"A genuine dialogue is never the one we wanted to conduct"

The quote from the title is from Hans-Georg Gadamer, a philosopher who studied hermeneutics - the art of interpretation and understanding.

Gadamer's point, is seems, is that it is the nature of genuine conversation that it takes you somewhere you didn't intend to go beforehand. And once you are there, the conversation reveals a new understanding that belongs to no one (no single person). Rather, the understanding is a creation that is realized only in its sharing.

Understanding is a creation that is
realized only in its sharing.

This is a very very radical stance - that something is only real if and only if it is shared. This flips most communication strategies on their head. Most communication strategies are strategies for getting the message out. We have the understanding ... now let's drill it into the masses (e.g., our family, our friends, our employees, our clients, our customers, our audience, etc.). How different would our approach to communicating be if we took Gadamer's insight to heart?

In order to have the conversation we intended to have we must steer the conversation, dampen our sensitivity to shifts in emotions and moods, and only listen for what we want to hear. But this doesn't necessarily generate understanding. In order to generate understanding, we must have the conversation that "wants" to happen, so to speak, instead of the conversation we want to happen.

To generate understanding, our listening must be sensitive and open and this demands from us a higher level of authenticity and presence in the conversation. Leadership, coaching, and design occurs within a conversation and can only be effective when it is a genuine conversation.

Take care,

-Steve

Comments

[Arni Karlsson]

Steve,

Thanks for this entry.

I wonder which of Gadamers books you got this quote from, I would be interested to know.

All the best,

Arni

[Steve]

Arni,

Sorry for being sluggish on the response. The book I got this quote out of is Gadamer's "Truth and Method." I'll have to dig a little to get you the page reference. I'll post it here within a week.

-Steve

[Steve]

Arni,

I can't find the exact page but it is somewhere in the neighborhood of pages ~360-~390 in "Truth and Method".

Enjoy!

-Steve

[Steve]

Arni,

Found it ... p. 383. Make sure you are looking at the Second Edition.

-Steve

[mo wechsler]

I wonder what it is a "genuine dialogue" and what it is "to conduct". In any case, to conduct seems to be half of the dance. Let yourself to be conducted, or even thrown into perplexity in the middle of the dialogue, seems to be another significant part of the story. Like the leader that leads as far as he let him/herself to be lead. We have a curious way of hiding what is not yet articulated, what it extremelly anti-practical. Beautiful quote.