[...some material excised]
>
> Jonah, in "the Goal" used a questioning technique called "the Socratic
> method". This method, developed by Socrates and documented by Plato uses
> pointed questions to either confirm or disprove the "subject's"
> hypotheses.
...
... Yeah, right on. Some of the best examples you could ever hope to
find are in dialogues such as "Protagoras". Their virtue is that they
come from such a completely different milieu and culture that it's
instructive and enlightening to recognize their intimate relevance to the
concerns of this thread.
> The whole philosophy behind the Socratic Method is the fact that
> facilitators (or consultants) should not spell out any of the answers for
> their clients (although they are often hired to do just that!). Instead,
> the facilitators should stimulate their clients to come up with their own
> answers. Once you tell someone something, you rob that someone from the
> opportunity of ever inventing that something by him/her self!!!!!
...
> Incidently, as consultants, one of our primary tasks is to cause
> our clients to BUY-INTO what we profess. One of the most powerful
> ways to do that is to make our clients invent their own solutions to
> their problems.
...
Whoops... Whoa, hold on there, these words call up exactly the kind of
manipulation that Socrates *didn't* do -- or that, if he did, is unworthy
of our imitation. Socratic dialectic is not a technique: *logic* is
the technique, the dialectic is the *style*.
I believe that I understand - I'm trying to, at any rate - that you
sometimes firmly believe you have a handle on some truth about your
client or his situation and that it is terribly important to exhibit this
truth to him and persuade him that it *is* a truth. I sympathize. But
the resulting efforts at persuasion must **Never** be confused with
Socratic dialogue. Every *true* such dialogue is a terrible risk for
*both* interlocutors - not just one. And I think that's the heart and
soul of - the best that can happen in - a real learning organization.
No, not every conversation or discussion with a client is worthy of
comparison with a Platonic dialogue, not every team forum or meeting in a
learning organization is either. But even a single one of those, when it
does happen, illuminates the times and the people around it for months
and even years. A single conversation, by the way it is conducted (even
more than by its subject matter or its outcome), can have an enormous
impact on other conversations, subsequent to it, on utterly unrelated topics.
From: Jim Michmerhuizen <jamzen@world.std.com>