Harlene Anderson

AI Dialogue*

Coaching and Mentoring: Building Bridges between Business Strategies and People
23 May 2005
BP: Britannic House, London

Harlene began the session by inviting participants to participate in developing the agenda for the day: to share their expectations, what they hoped to accomplish, or take with them? This was part of setting a "collaborative tone" for the day. In response, she began by talking about her approach to working with individuals and the importance she places on developing collaborative relationships based on dialogue.

This brings in the importance of hermeneutics: as we study a situation, we become aware that we bring our own pre-understandings to this situation and we can come with and develop a multiplicity of interpretations. She went on to talk about three areas:

Knowledge: One view of knowledge is that it is out there to be found. The social construction view is that knowledge is created between communities. It is fluid and related to history and language. Post-modern thinking invites us to be sceptical about universal knowledge and puts an emphasis on local knowledge, in other words, knowledge created in a group of people who decide what has relevance and utility to them.

Language: One view is that language mirrors reality based in a set of known assumptions. The post-modern/social construction view is that the use of words is created with people. In other words, as philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein suggests, words gain their meanings through their use. People access and create expertise through shared inquiry. With this approach, a consultant (or coach or mentoring) is a learner with the client as expert. The consultant's inquiring stance invites the client's curiosity and the inquiry becomes mutual - a mutual puzzling, as Harlene likes to think of it. In the process of mutual inquiry, questions come from within the conversation rather than from outside it and are part of the generating process. The art of not knowing provides options for them to respond. Not knowing refers to the way that we think about and the intent with which we use what we think we may know.

Relationships: One view is that relationships are based on hierarchy and power. The post-modern approach guides us to think in terms of collaborative relationships and dialogue. This influences and informs how people interact, talk and work with each other. One aspect of this is the notion of "being public," i.e., sharing more of the silent, private conversations going on in a person's head. This leads to a creative process by going from silent thoughts to spoken ideas. It also helps the consultant avoid pitfalls such as moving in directions that are not a fit for the client.

In responding to some participants' curiosity about collaborative practices and Carl Rogers' work, she commented on the path from Rogers to present day social construction or post-modern ideas. With Rogers, the emphasis was on the individual, the 'core self'' and unconditional positive regard. The emphasis on the individual then moved to the individual in relationship. The social construction or post-modern view is that individuals have a relational existence with others: we exist and have identity in our contact and language with others. The emphasis is on mutuality, respect of each other, and the relational aspect of identity(ies).

Comments about AI and social construction: Social construction is relational, from the beginning, i.e., we exist and we have identity in our contact and language with others, there is mutuality or respect for each other, and we are in a collaborative relationship. AI enables people to gradually become more relational as they go through the steps in the AI process. In an event, one person will invariably begin relating to one other person through the appreciative interview. They then join more people in a small group to look at the interviews. Depending on the length of the event, there will be several opportunities to work with different people in self-selected groups as well as the whole group. Through the evolving relationships, people work together developing images of the future, designing new systems and setting out how to sustain initiatives as well as deciding how to assess change progress. The day with Harlene provided a theoretical framework for the value of collaboration and dialogical processes and their relationship to AI; and in turn, the value for coaching and mentoring. The day also highlighted the importance of the relational aspect of AI which often gets lost. In sharing her work, and the way in which she did it, Harlene also highlighted some the often taken-for-granted premises of AI and demonstrated, along with the participants, the creative potential of collaboration.

You may contact Harlene Anderson at harleneanderson@earthlink.net or www.harleneanderson.org.

For future AI Dialogues see: www.aradford.co.uk/event.htm.

*Review written by Anne Radford and Harlene Anderson