As you discover more about it, you will find that there are many inter-related roles involved in the effective delivery of good Professional Dialogue work. The broad spread is depicted in the graphic below and we welcome members from all these areas. The generic problem they address is always the same – namely fragmentation in human thought that causes disconnections, misunderstandings, inaccurate assumptions and ignorance. It results in broken story-lines, misguided behaviour, counter-productive decisions, conflict and varying degrees of violation. Some situations are more complex than others, depending for example on whether you are working with a small group or a large system of thousands of people.
This graphic depicts some of the Professional Dialogue roles. The left-hand side names hands-on practitioner roles, including the facilitating Dialogue Groups, coaching key players in a Dialogic understanding and stance, intervening in specific fragmented situations and convening an appropriate grouping of participants for a particular purpose. These involve both face-to-face and design skills, based on an integrated theory. A step back are a further set of roles depicted in the right-hand side of the graphic. Writing about the Dialogue work for general publication, or within a specific process, helps people to become aware and to understand what is happening. Transferring the Dialogue skills through educational training and development programmes enables lasting change, and research using Dialogue as the methodology can inform people of a collective way forward. Perhaps most important is the commissioning of Dialogue work. How work is requested and resourced is fundamental to its success, and there are professional ways to commission Dialogue work.