Solving Tough Problems: An Open Way of Talking, Listening, and Creating New Realities

by Adam Kahane

The first way is downloading: saying what we always say and not listening at all. This is what Elena Diez Pinto was worried about when she saw each group sitting separately and thought, “They’re not going to talk with each other. In Guatemala … we say ‘yes’ but we mean ‘no.’” The second way of listening is debating: listening fairly and objectively. This is what the Guatemalan team member was doing when he tried to “actually listen, not to be thinking mentally of how I am going to respond.” Listening openly goes along with talking openly, as when “the young man called us ‘old pessimists.’” The third way is talking and listening with empathy, subjectively, from the heart: reflective dialogue. Raquel Zelaya demonstrated this when she listened and then said to General Julio Balconi, “I know that nobody enrolls in the military academy in order to learn how to massacre women and children.”