My Journey to Authentic Dialogue

Finding learning, deep relationships, and a mode for social action

Photo by Aarón Blanco Tejedor on Unsplash

Enlightenment can hit you in many ways. One of my earliest world-shattering insights occurred at a fleeting time in my life when I had barely learned to read and still believed in the tooth fairy.

It was a time when the news came in large sheets of paper delivered by neighborhood kids trying to earn some money. So, as is natural for a child, comics were my favorite reading, and I would spread the comic section of the newspaper out on the floor and read the entire section from front to back.

One particular morning, I wanted to finish reading the comics before going to Sunday School—which I hated—when I noticed this particular Family Circus cartoon.

Check the first panel. What??? Do you see what we have there in one world-changing moment? The tooth fairy was not real. It was my parents! And of course that meant Santa Claus was not real either. (To be completely transparent, I was having doubts about both of them. But still.)

Okay, so people could be telling you untruths. Then, slowly, the relentless intrusion of Sunday School into my Sunday comics inspired me to ask my mother: What is God? How do we know God exists?

The Commitment to Truth

Rather than threatening me with eternal damnation or otherwise insisting that I should simply have faith, my mother, fortunately, listened to my questions and sought to give rational answers. This created a safe space for authentic dialogue.

The safe space is fundamental because authentic dialogue is about transparency and the willingness to be wrong. This is critical, especially where power is involved. My mother could have easily squashed the conversation.

Within a safe space, authentic dialogue requires a commitment to the pursuit of truth. To do that, you have to accept the possibility of being wrong, as learning is a step into the unknown.

We all live in a world of myths. Some common ones are:

• Sugar causes kids to be hyperactive, even though there are dozens of studies contradicting this.

• Heavier objects fall faster. They don’t. Even people who learned this in physics class often revert to the false belief because it intuitively seems true.

• Whales spout water. Actually, they spout air which might have water in it.

Besides just being wrong on the facts, people are not always trying to learn from the conversation. Instead, they are pursuing other goals, such as influencing you to buy their book or vote for them.

Sometimes, they are just trying to make themselves look good. In a hilarious example perpetuated by comedian Jimmy Kimmel, supporters of former President Trump were asked to comment on actions allegedly done by U.S. President Biden. Once the actions were revealed as actually those of former President Trump, the interviewee revised their opinion, often with convoluted explanations.

Now clearly this kind of response is not restricted to Trump supporters. Funny examples are just easier to find—or generate—because the former President says so many outrageous things. But people of all political orientations routinely twist the facts to fit their narrative.

Honest Intellectual Inquiry

So to practice authentic dialogue, you must be committed to honest intellectual inquiry. That is, Can you commit to knowing the truth even if you don’t like it? Can you accept your knowledge, even some things you hold dear, could be wrong?

Moving toward the truth in conversation requires certain skills that probably need to be honed with practice. Beyond the safe space, my early years in conversation with my mother helped me sharpen those skills, which included artful advocacy and empathetic inquiry.

Artful Advocacy. Of course, for the conversation to happen, someone must assert a statement to be true. We can call this a knowledge claim.  The knowledge claim should be supported by evidence, which opens it up to discussion. Compare these two statements:

Statement 1: Climate change is man-made.

Statement 2: We know climate change is man-made because the increase in global temperatures during the last 100 years cannot be explained by any other cause.

In Statement 2, the knowledge claim has a reason attached so that we can examine it further.

Empathetic Inquiry. This means asking questions to understand how the other person arrived at their perspective. It clarifies the basis of the knowledge claim. For example, you could follow up on Statement 2 with “How are global temperatures measured?” (If you want to know the answer, see this article.)

The combination of respectfully exposing one’s line of thinking while similarly empathetically exploring the reasoning of the other person creates a joint inquiry into greater shared truth.

The Soul Connection

One great conversation can shift the direction of change forever.

—Linda Lambert

Besides improving your knowledge of the world, authentic dialogue can improve your relationships. Many years ago, I traveled from my home in San Jose, California down to Irvine to attend training with work colleagues who had flown in from other locations. After the session, all the attendees departed, except for myself and Geri, a woman from Salt Lake City. We were both staying overnight for other obligations in the area on the next day.

We decided to go to dinner in Laguna Beach, which was a beautiful small town on the coast south of Los Angeles. We walked through the shops and parks along the beach, and somehow the conversation moved more deeply as we talked about past relationships, religion, and our views on life. We ended up sitting on a bench on a small rise, overlooking the ocean.

I don’t have a picture of the location from then, but the one below reminds me of it.

2018, Michael Ryan Photography

Around that moment, a sudden shift happened. We started to understand each other differently. I felt there was a fellow truth seeker, someone who could go where the truth led. If a meeting of souls exists, that was it.

We each went back to our homes in different cities, although the conversation continued during phone calls for quite some time. The distance created an obstacle, but other work events occasionally brought us together again in person, and there was always a special connection. Eventually, we started dating and got married—a union that has now endured for nearly 30 years.

The big insight was how authentic dialogue worked in forging deep personal relationships. I had been in relationships before, but each of us maintained their separateness. In meeting my future wife, I learned how this kind of authentic dialogue was less about objective truth and more about understanding each other and ourselves. It was about personal growth and bonding, where the type of truth being sought was not objective truth, but rather truth about how my partner saw the world and how I responded to it.

Group Transformative Learning

Soon after getting married, I entered graduate school, and during my doctoral studies, I was involved for several years in research conducted through The Fuschl Conversations (held in Fuschl am See in Austria) and the Asilomar Conversation Conference (held at Pacific Grove in California). Both were quite beautiful locations that allowed attendees to stay on-site and dine together, take walks along the waterfront, swim, and do other socializing.

The conferences were organized as five days of dialogue. Professors, students, and other professionals from around the world attended, all organized into small teams with their own chosen topics. The agenda was very loose: There were morning and evening plenaries to connect the small teams and give report-outs. Otherwise, the teams self-organized their day as they saw fit.

Fuschl 2002 Conference, me in a purple polo shirt

As there were no organized presentations and the agenda was generally free-form, the conference had a particular dynamic. Initially, many divergent opinions usually came into play and after several hours the groups frequently developed a feeling of despair. Some attendees would complain that the dialogue was going nowhere and wonder if their time was worth it. Then, a group “Aha!” moment would occur and the group coalesced. In later papers describing it, we labeled this group transformative learning.

After that moment happened, usually about a day or two into the conference, the group would be excited and work on a plan together for the next few days. As the participants were mainly academics, the output was mainly papers and books. One of my articles was “Conversation as the Communication Method of Choice: Designing New Agoras for the 21st Century.”

During those days, I also found that authentic dialogue worked well in a business setting and improved innovation and team cohesion. For example, I used to run a technical publications team where I had had several managers in different locations reporting to me. To foster collaboration, I held quarterly in-person meetings for a couple of days that started with a few hours of dialogue. We all sat in a circle and allowed topics to emerge organically through an open, respectful conversation. This set the stage for many innovative ideas, and our technical publications organization led the way in moving to online documentation.

It should be noted that maintaining a safe space in business is tricky because we most often work in hierarchies. Even when managers claim they are open to discussion and contend “My people can tell me anything” this is not entirely true. Power always exists in management hierarchies, although there are better and worse ways to handle it.

The Public Sphere

My interest in authentic dialogue has also spurred my research into how we can improve public discourse. There is a clear need for more dialogic principles to be used in the formation of public opinion, yet the current conversation seems to be leading to greater polarization and less efficient government decision-making.

When people reach a common understanding of issues, it has generally been done by first creating a safe space for open dialogue and establishing common goals. Then by applying a facilition method like Fishkin’s deliberative polling, the group can reach consensus more easily. More work is needed to figure out how to scale these methods as they are currently very time-intensive.

Benefits and Wrap-up

The spark ignited by early dialogue in my childhood emanated from numerous long conversations with my mother, continued through forming a soul connection with my wife, and now underpins my approaches to successful organizational and social change.

Along the way, I have realized there several interrelated applications of authentic dialogue:

• Truth-seeking. Dialogue as honest intellectual inquiry.

• Learning about the self and others. Dialogue as personal growth and relationship building.

• Group collaboration. Dialogue as a foundation of high-performing group action.

In each application, the benefits of authentic dialogue include the following:

• Enhanced Learning: Individuals can gain deeper insights into different perspectives, experiences, and worldviews. This leads to greater empathy, tolerance, and appreciation of diversity.

• Strengthened relationships: Trust, respect, and mutual understanding are fostered among participants. This promotes a sense of community and belonging.

• Improved problem-solving: When people engage in authentic dialogue, they can openly discuss challenges, brainstorm solutions, and work collaboratively to address complex issues.

• Increased innovation: Creativity and innovation are encouraged by sharing ideas, challenging assumptions, and exploring new possibilities. This can lead to breakthroughs and novel approaches to various problems.

• Personal growth: Self-reflection, introspection, and learning enhance personal growth by providing opportunities for individuals to expand their perspectives, challenge their own assumptions, and develop greater self-awareness.

So get out and try it. Find the people who are truly interested in truth and learning. Advocate with evidence and ask questions. Comment on one of my posts. Be committed to learning and the truth. This will provide not only benefits to you personally but also contribute to better public discourse.