Abstract: This presentation aims to bring the latest insights from depth psychology, interpersonal neurobiology, and communication theory to bear on the question of how groups can take the energy of their differences and channel it into something that was never created before. We will focus primarily on the feelings of what happens when groups of people engage in a very special form of Dialogue (which we call Communologue) that lifts them out of polarization into a greater sense of commonality. The session will be conducted primarily as a workshop, where the participants will reach a new understanding and thereby experience a totally new basis from which to think and act. The idea of this kind of communologue is to go beyond "negotiation" and "getting to yes" as the old form of negotiation tries to reach agreement among parties who disagree with one another. This form of dialogue not only "solves" problems, it "dissolves" them by creating a context from which many new agreements can emerge from a base of shared meaning that can help organizations/communities coordinate and align their actions with their values. The workshop is designed to allow all voices present in the room to express themselves in a "flow of meaning" (translation of Greek word 'dia'-'logos') and to "gather together" (the original sense of the Greek word) to converse about what truly matters to them, so that they might "think together" in relationship, and no longer need to take their own positions as final; rather they are facilitated to relax their grip on certainty and to become "good listeners" (Deming) to one another and the new possibilities simply from being in relationship to others--and those are possibilities that under the old adversarial methods might never have occurred.

Biographies: Janis and David McCann have been active in the health profession for over sixty years between them. Janis holds Ph.D.s in Social-Clinical Psychology and Psychoanalytic Child Psychotherapy; David's Ph.D.s are in Humanities (Comparative Literature) and, like Jan, trained in Child Psychotherapy at the Reiss-Davis Child Study Center in LA. The McCanns have been in private practice together since the early 1980s. Married with four grown daughters and five grandchildren, they have specialized for the past 20 years in Relationship Therapy, conducting workshops and trainings for all kinds of relationships, from marital through family to communities, groups and businesses. Most recently their passion is taking the Dialogue (in Greek, dia-logos, meaning "through" plus "word" or "meaning"; dialogue is then "flow of meaning") into the community, which they now call "Communologue." They are inspired in their work groups by Deming's System of Profound Knowledge, particularly in recognizing that Deming's notion of cooperative learning together in organizations means that transforming individuals and organizations get that way by being "good listener(s)". Their workshop will present one powerful approach to facilitate dialogues that matter to the participants, lifting them out of competitive polarization into a greater common sense, and thereby demonstrating that groups have life intelligence and coordinated  power that they never dreamed of before doing this work.

Contact: Janis and David can be reached by e-mail at janismccannphd@icloud.com and davidmccannphd@icloud.com, respectively, for additional information about this session

Website: www.relationship-coaches.com

Blog: Blogs in progress; on Website (above)