By Tania Almeida*

One scenario of curiosity about the other. A childlike curiosity, virgin of information, who is delighted with everything he discovers and with what he thinks he understands.

Thomas Kuhn, the scientist who coined the term paradigm, says that adults don't have this nature of curiosity. They are always confirming hypotheses about the world and about the other, and recording in these meetings everything that confirms their hypothesis, failing to see what is not coherent with it. In this way, news about the world and about the other are no longer registered by perception. Paradigmatic blindness, says Kuhn.

A pity, because dialogue is also a scenario for learning about the other and with the other, if both can rescue their childhood curiosity.

It is an opportunity to review points of view, to revisit the text itself and put some commas in it, create and remove paragraphs, add and remove words, change expressions. If we can treat conversations in this way, we create a scenario that makes new and shared meanings emerge. Basis of effective communication.

A group at MIT – Massachusetts Institute of Technology, led by William Isaacs, speaks of dialogue as the art of thinking together. And to think together, he guides us that it would be necessary to meet certain premises of expression and listening.

To be really heard, an interlocutor would need to be clear in what he says. And clarity would also imply speaking to the other, in the language (in the metaphorical sense) that the other understood. Looks like we don't care. We use our way of saying it as if it were universal, without being aware of who is in front of us.

But only clarity without care in the way of packaging the message would not be enough. All messages would need to be gift-wrapped. Even the tough ones. If we don't gift-wrap our communications, the other doesn't get to make contact with the content. Wrapped in thorns, messages are refused without the information they convey being even evaluated. And there goes, without success, our noble intention to be heard. Baby and bath water pour down the drain together. The precious information and its blunt packaging are lost.

In order to really understand those who made an effort to take care of form and content, it would also be necessary to listen with empathy, considering points of view different from ours as a possibility. Listening with empathy means putting yourself at the age that the other is, visiting their social construction, their moment of life. Listening to the other from one's own frame of reference would be to exercise critical judgment and not empathic listening.

Here, in empathic listening, the verb to be conjugated is not to agree but to accept, to admit.

The game of argumentation and counter-argument to which we are used does not originate from empathic listening, but from listening attentive enough to build a distinct idea that can overturn the argument and its author. It is a sieve of mutual disqualification, in which the idea of ​​the other is discredited and replaced by one of apparent greater precision, value, and legitimacy. The practice of law calls for dexterity in this quality of listening so that the objective of winning is achieved. This nature of exchanging ideas does not approach. away.

Careful form and content, practiced empathic and inclusive listening, complete the triad of productive dialogue with an appreciation for difference. Yes, dear dialogue, says Isaacs: ideas different from yours are the norm. If there is no admission on your part to the difference, or rather, some enchantment to learn from it, dialogue does not take place.

If when you leave the conversation or meeting, after a lot of preparation to share your point of view, and even to answer any questions, your original idea is intact, you haven't been in dialogue. Sentence Isaacs. You've been to an explanatory memorandum. Congratulations on that, if that was your goal! Don't let yourself be touched by the other's point of view.

Communication theorists insist on telling us that our interlocution with the other is quite complex and always noisy. We believe that the other understood what was said or done, just as we believe that we understood the other in the same way. The distance between the intention of one interlocutor and the interpretation of the other is abysmal, and the interlocutors are rarely able to attribute the same meaning to their speeches and actions. As the clock doesn't stop and we have a lot to do, we continue without offering clarification questions and summaries that aim to check our understanding, believing that we understand the other and make ourselves understood. A course of action follows, even without having constructed a common meaning in our communication. Noises!

When noises become apparent, we tend to believe that others are difficult. Derogatory adjectives spring up easily and we don't realize that they only appear so assertive because we are using our referential to once again interpret the other. Adjectives do not refer to the other. Adjectives refer to our analysis parameters (which are not universal). How our parameters see or read each other.

Dialogues that create or check common meanings need to be more present in our daily lives if we want to be closer to each other. If we believe in the maxim that everything happens in the relationship with the other, this should be our greatest object of care and investment. Here's the invitation!

 

* MEDIARE Director. It acts as a third party, mapping, designing and conducting dialogue processes aimed at understanding or consensus.

 

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