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Jazzing up the ancient art of conversation

by Desiree Paulsen

Community Development Resource Association



“Human conversation is the most ancient and easiest way to cultivate the conditions for change – personal change, community and organisational change, planetary change. If we can sit together and talk about what’s important to us, we begin to come alive. We share what we see, what we feel, and we listen to what others see and feel.”

Margaret Wheatley, 2002



“Jazz is the music conversation…it is a dialogue…with integrity.”

Wynton Marsalis, jazz trumpeter


In my work as organisation development practitioner I have been hearing the terms ‘dialogue’ and ‘conversation’ being used more and more in various places both in written form and when bringing people together. As I read more around it, experienced it and spoke to others about it, I realised the value it could have in my practice. I felt the need to define these terms and also to highlight the methodology behind them. So join me on my exploration into dialogue and conversation…

Why the need to theorise about the art of conversation – surely it is the most natural thing – conversing? It is almost ironic that so many frameworks and books have emerged to teach us to converse. My sense is that the world has become so mechanistic that people have forgotten how to just be, we have meetings with protocol and formality, we have facilitation methodologies with complicated workshop plans and session layouts. To add to this the world has become a competitive place where people need to sound intelligent and fight to be heard – jargonised language is bandied about and half the time we are not really saying anything sensible. All of this has resulted in an environment where meetings are tedious, boring, and all the talking really gets us nowhere. Sometimes the facilitator or chairperson gets carried away with the very task of trying to get people talking and s