In response to LO19154
Beste At, dear LO'rs,
Your contribution is again of high value to us. Thank you, At. There are
some aspects related to your described problem. The first is the e-mail
dialogue, the second is the lifely dialogue.
In the anonymity (in fact it should be anacorporal) of e-mail
communication, some curious things happen. It is a sort of communication
where only the eyes are the activated sense, but only the written words
are seen. No bodylanguage, no blushing, no twinkling eyes or frowning of
the brows, no sounds, no smell, etc. In this evironment psychologists in
the Netherlands have good experience with the contact with their clients.
Clients are willing to be more open than during face-to-face contact.
Another example is that especially shy persons even have find partners via
e-mail contact; partyners with which they will share their lifes. So
e-mail has some positive effects: part of the expected hurt by the sender
is apparently taken away.
My personal experience is that e-mail communication works very well in a
dialogue, that is between 2 persons. However, group discussions like here
on the LO-list are complicated and difficult to manage (as receiver and as
sender and as discussion leader). The position of Rick as moderator is a
very tricky one.
Rick, maybe this is an issue which is of interest for all of us: what are
your experiences. This is particularly interesting in relation to the role
of IT in LO's and organizations where knowledge management and intranet is
introduced.
My specific questions are:
1. does it occurs that you
- refuse a contribution
- edit a contribution
and how do you communicate this to the sender
2. What are your experiences to direct discussion lines?
3. Did you ever contacted to a silent lurker directly, to invite him/her
to participate in the discussions?
My second point is in the face-toface environment.
In recent discussions in my professional environment (central library of
university of technology, 180 employees) I had some experience with group
discussions. A proposal to reorganise the contents of the jobs of some 15
academical librarians, a lot of resistence against the proposal arised.
The resistence was mainly triggered by 2 or 3 of the group; the rest kept
mainly in silance (the 'afraid lurkers'). At the end of this discussion
the opinion of each one in the group was asked: everebody was against the
proposal.
I am sure that if the proposal was initially discussed individually with
each of the group, nearly all of them have agreed; perhaps some minor
suggetsions could have been brought forward. However, the small team who
have prepared and put the original proposal on paper, decided not to
follow the individual dialogues. This was to avoid the possible (and
probable) impression in the group members of a divide-and-rule method.
It took over a half year of further discussion to end with an agreement
which hardly differed from the original proposal.
In conclusion: deeming in a group differs and gives other effects than
deeming in a dialogue (between 2 persons). And deeming in modern
communication via cables is different from deeming in the physial world.
dr. Leo D. Minnigh
minnigh@library.tudelft.nl Library Technical University Delft
PO BOX 98, 2600 MG Delft, The Netherlands
Tel.: 31 15 2782226
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Let your thoughts meander towards a sea of ideas.
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--Leo Minnigh <L.D.Minnigh@library.tudelft.nl>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>