Dialogue is an important aspect of community management. As a community manager, you have to cater to many interests, depending on the objective. First you have the people that are part of the community, you have your client and you have the discussion.  As a community manager you have to make sure the process of communication between people will lead to something, for example new insights. The people that are part of the community all have their own personal interests, which may differ from each other and seem not to get any closer. That’s where the community manager plays an important role.

One of the concepts the community manager can apply is dialectics. Dialectic is a method of argument which stems from the philosophy. The German philosopher Georg Hegel (1770-1831) is one of the latest philosophers that brought new life to the concept. His view on dialectics comprises of three stages of of development:

Dialectic

1. Thesis: an intellectual proposition
2. Antithesis: contradicts or negates the thesis
3. Synthesis: resolves the tension between thesis and antithesis, by reconciling their common truths, and forming a new proposition

These stages work as follows. Someone expresses his opinion on some subject. Another responds to it and does not agree, and in turn expresses a different opinion. Both opinions seem to contradict and the dialogue is unlikely to proceed. That’s where the community manager must try to take both opinions or views into account and try to seek a third way, not a compromise, but a synthesis where both opinions have a place. The dialogue does not end here, because the synthesis can be seen as a new thesis, so that the process can repeat itself. That’s what I call the art of dialogue. The process will come to a standstill if no one is able to contradict the thesis with an antithesis. When someone brings in an idea on one of our innovation platforms, it mostly needs refinement. And that process can be strengthened when an antithesis is posed as a comment on that idea.

The concept can be applied in many environments. For example, there is a debate in an organization between management and the workers’ council. Management wants to outsource some work from the production department, so processes will be more streamlined as the occupancy is divided better. The workers’ council reacts reluctantly because they think it is bad for employment. Maximum flexibility versus employment of the personnel, they contradict. The solution can be to hire machines and people temporarily to streamline the processes, and if the situation needs it as the market recovers, hire people to make the solution a structural one. This is an example of dialectics where the solution, the synthesis, is a better solution than the thesis and antithesis, and better as well for both parties.

As another example, I’ll pose my thesis here: community managers should master the art of dialogue by bringing the concept of dialectics in practice. Let’s bring this concept in practice, and please see this post as a thesis, which asks for an antithesis. There must be people that disagree with me and I must have overlooked something here. Let’s play some dialectics.