Heckscher Drive Neighborhood

Transforming Conflict Into Cooperation.

Mar 30, 2000

Both Sides Now, from NY Times on the net, October 10, 1999 By Daniel Goleman

THE MAGIC OF DIALOGUE
By Daniel Yankelovich.
236 pp. New York:
Simon & Schuster. $24.

The high school gym in my small New England town was standing room only one night last spring, as neighbors gathered for a town meeting on a proposed new zoning bylaw. Hands shot up for hours as townspeople claimed their chance to speak out.

The battle lines were classic. On one side ranged allies and supporters of a local businessman who had bought up much of the property along the highway that serves as the town's main commercial street. On the other stood a citizens' coalition seeking to preserve the charm and community feel of the village, with its 19th-century clapboard buildings. Those opposing the zoning made their appeals to a strain of leave-me-alone individualism that has deep New England roots, arguing that people should be free to build on their property as they saw fit. The pro-zoning coalition, invoking visions of soulless strip malls destroying our picturesque village, invoked communal responsibility and civic pride.

The two sides most often talked past each other, each applauded by its own claques. At the end of a long night, a secret ballot saw the bylaw narrowly defeated.

Grander issues can be read here: a fateful struggle between a vision of the free market, with entrepreneurs and companies guided by enlightened self-interest building prosperity and well-being for all, pitted against a vision of a civil society where neighbors and families strengthen their communities' social capital by protecting traditional values of mutual caring and civic virtue.

Lofty terms these, to be sure. But they are unabashedly invoked by Daniel Yankelovich in ''The Magic of Dialogue: Transforming Conflict Into Cooperation,'' his ambitious and admirable blueprint for constructively working out disagreements. This engaging report shows how dialogues have ironed out differences in a wide variety of settings, from board rooms and high-tech companies to parent-teacher meetings and at local levels in international flash points.

A disciplined encounter designed to enhance mutual understanding, dialogue has its spiritual roots in the philosopher Martin Buber's classic ''I and Thou.'' As Yankelovich writes: ''In dialogue, we penetrate behind the polite superficialities and defenses in which we habitually armor ourselves. We listen and respond to one another with an authenticity that forges a bond between us.'' ''Dialogue,'' as he uses the term, differs from ordinary conversation on the one hand and debate on the other. In debate, for example, parties assume they have the right answer and try to win by proving others wrong; in dialogue the assumption is that some truth lies on both sides and that the parties can forge a better resolution by working together toward understanding. What may sound lofty takes down-to-earth form as Yankelovich outlines 15 specific strategies for bringing hidden assumptions to the surface and avoiding misunderstandings. At the outset, he notes, three conditions are essential: participants must meet as equals; they must try to listen with empathy, seeking to understand each other's perspective; and they must be willing to examine their own and others' assumptions without judging them.

Those requirements, of course, may well eliminate large numbers of people. For people who are still game, or who have the skill to create those conditions, Yankelovich offers a further map. His strategies include, for example, revealing one's own assumptions first rather than speculating on someone else's, thereby setting an example for openness in clarifying what could become hidden roadblocks. Another is to see conflicts as being between people's beliefs and values rather than as between the individuals themselves. A third is to separate time spent in dialogue, with its focus on building trust and understanding, from time spent in decision making, creating, presumably, a more constructive environment for making those decisions.

No doubt all this would build the collective emotional aptitude of any group. But does it make a meaningful difference? Yankelovich offers several anecdotal accounts from his own life, including transcending differences between business people and academics on the board of directors of the Educational Testing Service, to which he belongs. Still, he concedes, the ability to conduct dialogue is a marginal skill that only a handful of people exercise well, a large number of organizations poorly and most people not at all.

Even so, the method has long had a testing ground in the work of Peter Senge and his colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who have successfully evangelicized their version as a problem-solving tool for corporations. This brand of Buber-in-the-boardroom has been field-tested with positive business results at the Lincoln Continental division of the Ford Motor Company and at the computer industry analyst Dataquest. Beyond applications in business, Yankelovich sees dialogue as filling an urgent need as Americans grow more isolated, social bonds fray and civility loses ground -- trends his survey firm's tracking studies identify as growing steadily since the 1960's.

Dialogue is no substitute for genuine social bonds, to be sure. But were dialogue to become commonplace -- say, a skill that children learned routinely in school -- society would no doubt reap benefits. But when it comes to his grandest proposal, that our entire society must join in dialogue about what he calls the fateful struggle for the soul of America between the free market and civil society, Yankelovich seems a bit out of touch, perhaps the result of viewing America for so long through the lens of the surveys and polling of which he is a master. Yankelovich calls for this particular dialogue in terms that are impossibly abstract, failing to notice how the issue has long been joined -- though not in the abstractions he invokes.

All politics are local: that grand struggle can already be heard across America in vociferous school board meetings, in fractious city council debates -- and, yes, in my small town's heated disputation over zoning. Those are certainly signs of a healthy democracy. The problem, in Yankelovich's analysis: these are debates and disputes, not dialogue. As I write this, the local paper brings news that my town has appointed a new committee to create a fresh set of zoning bylaw proposals. Members, the report notes, were carefully chosen to balance those pro and con.

Before they begin their meetings, the committee members would do well to make ''The Magic of Dialogue'' mandatory reading -- as should anyone who seeks to overcome mistrust and misunderstanding in resolving contentious issues.