Better known for his “U Theory”, Otto Scharmer has also worked extensively on Dialogue, together with his MIT colleague Bill Isaacs. In his pre “U Theory” days, he developed a very useful matrix to map out the various conversational fields that we could find ourselves in.
For him, there are 4 such fields:
- Field #1: Talking Nice. Here we maintain harmony in the group, but at the expense of diving into the real issues
- Field #2: Talking Tough: where we fall into debate and fail to work through the issues, mainly trying to prove we’re right and the other wrong
- Field #3: Reflective Dialogue: where listening takes over, and individuals can start conveying their perspectives, without feeling judged nor trying to convince others
- Field #4: Generative Dialogue: this is where meaning truly flows, where dialogue moves beyond interpersonal conversations, to enter a truly collective experience of meaning-making, discovery, and transformation
In this short video, Matthieu Daum presents in more details those 4 fields of dialogue, highlighting which ones are more likely to repeat patterns of the past, which ones hold most transformative potential – and how to avoid the former and foster the latter.