Building Connection While Thinking Together: By‐products of Employee Training in Dialogue

Abstract

This study investigates a Listening and Dialogue training workshop in a manufacturing company. Instructors presented dialogue as a way of communicating that enables groups to think together, which is consistent with Bohm’s epistemological approach. However, organizational me mbers described profound meaningful experiences of connection, otherness, and spirituality during the workshop. These themes, which are consistent with Martin Buber’s ontological notion of dialogue, occurred as by‐products of the Bohmian training. In this study, by‐products were enabled by workshop discourse linking dialogue skills to home and family settings. Implications for dialogue theory and organizational practice are discussed.