A Safe Place for Dangerous Truths: Using Dialogue to Overcome Fear & Distrust at Work

Annette Simmons, Group Process Consulting. Amacom, 1999.

Too often, speaking the "truth" is perceived career suicide. Yet truth-telling is desperately needed if we are to move past current levels of frustration and disillusionment. Dialogue is a way for a work group to get "un-stuck" when frustration and apathy threatens forward progress. Annette Simmons will explore some of the dangerous truths currently sabotaging the wordplace, the risks and rewards of truth telling, and the art and practice of creating a place safe enough so that "truths" do not deteriorate into blame sessions, scape-goating, or hopelessness. Genuine dialogue is a way to turn dangerous truths into shared responsibility.

Resource Link: http://www.groupprocessconsulting.com

Action Dialogues: Meaningful Conversations to Accelerate Change

Debbe Kennedy, Global Dialogue Center. Berrett-Koehler Press, 2000.

Meant to be used as a part of Debbe Kennedy's Diversity Breakthrough! Strategic Action series, this is a simple pack of 52 glossy cards, each isolating specific roadblocks that organizations commonly face when looking to launch a diversity initiative. The first, for example, reads, 'Our leadership team does not reflect our stated commitment to inclusion.' Another reads, 'Resistance to change keeps diversity out of reach.'

Alternative Dispute Resolution for Organizations: How to Design a System for Effective Conflict Resolution

Allan J. Stitt. Jossey-Bass, 1998.

Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) is a rapidly growing field, due to its popularity as an alternative to long and expensive lawsuits. ADR involves resolving disputes of any kind outside of the judicial system, through negotiation, mediation, arbitration, and other processes. This book is for people who work within organizations and are involved in disputes themselves, or for people who are required to deal with or resolve disputes. It covers how to set up a dispute resolution process in an organization.

Resource Link: http://www.josseybass.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0471642959.html

Americans for Informed Democracy's Organizers Toolkit - Entrepreneurship in a Globalized World

Thomas Friedman's bestseller The World is Flat argues that advances in technology are leveling the global competitive playing field and reshaping the challenges and opportunities faced by the next generation of entrepreneurs. U.S. entrepreneurs now compete more directly with businesses around the world, while working more cooperatively with foreign businesses and labor to manufacture and deliver their products. What does the changing global landscape mean for socially responsible global entrepreneurship? What are the challenges? What are the opportunities? Americans for Informed Democracy is bringing town hall style discussion of these questions to universities across the U.S. through its Entrepreneurship in a Globalized World initiative.

Resource Link: http://www.aidemocracy.org/entrepreneur.doc

Becoming a Conflict Competent Leader: How You and Your Organization Can Manage Conflict Effectively

Craig E. Runde and Tim A. Flanagan. Jossey-Bass, 2006.

Becoming a Conflict Competent Leader combines research, conceptual models, practitioner experience, and stories that highlight the core conflict competencies. The book underscores the importance for leaders to develop the critical skills they need to help them, their colleagues, and their organizations deal more effectively with conflict and move their organizations forward.

Resource Link: http://www.josseybass.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0787984701.html

Built to Change: How to Achieve Sustained Organizational Effectiveness

Edward E. Lawler, III and Chris Worley; Foreward by Jerry Porras. Jossey-Bass, 2006.

In this groundbreaking book, organizational effectiveness experts Edward Lawler and Christopher Worley show how organizations can be ?“built to change?” so they can last and succeed in today?’s global economy. Instead of striving to create a highly reliable Swiss watch that consistently produces the same behavior, they argue organizations need to be designed in ways that stimulate and facilitate change. Built to Change focuses on identifying practices and designs that organizations can adopt so that they are able to change.

Resource Link: http://www.josseybass.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0787980617.html

Can the human being thrive in the work place? Dialogue as a strategy of hope

B. Wesorick and L. Shiparksi. Michigan: Practice Field Publishing, 1997.

An excellent resource for those working with groups which are new to dialogue. It includes strategies and stories that show ways to introduce and go deeper into the use of dialogue in the workplace.

Corporation for Positive Change

The Corporation for Positive Change (CPC) is dedicated to the design and development of appreciative organizations - those capable of sustaining innovation, financial well-being and market leadership by inspiring the best in human beings. Our workshops are led by CPC principals and offered through the Taos Institute. CPC offers workshops in Appreciative Inquiry foundations, Appreciative Inquiry leadership, and Appreciative Inquiry in Action.

Resource Link: http://www.positivechange.org

Deliberative Organization Development: Multicultural Organization Competence Through Deliberative Dialogue

Dr. Deborah A. Wilcox & Jacquelyn McCray, M.P.A., AICP, Confluency Consultants & Associates.

Organizations and institutional life are conflicted with hostility, discrimination, discord and tension resulting from the inability to be inclusive and respectful of human differences. The critical question is why is it so hard for different types of people to work together and to be productive? The nature of the problem is couched in society?’s rampant power differential, the stereotypes and the isms of racism, sexism, heterosexism, ageism, and ableism and other identified elements that dominant organization structures. Deliberative Organization Development purports the use of ?“deliberative dialogue?” groups within organizations.

Resource Link: http://launch.vermontlaw.edu/epp/resources/DeliberativeODArticle.pdf

Dialogos, Inc.

Founded by William Isaacs, Dialogos promotes the spirit and practice of dialogue for strategic use at all levels of leadership within and across organizations. They work with client organizations to meet their business objectives by transforming taken-for-granted limits in ways of thinking and acting.

Resource Link: http://www.dialogos-inc.com

Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together

William N. Isaacs, Dialogos. New York, NY: Currency, 1999.

Isaacs is a colleague of organizational learning guru Peter Senge (who wrote the introduction) and one of the founders of MIT's Organizational Learning Center. He also directed MIT's Dialogue Project, on which this book is based. Isaacs argues that organizational learning cannot take place without successful dialogue.

Resource Link: http://www.dialogos.com

Diversity Mosaic: The Complete Resource for Establishing a Successful Diversity Initiative

Tina Rasmussen. Jossey-Bass, 2006.

If you're really serious about creating diversity in the workplace, Diversity Mosaic is the groundbreaking, comprehensive resource for developing and implementing a systemic, lasting, and measurable diversity initiative in any organization. The resource includes proven, step-by-step guidance, worksheets, manager, and employee training workbooks; organizational assessments, 360-degree feedback observer forms, and scoring sheets; and copies of Managing Diversity and Diversity Mosaic Participant Workbooks.

Resource Link: http://www.josseybass.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0787981729.html

From Conflict to Creativity: How Resolving Workplace Disagreements Can Inspire Innovation and Productivity

Sy Landau, Barbara Landau and Daryl Landau. Jossey-Bass, 2001.

From Conflict to Creativity offers leaders, managers, boards of directors, and team members a new way of thinking about conflict in the workplace. Within these pages, three experts in the field of workplace conflict resolution present an innovative and proven collaborative model that can help resolve on-the-job conflicts and unleash the potential for creativity. Using the information and tools presented in this book can take any organization from a place that merely tolerates conflict to a dynamic environment that uses everyday differences to enhance creativity.

Resource Link: http://www.josseybass.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0787954233.html

Future Search

Future search includes a planning process and a 16 to 18-hour meeting usually including two overnights. Participants discover a set of shared values or themes (common ground) and build new dynamics such as inclusion and collaboration into their organization or community. Future search ("future search" is not capitalized) is not owned by anyone and all are encouraged to use the process and experiment with it. It is supported by a network of people called the Future Search Network. It is an open system process, which means it considers anyone a necessary participant who can affect, is affected by or has important information or experience related to the task at hand.

Genuine Contact Program

The Genuine Contact Program's holistic approach provides the opportunity for leaders and organizations to assist their organizations to heal and to increase their skills, capacity, and competence in achieving optimal performance. Workshops include Organizational Health and Balance, Individual Health and Balance, Working with Open Space Technology, Whole Person Process Facilitation, Cross Cultural Conflict Resolution, and developing the Conscious Open Space Organization.

Resource Link: http://www.genuinecontact.net

Integrating Frameworks for Sustainability

The Society for Organizational Learning's Sustainability Consortium (Coordinated by Joe Laur and Sara Schley, SEED Systems).

This 24-page draft paper provides an overview of various principles and strategies for sustainability. The paper seeks to help managers make sense of the array of sustainability frameworks that exist today so that they can make more informed choices in choosing tools to support learning and change in their organizations.

Resource Link: http://www.solonline.org/repository/download/IntegratingFrameworks4Sustainability.pdf?item_id=473343

Last Chance for Eden Part 1

Lee Mun Wah (Director). Oakland, CA: Stir-Fry Productions.

Last Chance for Eden is a documentary about eight men and women discussing the issues of racism and sexism in the workplace. They examine the impact of society's stereotypes on their lives in the workplace, in their personal relationships and within their families and in their communities. In the course of their dialogue, they also explore the differences and similarities between racism and sexism - an area that has seldom been researched, but has heatedly become a very important issue needing to be understood and dealt with. The cast was painstakingly selected from a large pool of interesting and dynamic applicants.

Resource Link: http://www.stirfryseminars.com

Mediation Training Institute International

Founded in 1985, the Mediation Training Institute International (MTI) is the world?’s leading provider of training and certification in the core competencies for managing workplace conflict. MTI is owned and operated by Dana Mediation Institute, Inc.

Resource Link: http://www.mediationworks.com

Opening Doors: A Facilitator's Handbook

Theodore L. Kowalski. University Press of America, 1999.

Opening Doors provides practical methods developed over many years of experience for bringing consensus to business group discussions, cutting to the essence of an issue, and dealing with a multitude of communication problems. The author presents effective techniques for facilitation from the beginning of preparation through the creation of the meeting environment, to the actual carrying out of meetings in the modern business world.

Resource Link: http://www.univpress.com

Organization Development Network

The Organization Development Network is an international professional association of organization development practitioners. The OD Network is dedicated to being a leader in the advancement of the theory and practice of organization development.

Resource Link: http://www.odnetwork.org