Dialogue: The Art Of Thinking Together

William Isaacs

Crown, Dec 30, 2008 - Business & Economics - 448 pages

Dialogue provides practical guidelines for one of the essential elements of true partnership--learning how to talk together in honest and effective ways. Reveals how problems between managers and employees, and between companies or divisions within a larger corporation, stem from an inability to conduct a successful dialogue.

Contents

• The Fire of Conversation: 1
• W H AT I S D 1 AL O GUE: 7
• A Conversation with a Center Not Sides: 17
• Why We Think Alone and What We Can Do About It: 49
• The Timeless Way of Conversation: 70
• Listening: 83
• Respecting: 110
• Suspending: 134
• Voicing: 159
• Patterns of Action: 185
• Overcoming Structural Traps: 203
• Setting the Container: 239
• Fields of Conversation: 252
• Convening Dialogue: 291
• The Ecology of Thought: 300
• Dialogue and the New Economy: 323
• Cultivating Organizational and System Dialogue: 336
• Dialogue and Democracy: 360
• Taking Wholeness Seriously: 387
• Notes: 400
• Diagrams: 419

About the author

William Isaacs is the founder of Dialogos, a consulting firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is also a cofounder of the Organizational Learning Center at MIT and a senior lecturer at the Sloan School of Management. He is the author of Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Dialogue: The Art Of Thinking Together
• Author: William Isaacs
• Publisher: Crown, 2008
• ISBN: 0307483789, 9780307483782
• Length: 448 pages
• Subjects: Business & Economics / Business Communication / General; Business & Economics / Skills; Self-Help / Communication & Social Skills