The Compass: Where Dialogue Begins
—

There are moments in life that leave us asking questions we never expected to ask. For me, one of those questions was not about love, success, leadership, or even happiness.

It was about dialogue. Not how people speak, but what happens when they stop listening.

For a long time, I believed dialogue was simply the exchange of words. If two people were talking, I assumed dialogue was taking place. Life has shown me that this is not always true. Sometimes people speak for hours without hearing a single word the other person is trying to say. They are not building a bridge. They are standing on opposite sides of a river, each shouting louder, hoping their own voice will somehow reach the other first.

I did not arrive at this understanding through theory. It came through different moments in my life, moments that at first seemed unrelated but, looking back, were quietly asking the same question.

Where does dialogue really begin?

One winter evening, my phone rang. The voice on the other end belonged to a close friend, but it was unlike any voice I had ever heard before. She was crying so intensely that her words almost disappeared beneath the sound of her tears.

"I can't do this any more," she said. "Please meet me tonight. If you don't, I don't know what I'll do."

There are moments when questions can wait. This was not one of those moments.

We agreed to meet at a café about an hour later. When she walked through the door, I almost failed to recognise her. Her eyes were dark red from crying, and there were bruises across her face. At first, I thought she had been involved in an accident. Then she sat down, looked at me in silence for a few moments, and quietly told me what had happened.

Earlier that day, her husband had asked if they could sit together and talk about their marriage. They had been struggling for some time and were considering divorce. She accepted because she genuinely believed that conversation might help them understand one another... At first, it did.

They spoke calmly about the pressures they had been carrying, the disappointments they had never fully expressed, and the distance that had slowly grown between them. For a while, it seemed they were finally having the conversation both of them had needed for months… Then something changed.

Without either of them noticing, the conversation stopped being about understanding and became about defending. Every sentence was answered by another. Every explanation sounded like an accusation. Neither of them was listening any more. Both were trying to prove that their version of the story was the right one.

The words became louder. The anger became stronger. Eventually, dialogue disappeared altogether.

What followed left scars that were far deeper than the ones I could see that evening across the café table.

For the next three hours, she told me everything. I listened. More than once I found myself searching for the right words, believing I should somehow make sense of what had happened. Yet every sentence I imagined felt too small for the pain she was carrying. Looking back, I realise that what she needed most was not advice. She needed someone willing to remain present while she slowly gathered the pieces of herself together again.

That evening stayed with me for years. Not simply because of the violence, but because it made me wonder how many tragedies begin long before anyone notices them. Violence rarely appears without warning. More often, it arrives after dialogue has quietly left the room.

The memory of that evening stayed with me, but life has a way of returning to the same lesson from different directions. Years later, I found myself facing another situation where dialogue seemed to have reached its end. This time, however, it was not between a husband and wife. It was inside an organisation, during one of the most demanding periods of my career.

As Quality Consultant, I was preparing the organisation for a renewal surveillance audit by the certification body. New policies had recently been introduced, and the management board had decided that we would carry out an unplanned internal audit across every department before the external auditors arrived. It was a thorough review of policies, procedures and records, and because I was leading the audit alone, I would be assessing every department, from senior management to frontline staff.

Everyone knew the importance of this exercise. Human Resources had already communicated that poor results could have serious consequences. The atmosphere was understandably tense.

At the opening meeting, I tried to remove any uncertainty. I explained that I intended to be more demanding than any certification body itself, not because I wanted to make anyone's work more difficult, but because I wanted every department to be fully prepared. I also asked for one thing that morning.

"Please work with me, even if some of my questions seem difficult."

Most departments did exactly that. We discussed findings, corrected issues and moved forward together. Then I reached one department where everything changed.

The department manager was highly capable and deeply committed to her team. She took great pride in their work, and rightly so. As we reviewed the records, most of the findings were relatively minor. Under normal circumstances they could have been corrected later. Instead, I challenged them immediately. My intention was simple. If we addressed every weakness before the external audit, her department would be among the strongest in the organisation. Unfortunately, that was not what she heard.

As we continued, I noticed a change in her expression. She stopped asking questions. She stopped listening to the reasons behind my observations. Instead, she began defending every file, every decision and, eventually, every member of her team. Within minutes the discussion became personal. She accused me of being unfair and claimed I was treating her department differently from the others.

For a moment, I realised we were no longer discussing quality. We were no longer even discussing the audit... We had stopped listening to one another.

I could have continued. My position gave me the authority to do so. Instead, I did something that surprised everyone in the room.

I closed my notebook and suspended the audit until the following day. Some people thought I had given up. In reality, I had reached a simple conclusion. No meaningful audit can continue once dialogue has disappeared.

A few hours later, I walked to her office and asked if she would allow me a few minutes to explain my thinking. I made only one request.

"I am not asking you to agree with me," I said. "I am only asking you to hear me before deciding."

She paused for a moment and then agreed, on the condition that the General Manager would be present. I accepted without hesitation.

The conversation that followed lasted only a few minutes. I reminded her of what I had said at the opening meeting and explained that I was holding her department to such a high standard because I believed it was capable of achieving it. With permission from the board, I even showed her part of a confidential memorandum that explained the purpose of the audit and why immediate corrections were essential.

The atmosphere changed almost instantly. Yet nothing about the audit itself had changed. The findings were exactly the same and procedures were exactly the same. The only difference was that we had started listening again.

The following morning, the audit resumed. This time we worked side by side, not as opponents trying to prove each other wrong, but as colleagues working towards the same goal.

That experience taught me something I have never forgotten. Dialogue does not always fail because people disagree. Sometimes it fails because they no longer feel understood. And sometimes, all it takes to begin rebuilding it is one person willing to pause, lower their voice, and invite the other person back into the conversation.

As the years passed, I began noticing something else. Dialogue is not only tested when relationships become difficult. Sometimes it quietly creates relationships that should never have existed in the first place.

One evening, I attended the closing reception of an international fine arts summit on a Nile cruise in Cairo. I was there as the event's media coordinator. By profession, I worked in quality management, while many of those attending were artists whose lives seemed very different from my own.

At the reception dinner, I found myself seated beside an artist from Estonia. Neither of us had chosen our seats. It was simply one of those ordinary moments that life arranges without asking our permission.

Looking back, it seemed we had very little in common. We came from different countries, different professions and different cultures. Even our reasons for being at the summit were completely different.

Yet, as the evening unfolded, none of those differences seemed to matter.

The conversation began with the kind of questions strangers often ask one another. Where are you from? What brought you here? What kind of work do you do?

Then, almost without noticing, we moved beyond introductions.

We spoke about our families, the places we called home and the experiences that had shaped our lives. He showed me photographs of his family and the house he had built in Estonia. I found myself speaking about Egypt, my own journey and the moments that had quietly changed me over the years.

There were times when we saw things differently. We came from different worlds, so that was only natural. But neither of us seemed interested in proving the other wrong. We listened with respect, and genuine curiosity, asking questions not to challenge, but to understand. By the end of the evening, something unexpected had happened.

By the end of the evening, a stranger no longer felt like a stranger. A friendship had quietly begun.

It has often made me wonder how many friendships never begin because we decide too quickly that another person is too different from us. We notice their nationality before their kindness. Their profession before their character. Their opinions before their humanity.

Sometimes the greatest barrier between people is not distance. It is assumption.

When we become curious instead of defensive, something remarkable things happens. Differences remain, yet they stop feeling like obstacles. They become invitations to learn.

As I look back on these three very different moments, I realise they were all teaching me the same lesson. One conversation ended in pain because listening disappeared, another found its way forward because listening returned, and a third created a friendship because two strangers chose curiosity over judgement. Different stories, different people, the same quiet truth.

Dialogue is not the surrender of our convictions. It is the recognition that another human being deserves to be heard before they are judged. We can disagree honestly while still treating one another with dignity and respect. In fact, I have come to believe that people who are confident in their convictions are often the ones most willing to listen.

Perhaps that is where dialogue truly begins, not with words, but with the simple decision to believe that the person sitting opposite us is more than an opinion waiting to be challenged. They are a human being whose story deserves to be heard.