For three days this week I had the pleasure of attending the first ‘The World Needs Dialogue’ conference, hosted at Roffey Park by the International Academy of Dialogue. The conference drew 80 people from around the world who have been working with dialogue in a variety of sectors, from healthcare, criminal justice, organisations and societies, some for many years. The wealth of experience, expertise, passion and warmth was a source of great inspiration and motivation that di

I am writing this article as a Trustee of Prison Dialogue, a UK-based not-for-profit charity which seeks to promote the use of Dialogue in the Criminal Justice System, and especially in prisons. My route to arriving in this position was somewhat roundabout, as I am neither a Criminal Justice professional nor a Dialogue Practitioner. I encountered the concept of Dialogue in the course of my career in the oil business with British Petroleum as part of some work we were doing to

Medicine in the United States is generally fragmented as a profession, as are Academic Medical Centers as institutions. Academic Medical Centers (AMC) typically consist of a College of Medicine with its afliated University Hospital. The University Hospital often has a closed medical staff, meaning that only the faculty members of the medical school are able to care for patients in the hospital. Community physicians who are not faculty members are typically not allowed to mana

OUTDOORS PAPER PRESENTERS GROUPINGS MEMBERS MEETING TRUSTEES & FOUNDERS

With globalisation, workers today face challenges that language educators in higher education cannot ignore. As English is the globally shared language in working life, educators need to pay attention to the fact that interaction skills are one of the most called-for skills in any present-day job. Conventionally, English for working-life courses aim at providing students with such skills as telephoning, emailing, and participating in meetings and negotiations. The topic of so

For most of us, the term “border services” likely brings to mind protected boundaries, secured borders and the regulated movement of people and goods between nations. This would be true for the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) as well, but it would not fully encompass the emerging partnership between Indigenous Peoples and the Agency, nor the role I am proud to play as CBSA Champion of Indigenous Peoples. It also would not describe the central place of dialogue in our wor

Flux has been working with dialogue in Norwegian prisons since the autumn of 2015 and, prior to that, with the practical application of dialogue since 2009. The story, however, begins before that. Henrik Tschudi met David Bohm at a private dialogue Weekend in Copenhagen in 1989 and, although attending the conference because of Bohm’s reputation as a scientist, Henrik walked away deeply inspired about dialogue. A similar private dialogue weekend was arranged in Oslo by friends

International development is concerned with complex global problems such as climate change, urbanisation, poverty and migration. International development actors worldwide are becoming aware that seemingly simple solutions might have short-term, localised effects, but often create more drastic problems in the long run. Solutions that look good at first sight often reproduce effects similar to those that they were meant to counteract. Over time, this leaves many people disillu

Did it ever occur to you that human thought may be the cause of most of the challenges we face in the world today? Some problems are the result of natural disasters like earthquakes, tsunamis, droughts and cyclones. Most, however, are caused by people, and the way they behave towards one another and the environment. The problems of crime, wars, substance abuse, deforestation, pollution, depletion of the ozone layer and so on, all arise from the way people think, feel and act.

My route into dialogue has followed a path from psychology to union representation, and from consulting to my current work. I started in 1971 as a mental health worker at a major psychiatric hospital in Uppsala, Sweden. This led me to becoming a member of the Swedish Municipal Workers’ Union – known as Kommunal, Sweden’s largest union – where I soon became the trade representative and then president of the local union in 1976. In 1980, I was offered the position of ombudsman

What is the purpose of the criminal justice system? Is it punishment? Or retribution? Perhaps rehabilitation? Deterrence? Public safety? While there is undoubtedly a little of all of these in practice, rehabilitation is at the heart of modern penal policy in the UK and US systems where I have worked. In my experience the reality of the aspiration to provide rehabilitation (defined as ‘the reintegration of a convicted person into society’) is hampered by the fragmentation of t

It is sometimes said that organizing church communities is like herding cats. This is meant to be funny, but there is more than a grain of truth to it. Cats cannot be pushed into formation, but  they can, in fact, be herded. All we need do is put a fish on a line. In effect, we need to find  what they all hunger for and hold it out there: they will come, and they will eat and be better for  it. It is the same way in an effective dialogue with members of church communities who

People have always been concerned with what they could do to be well prepared for future events and uncertainties. One of the skills of a successful entrepreneur is foresight, the ability to make the right decisions for an uncertain time ahead. The technical and biotechnical developments of the last 25 years, and the resulting possibilities of their use, are immense. They have changed working and thinking. The time periods between introduction and widespread usage are getting

In our work with dialogue at the Centre for Ecological Economics and Ethics (CEEE), based at the Nord University Business School, Norway, we focus on communicative processes as a value inherent to ‘living societies’. This stands in contrast to the instrumental value of dialogue in the ‘smart city’ concept, where conversation is often in service of designing technology and services for the future. Our goal is to develop arenas for conversation and to inspire processes that con

In 2005, Degerfors Municipality in central Sweden received financial support to develop an education programme to stimulate better staf communication, and to make its work teams aware of their responsibility for setting goals in the organisation. The programme was also aimed at promoting a good workplace climate, increased understanding of our diferences and awareness about how we would succeed. We focused on a three-day training in Dialogue. All staf members in the municipal

The dialogue intervention I’ll be describing in this paper consumed a year out of my life and went deeply under the surface of my own consciousness with an impact that still reverberates. It was an intense, whole-system engagement focusing on dialogue within a long-term healthcare facility. Although the intervention was conducted almost 22 years ago, it ofers a perspective that is still relevant today, as it focuses on the intensive use of dialogue, eventually taking in a who

As the Director of Graduate Medical Education (GME) at an academic medical center, I oversee the requirements of the resident physician training programs. Resident physicians (residents) are in the final phase of medical education. They are learners who have graduated from medical school and are training in their selected medical specialty field with supervision. At the completion of residency training, these physicians are eligible to be licensed, board certified, independen

This exploratory journey was jump-started by an invitation to write about an economic crisis within a large commercial enterprise, and how dialogue played a role in overcoming not only that temporary situation, but also many other emerging challenges. The experience I will describe took place many years ago, but it makes an ongoing case for the dialogical challenges and opportunities in complex private businesses, where everybody is a client from a particular perspective. It

Autism is a lifelong developmental condition that mainly afects how people perceive their environment and how they interact with others. Autistic people experience the world differently to non-autistic people and it is often, but not always, debilitating. An autistic person may also have other conditions within the autism spectrum, learning disabilities and/or mental health issues, and may receive a diferent level or way of support from other autistic people. © Jonathan Drury

It is my perception, which seems to be fairly commonly shared by others as reality, that the pace of change in the world is getting faster. There are various terms relating to this, whether they be the originally military ‘VUCA’ acronym (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity andAmbiguity) or ‘Age of Accelerations’, coined by Thomas L. Friedman. However this experience is labelled, leaders and teams in organisations need to find increasing levels of responsiveness and agility to