Dialectical Thinking and Listening in the Workplace

Abstract

This chapter is in three parts, A to C, each of which throws light on the impact of individual contributors’ phase of dialectical thinking on an organizations’ Accountability Hierarchy (MAA). In Part A, I review different (hypothetical) conceptualizations of human thinking in the attempt to highlight the nature of dialectical thinking. Specifically, I engage with Roger Martin’s theory of integrative thinking as “abductive” (Martin, 2007a, b), which aids me in showing that dialectical thinking, while “integrative” in a comprehensive sense, transcends not only logical but also abductive thinking (while at the same time enabling both). In a short section on the psychological obstacles of acquiring complex thinking, I view such obstacles as linked to different Inquiring Systems (introduced in Book 1, Chapter 1).

In Part B, I focus on the cognitive-developmental differences between three managers and on how these differences determine the managers’ way of understanding their organization. I use intense text analysis to scrutinize how managers at different levels of cognitive development articulate issues posed by a completed merger of their company with another company. Formulated for pedagogical reasons, this section shows the reader that contributors’ functioning at different levels of cognitive development, rooted in an organization’s HCA, has far-reaching consequences for the effectiveness of the organization’s MAA.

Part C elucidates cognitive “sense making” as the cognitive equivalent of social-emotional meaning making researched in (Laske, 2005, 2023a). I spell out different aspects of dialectical listening and outline the seven dimensions it comprises. In this way, I pave the way for the reader to begin to study the Manual of Dialectical Thought Forms presented in Book 3 of this monograph.

Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable reason why so few engage in it.(Henry Ford)