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 stay competitive and require empathy and creativity to constructively shape the experience of customers or users – and resilience, quite frankly, to stay sane!
I have found in my work some simple practices for relating to each other which evoke the spirit of dialogue, as I understand it. They help groups build collective resilience, find creative solutions to tricky problems, and establish a habit of listening more deeply to themselves, to each other, and to their wider ecosystem so that they can be more responsive and less reactive. This has been true across diverse contexts, from talent and leadership development to culture change and Agile business transformation.
While this work may not engage people in Dialogue in the traditional sense, it is proving to be of genuine value, enabling them to enter into a different kind of conversation with each other, and to elicit deeper listening, awareness, and connection. This is especially true when combined with embodied approaches to state management – practices which enable people to swiftly manage their physiological state when they are emotionally ‘triggered’ by an event – so that participants have the capacity to regulate their own levels of stress and psychological arousal and we can all relate to one another as constructively as possible.
© Francis Briers, 2018
The World Needs Dialogue!
ISBN: 978-1916191204 One: Gathering the Field
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 and Ambiguity) 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 stay competitive and require empathy and creativity to constructively shape the experience of customers or users – and resilience, quite frankly, to stay sane!