Members Monthly Dialogue

The Dialogue at the Heart of the Academy: 

We will meet at the same time on the first Wednesday of every month – do make a note in your calendar and join us!

Our intention is to deepen our community engagement, to learn together and experience together as colleagues, and to practice dialogue to improve our skills and competency.

The theme will be announced approximately two weeks before each monthly dialogue.

Theme for October: Dialogue...to what end?

Reflections from September's theme: The atmosphere matters. But what does it mean when we say we're in dialogue?

20 experienced practitioners were together in one room, enquiring together about Qi, judgement and being non-judgemental, suspension, how weird we are calling out other people for doing what we do ourselves, practicing, listening, thinking, feeling, being silent and building a deeper space together.

One story told in the September Monthly Dialogue was about two members in a team who had an altercation. The team lead intervened and told the two members he would take the matter offline and talk with them privately afterwards to resolve the matter. The team coach thought differently and saw that as a lost opportunity for the whole team to learn together. The coach probably held a more dialogic approach to resolving the conflict by getting everything out in the open with everyone (whether through dialogue or debate). In this way of thinking, dialogue as a noun is displaced by the adverb dialogic. One question that arises is whether the container in that team in the story was resilient enough in that moment to hold together whilst an uncomfortable process occurred. In other words, would it be a crisis within the container, or a crisis of the container. That is the discernment that needs to be made in the moment, that a skilled practitioner develops over time. It requires courage and taking the risk to act on one’s sense of the situation, and it can pay huge dividends through collective learning.

In the previous Monthly Dialogue we had talked about the atmosphere, noting that the physical atmosphere is what we describe as weather. The social atmosphere is better described as mood or disposition held by people. That exists both within the group or team, and within each individual, making it an elusive and ever-changing atmosphere. This combination of the internal atmosphere, and the external atmosphere or mood in the room is what is often called the ‘container’.

Part of our enquiry this month led us into exploring the nature of a container by considering whether anger could be revealed during a good dialogue. Clearly humour is welcome, within reason. but what about anger? It seems to get bad press. The question had been flagged up by a story told in our previous Month’s dialogue. That story was about a South American, who had been resident in the United States for many years, being told that he was not welcome and that he should go home. It is hard to imagine that such an exchange would not lead to anger, as well as other emotions, or that it could be resolved without some kind of dialogic approach.What can we learn in dialogue? Let's find out.

Peter

Your hosting team

Nick Regan

Susan Dandridge

Harold Clarke

Peter Garrett