-playing and quantitative aspects of the issues.

As an example(from Getting to Yes), two children are fighting over an orange. The parent decides the battle by cutting the orange in half, and giving one-half to each child. One child eats the fruit and throw away the peel from his half. The other child uses the peel for cooking and throws away the fruit. Even though the solution of giving all the peel to the child who wants to cook and all the fruit to the child who wants to eat it would have been perfect, that option never emerged. Everyone is the loser relative to the ideal solution.

In The Magic of Dialogue, Professor Daniel Yankelovich takes on the lack of shared emotional space from the perspective of sociology, and extends the understanding of working with others that we all need to create these win-win alternatives and agreements. I found this book to be an important expansion of the subject matters of collaborative thinking and problem solving.

The book is organized around first establishing collaboration as a much-needed expansion of the way we interact with others. Next, the book does an excellent job of defining 15 strategies (neatly summarized on pages 127-128, following excellent earlier discussions and examples), and outlining 10 potholes that can get in the way (as bad thinking habits) immediately after the summaries of the 15 strategies.

Without giving you the whole list, the essence of the concepts here is to create an emotional linkage that allows us to feel empathetic towards the other person. This primarily occurs because we sense that the other person is willing to look at things from our perspective, and that we share either common ideas or values that we can respect. After that linkage is established, more information is shared, understood, and incorporated in the group thinking. More empathy builds to more sharing, which leads to more understanding, and so forth. Basically, we can create avirtuous cycle of collaboration and cooperation.

The greatest strength of the book is in providing examples of how such emotional connection occurred in many different and difficult situations, both humble (school policy decisions being discussed among parents and teachers) and exalted (arms negotiations during the cold war).

Inthe final part of the book, Professor Yankelovich focuses on fundamental flaws in the way we dialogue in the United States. By making these flaws explicit, he helps us each become more aware of these issues so we can begin to overcome them. One of the most interesting to me was the idea of considering things as either from afactual or an emotional perspective, with factual being assumed to be superior in our culture. In technical issues involving physical items, that priority for the factual makes sense. With people issuesin social situations, it often doesn't. Combining both perspectives often works best for social issues. I found that Professor Yankelovich's perspective in describing what we should pay attention to (depending on the subject) to be valuable. He also has a number of useful things to say about how to combine the two perspectives to derive better solutions and decisions (for example, inhow free markets should be combined with governmental limits and social civility).

Each issue also comes with an explanation of how one can facilitate a better dialogue by varying formats and type of facilitation employed. One of the most striking examples was an outline for how to conduct a national debate on the future of social security that would resonate with each of us, and help us create a national consensus at the voter level. He proposes using research to create a series of televised dialogues among people who represent the major points of view among the electorate (rather than the experts and legislators) to consider the ethical, moral, and economic perspectives that need to be reconciled.

Anyone who is concerned about lack of progress in solving problems where everyone in a group has a vested interest will find this book to be relevant and valuable. These concepts can be applied to personal relationships, solving problems at work, or to important social issues.

After you have finished reading this book, I strongly urge you to pick an area which you care about that has been a persistent problem for a long time. Use the book to diagnose why dialogue has been stalled, and use the book's recommendations to overcome those stalls. After you have succeeded in one area, repeat the process.

Get out of the potholes and back on the rapid road to mutual progress!

It does not replace fuller guides, such as Ellinor and Gerard's 'Dialogue', but complements them. Whereas Ellinor and Gerard is of most use to the specialist, this book is invaluable for executives and professionals, and indeed for anyone who is seeking to achieve cooperation in a complex situation. It is particularly valuable for the range of its coverage - from resolving difference within the family to identifying directions for business. It also addresses the wider issues of how society should develop and how ordinary citizens can be fruitfully engaged in the decision processes.

The book is in three parts:

The Will to Do it: Why Dialogue is Necessary The Skill to Do it: Strategies for Dialogue The Broader Uses of Dialogue

The discussion in Parts one and two is cast mostly in the context of organisations. Part three is concerned with the political process, the divide between the elites and the mass of the citizens, the nature of knowledge in a societal context and the advantages of dialogue and barriers to its use in deciding societal directions.