The Oxford English dictionary defines dialogue as ‘a conversation carried on between two or more persons ‘. The ancient meaning of the word dialogue (dia lagos) is a” flow of meaning” which stands in stark contrast to the word ’debate’ which means to ‘beat down’, or even the word ‘discussion’ which has the same route as ‘percussion’ and ‘concussion’-to break things up.

Dialogue is a process where the participants commit to listen, reflect and question with a curious mindset in order to seek a shared understanding. A resolution dialogue has the purpose of resolving conflict through dialogue.

Suspending judgements and assumptions is essential to establishing a ‘flow of meaning’ and finding shared meaning within a dialogue between conflicting participants. The emphasis within the following four key stages is on nurturing participant’s ability to engage in collective thinking, reflection and enquiry in order to develop a meaningful dialogue and design meaningful relationships. In this model, participants move through the following four stages with the neutral facilitator (mediator).

Establish a safe environment for dialogue. Establishing the environment involves clarifying the purpose of the dialogue and building a ‘dialogue container’ within which meaningful issues will emerge to be explored. It is essential at this stage to develop a consensus between those involved as to the purpose and structure of the meeting.

Develop a common base of knowledge-conceptual and personal. This is done by exploring beliefs and assumptions being made which requires the suspension of judgement. The tendency towards making judgements and assumptions are barriers to listening and creative thinking.

Explore questions and conflict. The dialogue needs to focus on one or more specific matters with a view to probing and deepening the dialogue, increasing the suspension of judgement (when people edit, delete, generalise and distort in an attempt to frame the dialogue around their own assumptions and judgements). In this way curiosity and creativity are allowed to flow more freely.

Moving from dialogue to action. This involves assessing the experiences arising from the dialogue, learning from these and embedding the learning in the form of new skills for communicating together, reaching decisions together and resolving conflict.

By following these 4 stages, the participants in conflicts are able to work with the neutral facilitator whose aim is to motivate, empower and support the participants to engage in a meaningful dialogue making decisions together and resolving conflict together.