 |
Reviews Dr. Elayne Chou My expertise in facilitating difficult dialogue has been earned mainly through hard experience, but reading The Little Book of Dialogue for Difficult Subjects by Lisa Schirch and David Campt made me feel more equipped, and even excited, about the possibilities of facilitating more dialogue in a systematic way in my personal and professional lives. I am a counseling psychologist who has worked with individuals, couples, groups, and organizations in improving communication and resolving conflict. Within organizations and within families there are often many stakeholders with different perspectives. Everyone is working to take action or make changes, but often the important dialogue about different perspectives is absent – and can lead to larger conflicts, misunderstandings, and impaired productivity down the line. This methodology could help in so many different work settings and communities, not to mention within families. The practical, step-by-step style of this book is its most significant strength. That the book was able to evoke a feeling in me of desire to approach, rather than avoid, difficult discussions, is truly inspiring. This book lives up to its title of being the “little” book – it’s a quick 90-page read. I appreciated this given the bookshelves of half-read books in my office. It occurred to me upon finishing the book that the authors have done a great service by giving readers a digestible chunk of a large topic. Because facilitating dialogue is a skill, readers are best served initially by having the process simplified and explained with concrete examples. Lest you think my comments imply that only laypersons and novices will find this book helpful, let me point out that the book places the methodology within the context of social change processes. The book’s reach is ambitious and will allow people from all ends of the spectrum – those who have been trained in facilitation to those without any prior exposure to communications skills training - to find something of interest. Counselors, psychologists, social workers, meeting facilitators, and corporate trainers will recognize some topics covered in the book, such as setting ground rules. The methodology presented will be familiar in many ways, but will also present new perspectives. The authors have impressive experience facilitating dialogue successfully with groups both large and small. They make their points using case examples throughout the book, which made the material come alive. Professionals who read this book will see the value in adding dialogue facilitation into their repertoire of skills. If I had to specify one area where this book could be better, I would focus on the pre-conditions the authors mention as necessary for effective dialogue - enough shared perception of language abilities, cultural differences in expressiveness (verbal and emotional), openness to learning and changing. This book is designed to be little so I didn’t expect it to go into detail on how to foster these pre-conditions or work with their absence, but in the future I would love to see more from these authors in another book on those topics! Another warning is that it takes experience, training, and some talent to be a good facilitator of difficult dialogue – this book is a great start, but people who feel called to this line of work will want to get training and not go it alone initially. The book emphasizes the value of teams of facilitators working together to support the dialogue process and one another and I couldn’t agree more. These authors have worked well together in giving us a wonderfully useful set of guidelines for an important and underutilized skill set. I recommend this book highly.
Frequently Asked Questions for Interviews
|
