Dialogue                                                  

                                                             Lucas Pääkkönen Alvim – Syntre

Dialogue is a cooperative two-way conversation with the objective of exchanging information and building relations. It can be a conversation between two or more people, it can also be featured in a movie, play, book, etc.

To improve or exchange an environment or deal with an issue constructively you need to dialogue first. Dialogue is a communication tool used to understand other people´s point of view without creating conflict because of it. Your goal in a dialogue is to listen and understand the other persons point of view, so you do not defend your own point of view because you are not trying to prove that their statement is wrong and your right. The key to dialogue is that when you give your viewpoint, you do not give your viewpoint relative to theirs. In dialogue there is not a back and forth like in a discussion, debate or rebuttal. Dialogue provides a chance to frame a problem collectively by both independently voicing their perspective on the issue.

As I see, dialogue should always come before discussion, because how are you going to discuss and get to common resolution if you don’t understand each other. That´s the great thing about dialogue, you just listen and try to understand the other persons perspective without thinking at the same time how to take value from their point of view or how to give more value to your point of view in relation to theirs, because there is not a winner or a loser in a dialogue.

There are people who may find hard to participate in a dialogue because they think that their point of view is the only one that matters, so they are not going to listen and think about what the other person is saying and will only be thinking how to win the exchange or what are they going to say next. A good way of getting better at dialoguing is practicing active listening. Active listening is a technique utilized to ensure the speaker that their point is coming across effectively and makes the listener absolve and understand more information by being engaged. You can actively listen by showing that you are paying attention, listening with empathy, avoid interrupting and judging, paraphrasing what has been said, asking for clarifications and giving feedback if asked.

Using appropriate body language can also help your dialogue skills. Body language is the unspoken part of communication. Body language is a way of reveling our true feelings and giving our message more impact. Nonverbal cues play a big part in a conversation, like tone of voice, gestures, and posture. Your mouth can be saying one thing and your body is transmitting other, per example you can say that you are confident about something, but your body language plays a big part in showing that.

So in conclusion dialogue is a valuable tool for everybody. Because both sides have an opportunity to voice their experiences and points of view without being interrupted and both sides also can learn about the other without being worried about how to win the conversation.

References

(Lieberman, 2016)

(Schmidt, 2022)