Dialogue: How to Create Change in Organisations through Conversation

Facilitators
Sarah Rozenthuler, Sarah Hill and Gareth Fendick

Who should attend
Any change agent (psychologist, leader, manager, consultant, etc.) who wants to bring about change in an organisation through conversation. It is suitable for psychologists and non-psychologists, OD practitioners and both internal and external consultants.

Workshop overview
In organisations people spend up to 80 per cent of their time in conversation. ‘Talk’ is our key action tool - and often a neglected discipline. Changing the nature of conversations in organisations may be the single most powerful way to bring about performance breakthroughs. Research shows that high performing teams talk together in distinct ways that lead to:

• Greater productivity and profitability.
• Higher levels of customer satisfaction.
• Better relationships with colleagues.

This one-day workshop is for psychologists, leaders, managers, consultants and other change agents who need to convene conversations to engage people’s hearts and minds. It equips participants with skills and knowledge to lead and participate in powerful conversations at work. Dialogue is a leading edge area of OD practice that is being increasingly used in organisations to bring about change by engaging people in conversations about what really matters.

Aims of the workshop

• Build conversational skill using empirically derived models of practice which have been tried and tested in organisations.
• Re-frame conversation as a key action tool - a fundamental and primary means through which change happens in organisations.
• Understand how dialogue differs from debate and how to move people on from debate into dialogue for more effective decision-making.
• Raise awareness that dialogue is a leading edge OD approach that has a substantial body of theory and empirical research to guide practice.

Projected outcomes and benefits of attending
Participants will enhance their ability to lead and participate in powerful conversations at work through learning:

• What makes conversations dysfunctional and how to make successful interventions to re-focus them.
• How to generate new possibilities for action through getting people beyond posturing by balancing inquiry with advocacy.
• How to create a positive atmosphere and gain maximum engagement through using some tried-and-tested dialogic processes.
• How to prepare for and engage in difficult conversations.
• Assess their own conversational skills and identify how they can develop these further using a shared language based on dialogic models of practice.

Psychological theory underpinning the workshop
A dialogic approach can help to overcome the following challenges to group effectiveness identified by social psychologists: the pressure to conform (Asch, 1956), groupthink (Janis,1972) and in-group/out-group dynamics (Tajfel, 1978). Dialogic processes can help people to feel safe to express what they really think and feel, to challenge the majority view and to contribute to generative conversation. This in turn can lead to better decision making, more innovative ideas and reduces the likelihood of ethical dilemmas.

A dialogic approach helps to address these dynamics by giving groups a shared meta-language for talking about how they are talking together. This enables a group to re-focus when conversation becomes difficult or dysfunctional. Dialogue promotes reflexivity - a key capacity contributing to more effective team functioning (West, 2003).

Dialogue is an OD approach that benefits from not only being tried-and-tested in organisations but substantiated by theory. The original theory of dialogue was developed by the quantum physicist David Bohm (Bohm, 1996) and has been translated into practice by psychologist David Cantor and the OD practitioner Bill Issacs (Issacs, 1999).
There is a growing body of empirical evidence that high performing teams talk and think in distinct ways (Losada and Heaphy, 2004). ‘Talk’ is a primary and fundamental means by which things get done so that changing the nature of conversations in organisations becomes a
critical OD intervention (Shaw, 2002).

Pre/post work required
There is some pre-work I would like participants to complete.

Date and venue
20 July 2009, 09.30 - 17.00.
The British Psychological Society, 30 Tabernacle Street, London, EC2A 4UE.

Booking A Place
To book a place at the workshop please download the registration form WS200908.doc or visit the Learning A Living website to book online. www.bps.org.uk/learningaliving2009

For further information please contact Lianne Bruce and Reshma Patel on 0116 252 9555 or email learningaliving@bps.org.uk

Places are limited so please book early!