Levels and Stages of Dialogue
The following information about dialogue is from Organizational Dynamics. Autumn 1993. "Taking
Flight: Dialogue, Collective Thinking, and Organizational Learning", William N. Isaacs, director of
the Dialogue Project at MIT's Organizational Learning Center.

Dr. Isaacs mentions these first steps and four Levels and Stages of Dialogue.

STAGE 1:  INSTABILITY OF THE CONTAINER.  Early requirement - people
developed an initial grasp of inquiry skills, such as how to detect an abstract
statement and invite people to explain their thinking.

STAGE 2:  INSTABILITY IN THE CONTAINER.  Gradually people recognize that they
can either begin to defend their points of view, finding others as somewhat or totally
wrong, or suspend their view, or begin to listen without coming to a hard and fast
conclusion about the validity of any of the views yet expressed.  They become
willing to loosen the "grip of certainty" about all views, including their own.

STAGE 3:  INQUIRY IN THE CONTAINER.  At this stage, people may find
themselves feeling frustrated, principally because the underlying fragmentation
and incoherence in everyone's thought begins to appear.

    Extreme views become stated and defended. All of this "heat" and instability is exactly what
    should be occurring. The fragmentation that has been hidden is surfacing in the container.

    They ask: "Where am I listening from? What is the disturbance going on in me (not
    others)? What can I learn if I slow things down and inquire (to seek within)?"

    People notice, for example, that they differ in their pace and timing of speaking and
    thinking, and begin to inquire into and respect these facts.

    Sometimes in this phase the flow takes on a powerful and undeniable intensity.
    Inquiry within this phase of the container is subtle; people here can become
    sensitive to the cultural "programs" for thinking and acting that they have
    unwittingly accepted as true. In these later stages of dialogue, the term "container"
    becomes limiting. It is more accurate to describe it as a kind of shared "field" in which
    meaning and information are being exchanged.

    This phase can be playful and penetrating. Yet it also leads to another crisis. People
    gradually realize that deeper themes exist, behind the flow of ideas. They come to
    understand and feel the impact that holding fragmented ways of thinking has had on
    them, their organizations, and their culture. They sense their separateness. While people
    may understand intellectually that they have had limits to their vision, they may not yet
    have experienced the fact of their isolation. Such awareness brings pain--both from loss of
    comforting beliefs and from the exercise of new cognitive and emotional muscles. People
    recognize that their thoughts--in the form of collective assumptions and choices--create
    and sustain fragmentation and separation.

    Moving through this crisis is by no means a given nor necessary for "success" in dialogue.
    Groups may develop the capacity for moving to the final level of dialogue over a
    considerable period of time. It is a deep and challenging crisis, one that requires
    considerable discipline and collective trust.

STAGE 4:  CREATIVITIY IN THE CONTAINER.  If this crisis can be navigated, a
new level of awareness opens. People begin to know consciously that they are
participating in a pool of common meaning because they have sufficiently
explored each other's views. They still may not agree, but their thinking takes on an
entirely different rhythm and pace. At this point, the distinction between memory and
thinking becomes apparent. People may find it hard to talk together using the rigid
categories of previous understanding. The net of their existing thought is not fine
enough to begin to capture the subtle and delicate understandings that begin to
emerge. This too may be unfamiliar and disorienting. People may find that they
do not have adequate words and fall silent.

    Yet the silence is not an empty void, but one replete with richness.

The Three Basic Conditions For Dialogue:
All participants must “suspend” their assumptions, literally to hold them “as if suspended before us”
All participants must regard one another as colleagues
There must be a “facilitator” who “holds the context” of the dialogue
Stages of Dialogue
Attribution to William Issacs
(http://www.hhs.oregonstate.edu/hdfs/ecld/dialogue.html)