“The collective thought is more powerful than the individual thought.”
— David Bohm
“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”
— Carl Jung
Brain-based Holistic Dialogue: Empowering the Empathic Stance
What is the Empathic Stance?
The Empathic Stance is where we look others and their perspectives, from the start, with curiosity and an intent to deeply understand what they are thinking and feeling. More often than not our initial reaction to those with different points of view is defensiveness, which closes the door to understanding. An empathic stance makes space for new understanding and possible new solutions.
Dialogue as described by William Isaacs and David Bohm can be an effective method for bringing people together to create mutual understanding as a foundation for the generation of novel solutions. During challenging social interactions, we often have difficulty making sense of what is coming up for us. We react in a certain way without being able to articulate exactly why. Carefully facilitated dialogue is often insufficient to help participants come together in new understanding.
What happens when our leaders, news outlets, and social media activate in us the same mental processes that were activated in our earliest forebears when faced with mortal danger?
The challenge with dialogue
Our leaders, news outlets, and social media amplify our differences and present issues in ways that trigger primal neurological threat response. When our differences are seemingly so great that our brains interpret them as existential threats, normal dialogic practices can be insufficient and risky. For dialogue to be truly effective, those participating in a dialogue need to understand the reciprocal nature of the forces acting upon the individual, the group, and society as parts of a system. Effective dialogue about high stakes issues requires a deeper understanding of why we think and feel the way we do about things as well as an ability to empathize with others.
Brain-based Holistic Dialogue is an extension of the dialogic practices as developed by William Isaacs and David Bohm. It is holistic in that it is a structured, inward-looking exploration of neurologically based primal forces as well as outward looking societal forces and how they shape our beliefs and behaviors as well as those of others. By surfacing these unconscious processes, we help participants better understand and articulate their own behavioral drivers prior to engaging in dialogue. Through this carefully facilitated experience, at the macro level, we build dialogic skills using William Isaac’s dialogic practices. Building capacity at the micro level, through the Structural Dynamics of David Kantor, we examine the very words and language we use to communicate. Learning how specific communication patterns shape our perceptions and reactions will result in a more effective interaction. The diagram in the next section illustrates the components of the Brain-based Holistic Dialogue process.
In Brain-based Holistic Dialogue, we use a carefully facilitated process of exploration, skill building, and practice by systematically incorporating:
The five core social motivation B.U.C.(k).E.T. model developed by Susan Fiske of Princeton University.
Identity Theory work done by Peter Burke, Henry Tajfel, Dominic Adams, Michael Hogg, Ezra Klein, Drew Westen, and Jonathan Haidt.
Dialogue influenced by William Isaacs and David Bohm as well as Somatic theory in which awareness of the mind-body connection can be used to influence our ability to communicate.
The Four Player Model and Language Domain components of Structural Dynamics developed by David Kantor.
Additionally, we explore how Environmental Factors influence our self-concept and behavior.
Using this brain-based holistic dialogic model, we help participants surface, integrate, and bring their whole selves to productive, generative dialogue.
