Margie, in my experience, a lot of the questions of style come into
play when the development of dialogue capacity is combined with a
need to get results. In most cases, this distorts and delays the
dialogue learning process.
What I suggest is that action learning be employed working on issues
that are agreed to be related to what is important without being the
important - read "production oriented" - issues themselves. These
lend themselves to action learning without the drive for results. In
this mode, the style question becomes less relevent.
Too many "dialogue" sessions are covert discussion session.
I use a sport development model a lot. (And appreciate the
development of the flow model provided in another of todays
postings.) The part of the sports model is that an effective coach
(see HBR article of SF49's coach - I forget his name) creates
distinctions in skills or capacities to be developed and provides
practice environments which relate them to the area where they will
be used. Generally, these will not be complete simulations and game
situations but designed to remain related without "being the real
thing".
-- Michael McMaster <Michael@kbddean.demon.co.uk>