Intercultural Dialogue

Consultancy

Most of my work in the last ten years has been in an intercultural context, and there is a lot to learn from bringing together different cultures...organizational as well as national cultures.  Dialogue is a much misused term and is wrongly confused with debate or defined as 'two people talking' as opposed to monologue.  It's root meaning is 'dia' - flow as in diaphanous and diarrhoea (!) logue - meaning word or meaning.  So it means 'the flow of meaning' and much work needs to be done with a group before dialogue can hope to happen.  Even when there is a common language (usually English) misunderstanding and ensuing chaos is part and parcel of the experience of working interculturally and needs to be navigated with skill.