Howard Rheingold, Virtual Community guru, has some helpful tips for those who are hosting conversations online, especially ones that are oriented to building community: The Art of Holding Good Conversations Online
Have committees that meet via teleconference? Here are some helpful hints for facilitating telephone conference calls: Telephone Conference Call Tips
Looking to create teams online? This site may provide some useful tips.
Virtual Organization: "This site is concerned with various aspects of virtual organization such as leadership, structure, collaboration, teams, technology, methods, and learning."
David Bohm, Donald Factor and Peter Garrett detail the ideas behind the method called Dialogue, where people can explore an issue without many of the dynamics common in discussions and debates.
Excerpt:
In Dialogue, a group of people can explore the individual and collective presuppositions, ideas, beliefs, and feelings that subtly control their interactions. It provides an opportunity to participate in a process that displays communication successes and failures. It can reveal the often puzzling patterns of incoherence that lead the group to avoid certain issues or, on the other hand, to insist, against all reason, on standing and defending opinions about particular issues.
Dialogue is a way of observing, collectively, how hidden values and intentions can control our behavior, and how unnoticed cultural differences can clash without our realizing what is occurring. It can therefore be seen as an arena in which collective learning takes place and out of which a sense of increased harmony, fellowship and creativity can arise.
Full Article: dialogue_proposal
A list of websites on Dialogue: Selected Websites on Dialogue
"I have always found the same thing to be true: people want more than anything to be heard and understood by others." Some thoughts on the importance of listening deeply to each other, especially as the world becomes more diverse.
Excerpt: "In any relationship, the longer it takes to really hear and understand the other side the more the damage mounts up and the more effort it takes to create trust again.... I would propose that instead of turning our relationship into another issue war, we use our circumstance to set an example of real people with real issues creating a working understanding where everyone is considered
Our current situation blends together many diverse elements of our community. In any situation with such a diversity of interest and desired outcomes it is important that each person bring one specific quality to the table: generous listening, listening that is genuine in its attempt to understand others."
Generous Listening - Tom Lutes The Inventure Group: Taking Charge