Dialogical approaches

Dialogical approaches involve reflecting through conversations. These can be dialogues with or between other people (real or imagined) or between different aspects of yourself. (See Brookfield's mirrors)

Dialogues with real people

• Supervision mentoring — with a more experienced individual in a similar role

• Peer mentoring — with an individual with similar levels of experience

• Reverse mentoring — with someone less experienced in your area of expertise but who might have fresh perspectives or better knowledge of recent developments (e.g. technology)

• Coaching — with someone who has an external perspective

• Critical friend — a trusted individual who asks challenging questions and provides constructive feedback from a position of empathy

• Action learning sets — a group of people engaged in (non-directive) structured reflection, exploration and planning

Dialogues with (or between) imagined people

The imaginary people could include imagined versions of:

• real people involved in the event or activity with you

• significant other people who you know well and whose views you respect

• historical or fictional characters (e.g. famous practitioners or thinkers in your field or personal heroes [WWXS/D - What would X say/do?])

• the personification of a particular theory, concept, emotion or meaning schema

• pre-defined perspectives (e.g. de Bono's six thinking hats)

Dialogues with yourself

This could include dialogues between:

• different aspects of your personality (e.g. carefree you vs careful you)

• your different drivers and motivations (e.g. angel vs demon dialogue)

• your emotional self and your rational self

• different roles you play in life

• your past, present and future selves

• alternative possible future selves

• your current (real) self and your desired (ideal) self 

• your competing meaning schemas

See Self-confrontation 

Types of dialogue activities

• Structured dialogue — a formal process in which participants take turns to ask the other for their immediate thoughts on a particular theme and listen to their responses without interrupting. The process can be repeated a number of times allowing participants to incorporate their reactions to the other persons perspective.

• Role play (you play yourself and someone else plays the significant other), role reversal (someone else plays you and you play the significant other) and role-switching (you play both roles)

• Chairwork 

  • Empty chair technique — addressing a vacant chair as if a significant other was there

  • Two-chair technique — in which you alternate between playing yourself and the significant other by switching between chairs

• Letter writing and scripting (see Journaling)

Dialogue frameworks

These could include:

• Cognitive interviewing — focused on detailed recall of events

• Coaching models (e.g. GROW) — tend to be goal or outcome focused

• Change-focused therapy approaches (e.g. Motivational Interviewing) — tend to be focused on the motivations for and against change