#820 Insight & Communication

Brain Food for Pioneering Spirits: What role does communication play in gaining insight? That’s the question we explore in Room #820 of the Deep Talk Club, under our overarching theme of “Insight (and gaining it).” Listen in on the examples that came up and the perspectives that emerged in dialogue…

Note: This session was recorded live in German as part of the Deep Talk Club, so the video above is German-language audio only. What follows is an English translation of the conversation, lightly edited for readability — the back-and-forth between the moderator and participants is preserved, but the original timestamps and speaker names have been left out.

Today we’re talking about insight and communication. I’m really, really looking forward to this and I’m genuinely curious — what role does communication actually play in gaining insight? And communication naturally has all sorts of facets, so I’m curious what comes together today. In particular, this is really about the concept of dialogue, which I’d like to take a closer look at with you today — what role does dialogue play. And tomorrow, picking one aspect out of this broader concept of communication, where a lot of different things can come together, I’d like to focus specifically on the aspect of listening. So today I’d like to set that aspect of listening aside for now, so we can go deeper into it tomorrow, and today take a somewhat more general look at communication, with a focus on dialogue in particular. So, as every morning, you’re warmly invited to join in and bring in different perspectives through your first thoughts, so that we can open up this reflection space together, through the different perspectives that come together, and see, in dialogue, what emerges from that. And just a quick reminder, we’ve agreed that all rooms get fully recorded, so this room is being recorded today too — if you join, you’re agreeing to that, so that it can be used later and made accessible to you as well. And beyond that, we have three small room rules, just as a reminder: a profile photo in which you’re clearly recognizable, your first and last name, and at least one sentence in your bio, to make sure we’re dealing with genuine contributions and not Clubhouse trolls. If for whatever reason you don’t want to do that, you’re warmly invited to simply use the chat and join in that way, and I’ll happily pick up on one or another contribution that fits. So, wonderful, let’s get started. I don’t see any hand-raises yet, so let’s really make sure we don’t let too much time pass and can dive right in. Wonderful, Layla is here. Good morning, Layla, a very warm one.

Good morning, Yasemin. Well, communication and dialogue can involve two people or more, so I’d also like to say again, please do come up and enrich the round with your impulses and ideas, that’s always so lovely. And, well, that’s why I wanted to say that again. And funnily enough I saw something about this just yesterday, Yasemin — I really enjoy engaging with communication topics. There, terms like “combat rhetoric” came up, and I thought, is that a dialogue, or is that a fight? Then I thought, well, that kind of rhetoric does get used fairly often. That reminded me of Schulz von Thun, which I’m actually covering in school right now, we always do that in ethics class, with the four-ears model, which I found quite nice too. And, well, I think you want to address listening tomorrow — but I do believe that dialogue has an awful lot to do with listening. Because Vera Birkenbiel explained this so beautifully — we each have our own island, so to speak, I describe my own island, and the other person describes theirs. And then we always try to somehow explain to the other person, either how the world works, or just my own view of it. I think that’s something you can choose in a conversation, who does what, or whether they do it at all. And dialogues are actually something really beautiful — for instance, I really treasure our dialogues, and also the dialogues I’ve already had here with others, especially within your room. So yes, that’s always something wonderful.

Thank you so much. And I actually find that point about combat rhetoric really, really fascinating in this context, because today we’re not really trying to look at how successful communication works, or what a good dialogue looks like — we’re actually looking at how communication connects to insight. So I find it really fascinating to look at this from both directions, from that particular perspective. On one hand, looking at what effect any given form of communication has on insight and gaining insight, and gladly picking up on terms like combat rhetoric — what are the first impulses that come to mind for us there, and can it be, for instance with combat rhetoric, I think of it not as positive communication in that sense, but more in the direction of power games, back to “Games People Play” and so on. And the interesting question, in that context, is, to what extent does good or successful communication actually influence insight and gaining insight, and at the same time also looking at, does something like combat rhetoric, or whatever, so to speak “bad” communication, whatever that even is, can that maybe also lead to insight and gaining insight, which I personally wouldn’t rule out at all at first. So I find that perspective really fascinating too. What do you think about that?

Paul Watzlawick once said, you cannot not communicate. I think a lot of people aren’t really aware of what communication can actually trigger. I have this motto, when words become important again, because I believe words are extremely, extremely powerful, and maybe I’m not even consciously aware of what rhetoric I’m using right now myself, because rhetoric always involves exerting some kind of influence, in one way or another. There are so, so many people who study this, and it’s been going on for a really long time, the Greeks were already doing this, and so on. And I think the real question is, which words do I actually use? I was actually in a Clubhouse room once where they talked about the chat, and someone said, the chat is a battlefield, and I thought, whoa, that’s really escalating things. And I do think this kind of rhetoric can often be used as a weapon, consciously or unconsciously. And if I do it consciously, then I’m getting into manipulation. And I think manipulation isn’t necessarily something negative for me, Yasemin, because, for instance, NLP stands for neuro-linguistic programming, and people always go, “whoa, programming, how bad is that?” But it’s really just rhetoric to achieve something — in the best case, that the other person understands me, and in the worst case, that I get what I want, that I sell them something, for instance. If I use combat rhetoric, that means I see my counterpart in the communication as an enemy, someone who wants to take something from me, or someone I want to verbally knock down, to steer them in a certain direction, or to push my arguments through, making my arguments stronger than theirs. But if you think about how rhetoric and dialogue actually work, it’s certainly a kind of contest — but it’s not a fight, I’d personally say, because I’m a fan of dialogue, I’m a fan of discourse, but I’m not a fan of conflict, I have to say personally. And I don’t think people are always fully conscious of how it’s being used. Of course there are people who use it quite deliberately. I saw something about this yesterday, it was the “Dunkler Parabelritter,” who was talking with a CDU politician — it’s really fascinating to watch, we’re actually going to analyze it later too. There’s a young woman in it who’s very, very intelligent, in my opinion, and she falls right into the trap. Because the conversation was about discrimination and racism, and just two or three buzzwords get used, and to what extent does she fall for it? She reacts to it immediately. And you actually told me about this yesterday too, because we’d talked about the topic of anger — if the other person knows exactly what I react to, that can really work against me, because then I fall right into it. And when they use polemical phrases like, “well, surely one is still allowed to say that,” and “opinions are being restricted” — and content-wise she was actually right, because it was about “cancel culture,” and she was right in the sense that these terms have been flipped around, that they’re now used to say, surely one is still allowed to say this, and that one gets “cancelled.” And then someone said something, and she immediately got emotional and reacted to it. And the Dunkler Parabelritter put it really nicely afterward, because indirectly, she’d done exactly what he wanted. Of course this is just my personal view, and it’s not against that particular politician, you could take other conversations as an example too. The point is, certain buzzwords get used, and the other person reacts to them immediately, and then they get emotional, or they move away from being matter-of-fact, they stop reflecting. And then the other side holds all the arguments. And I’d personally call that combat rhetoric, because then I’m using these things deliberately, knowing how a person functions, knowing I can say afterward, see, you can’t even let me finish a sentence here, see, now I’m getting cancelled again.

But in this context, the question then arises — does this actually have an effect on the insight of the person doing the communicating? So building the bridge back once more to the concept of insight and gaining insight. You said, if we go by that principle again, that you cannot not communicate, that it’s not just the words that are used, but also things like body language and so on. And that made me wonder, for instance, if we look at gestures and facial expressions. Especially here on Clubhouse we have this situation, over and over, and it happened again this morning too, where people come in, quickly raise their hand, and within three seconds they’ve already left the room again, because nobody responded to them. So you could say, these hand-raises that come in, however many seconds they hold for, I just ignore a lot of them — and ignoring is already a form of communication in itself, isn’t it. That’s a signal that gets sent out. That signal then gets evaluated in some way by the other person. Maybe their interpretation is, well, they probably just want to keep it among themselves, or she doesn’t feel like bringing more people up on stage, or whatever their interpretation happens to be. And accordingly, that person then leaves the room again. The question that comes to my mind here, for instance, is, is that already insight? Or is it more just a kind of evaluation, so to speak? Do I actually gain any insight from that? Or does the real insight only come once I’ve experienced the same behavior — and here we’re actually talking about behavior, which isn’t the same as communication — if this happens repeatedly, say, I’ve been in a hundred rooms in a row and the same thing always happens, and then I start thinking about why nobody ever lets me up on stage, and that’s when insight actually kicks in — or is that small process itself already an insight, that moment of thinking, apparently I’m not meant to be on stage here, for instance, and is that already an insight, or would we just call that an interpretation? That’s one thing, and we can apply the same thinking to things like gestures, facial expressions and so on. I’d find it fascinating to figure out whether that’s already insight on this small scale, or at what point it actually becomes insight. And the other thing I’d like to pick up on is a message from the chat, namely: if I reclassify or reinterpret something differently based on new information, that, in my understanding, leads to insight. Example: someone behaves strangely, I find out through communication what’s actually behind it, I understand, and I no longer find it strange at all. Ah, right, okay, that understanding process behind it, interesting. What do you think about that, Layla?

I’m completely with that chat comment, because I was just thinking about the same thing. Of course this can be interpreted the way you described — you come into a room, you raise your hand, and you don’t get called on, or you get the feeling you’re not being noticed. That happens again in three, four, five rooms, and you keep having the exact same experience. But I think that this understanding, as it was just described — I hope I’m paraphrasing that correctly — that it actually has something to do with this. Because, look, Yasemin, I know you, in the sense that I’ve already been in several of your rooms, and I know Clubhouse, and I know there are also a lot of people here who just come in, raise their hand, and then, and I really don’t mean this unkindly, it’s not necessarily a purposeful contribution — and I don’t think that alone would even be a problem — but there are also people who deliberately use Clubhouse for other purposes, let’s just say, they troll, they come up on stage and make some comment that neither fits the topic nor is particularly friendly, and sometimes even a bit strange. And I think there’s a certain approach here. These are really two positions — one is yours, and I understand the listener who thinks, ugh, I never get a turn to speak here, but I also understand the person, to keep it general, who’s running the room, because I have my own rooms on Clubhouse too. And of course that’s, well, I don’t know, it’s disruptive — someone comes up and says, what’s this room actually about, what’s the topic, and you think, well, look, it’s right there in the room title. And, to make a teacher joke, being able to read is definitely an advantage, which sounds mean, but really it’s about actually engaging a bit with what’s there first. And I think insight, for me, is more like an experience — I’ve had this experience. The insight I’d draw from it would actually be, you can interpret things one way or another, but whether they’re really that way, I don’t actually know, I can’t look inside someone else’s head. My mother always used to say, you never really know people. So I go off my own accumulated experience, off the things I’ve actually gone through. And of course, if someone comes in here who could be as wonderful and as intelligent as anything, that has nothing to do with loyalty or sincerity necessarily, and then she doesn’t get called on, and she’s already experienced that ten times before, then she thinks, ugh, come on, not this again, the same experience all over again. And the insight, or the interpretation, I don’t actually know if I’d call that insight, more of a personal interpretation, an evaluation. The evaluation being, well, I’m not important, or, this is how things are run here and I don’t agree with that. And, yes, I think that’s really a process, and I think reflection helps to actually get to insight, because you don’t have to please everyone, you know? It’s really not important to please everyone, but a dialogue works, as Vera Birkenbiel says, by me trying to explain a little bit of my own island to the other person, I hope I’m quoting that right, and finding out something about the other person’s island in return. That’s exactly why listening is so important. And if you have people around you for a longer time, as was mentioned in the chat a bit, you also come to understand why they react the way they do. Otherwise I just have to go off my own accumulated experience, and then it becomes interpretation. And this way I don’t even get the chance to ask further questions. And on Clubhouse I don’t have facial expressions or gestures to go on either, I don’t actually see the person at all, I can’t see whether they’re smiling in a friendly way, I can’t see whether they’re turned toward me or away from me. So that whole assessment is simply missing for you too.

Thank you so much. We’ve got another hand raised, I’ll bring them up in a moment, and there’s one more contribution from the chat too, let me bring that in first. Someone wrote: in my view, everything is communication, both what we do and what we don’t do, silence too counts as communication, politicians use a lot of physical postures to communicate. Yes, that goes right along Watzlawick’s line of thinking — this “you cannot not communicate” idea essentially means that whether it’s through words, through body posture, or through ignoring someone, all of these are signals we send out, so to speak, which absolutely fall under this aspect of communication. Absolutely. Right, Raphael, a very good morning to you. What do you have to say about this topic?

Yes, I came up to join in. Layla, I have to strongly disagree with you here, because I actually hear, or I’m particularly good at hearing a smile in someone’s voice. As someone who’s cold-called quite a lot and built up a lot of experience through phone calls, I can only tell you, you really just have to be able to interpret voices, because on the phone you don’t see anything either. But you have to be able to assess situations, moods, work contexts, everything, and communicate accordingly. And I really like the other comments in the room too, that new information really does change your point of view, and honestly that partly only happens through asking questions — if something seems off, ask; if you don’t understand something, ask. Asking questions is simply an incredibly powerful tool. And combat rhetoric is of course a really fascinating topic too — yes, it exists, and it’s good to know about it, both in case it’s used against you and in case you’d use it yourself, though that should really only be in emergencies, when things come at you out of nowhere. It’s really interesting to react to it, and that can happen through friendliness too, and through asking follow-up questions.

Thank you, Raphael. I’d like to ask again, I may have missed a moment there, could you clarify what exactly the disagreement is — what do you see differently from what Layla said, or from what you understood? That would help me.

Okay, Layla just said that on Clubhouse she obviously can’t see what facial expressions people are making, whether they’re friendly, whether they’re smiling, and what’s going on. And what I told you was, when you talk, when you’re speaking with people, you can actually hear whether they’re smiling, what mood they’re in, whether they’re under pressure, and you pick up on all their emotional states. If you’re attentive, you catch it a hundred percent, and you can react accordingly. And that’s really, really important, whether that’s in a professional setting or in conflict situations — attentiveness is, in my view, key.

Wonderful, thank you so much, that helps me place it better. Layla, I believe you wanted to respond directly to that too, right?

Exactly, because I don’t actually think you’re disagreeing with me at all, Raphael, I think you’re really nicely adding to it, because of course tone of voice is a really important component too. Look, for me, facial expressions are such that you can smile and still not really be smiling, if your eyes aren’t smiling along with it, because certain things we simply can’t suppress. In the voice too, I hope you can all hear that I’m smiling right now, and that I’m enjoying this discussion, because I find it really valuable. And yet I also think it’s partly a matter of personality type — a question of whether someone can actually read these signals or not. For me, the more signals I have available, the more I might be able to interpret it correctly. And if someone’s standing right in front of me, and I have their facial expression and gestures on top of their voice, it’s probably easier for me to assess it, and maybe even get it right. Just because someone’s smiling doesn’t necessarily mean they’re in a good mood, there are people who plant their hands on their hips just to maintain a certain posture, which can have completely different reasons behind it. And with the voice too, you can modulate it really, really strongly — I can, with my voice, and many of us can, if I want to, say “good morning everyone, I’m so glad you’re all here,” and it can sound like “I can feel your energy” — you can modulate quite a lot if you want to. So I simply think, the more indicators you have, the higher, in a manner of speaking, the potential gain in insight could be. So thank you for that impulse, I think it’s really important.

Thank you so much, and let’s really keep building this bridge back to insight and gaining insight, so that this room doesn’t just become a room about communication itself, or about which elements simply, in a manner of speaking, make up communication, but really keep drawing that bridge and looking at what that actually does to insight and gaining insight. And I think it’s important here to look in both directions — both at successful, effective communication, where of course these elements play a role, which is why I think it’s wonderful we’ve already picked up on Watzlawick’s quote, “you cannot not communicate,” which really says a lot. And at the same time really looking at what actually enables insight to be generated within the framework of a communication that takes place. Is it a prerequisite that the communication be successful? Or could I maybe even gain insight through combat rhetoric? How would you all assess that? Raphael, go ahead.

Of course, everything is insight. That’s the wonderful thing, even in transformation processes at companies, or anything else, it’s all a really, really fascinating story. NLP helped me a lot with this specifically, you already mentioned what it stands for. One of the ten core assumptions is basically that successful communication doesn’t lie in the intention of the sender, but in the reaction of the receiver, and that actually says it all. If you listen and watch closely, you simply get the insight, whether they understood it or not, whether they want to understand it or not, whether I need to go into combat rhetoric or don’t need to. And that gives you an enormous amount of insight, of course.

Thank you. Sonja, a very good morning to you. What do you have to say about this?

A very good morning to you all. Since you’re already on the topic of NLP, I’d like to bring in another underlying assumption that also leads to insight, namely that everyone has a different map, a different way of representing the world in their head. And when I talk to someone, no matter how they react, if I’m attentive and a bit trained, I can recognize what map that person is carrying in their head. That’s also possible when someone, for instance, makes an effort to bring a certain melody into their speech, or to say certain things — because I, at least, can sense whether someone actually means what they’re saying, whether there’s some kind of inner conflict going on. And I think that’s also what Raphael meant, when it comes to phone sales, or phone contact in general, that people smile while talking — because attitude is really the essential thing, it’s not the facial expression, it’s the feeling we’re carrying with us. And when we start adjusting our body language to match that, and keep it up for a while, many people, not everyone, but many, find that the feeling actually follows suit, and we automatically start turning toward the other person more warmly too. And that’s the trick that lets us approach even people we might not find that likeable with genuine warmth, warmth from the inside, not just something put on. And I think this insight is essential — that we don’t all carry the same map in our heads. And if I want someone to understand me, it’s important to engage with their map, not just my own. Thank you.

Wonderful. Layla, go ahead.

I’m completely with you both there, I was just thinking too that I believe attitude, in communication, contributes to gaining insight. In the sense that, as Raphael already said, the other person’s reaction matters. Sonja just talked about the map. And I think, if I hold an open attitude toward the other person, and for instance asking questions is a very open attitude, or saying, I don’t know, and then actually using that, avoiding certain kinds of rhetoric — and I’d call this combat rhetoric — saying things like, that’s nonsense, that’s rubbish, what you’re saying — the other person can’t possibly feel good about that. But sometimes it’s hard to get out of that mode once you’re in it. What I’ve noticed, what I’ve gotten into the habit of doing, is with people I — well, I can’t like everyone in the whole world, and I think it’s actually good that it’s that way — when you’re in a forced kind of communication, a forced community, which happens in employment too, quite often, when you’re an employee, or in groups, even when I go out for coffee with my friends, there isn’t always someone there I think is wonderful. And adopting this inner attitude — I once tried wishing someone good energy, wishing them something positive — that actually had an effect on the communication, because that was a person I had major problems with. Major problems in the sense that I didn’t understand that person’s island at all. I didn’t even want to understand their map, because that person held a completely different value system. And yet, simply by adopting that attitude, I ended up unconsciously choosing a different form of communication, because I’d become gentler. And I think that’s something important, because I didn’t go into it with the attitude of, I have to defend my values now, and then reach for the weapons of rhetoric, and instead thought, well, the other person is actually unarmed, okay. It didn’t go in that direction at all, instead I simply tried to get to know that person. And that involves things like, did they actually understand it? Maybe there’s something I don’t understand either. Or, I don’t understand their map. And I think this open attitude toward the other person, as you’ve both already said, I think that’s important. And that’s really exactly what Raphael said, that the other person’s reaction matters — it’s not about me being right in order to gain insight, it’s about a communication taking place in order to generate insight. Because what I say, I already know. What the other person says, I don’t know yet. And I don’t know their map, and I don’t know their reaction. So it’s actually really fascinating to find that out.

Thank you so much. I’d like to bring in one more aspect as an impulse, beyond this kind of communicating, since we’ve also just been talking about dialogue. I remember a line from Jürgen, roughly paraphrased, I hope I’m reproducing it reasonably accurately — dialogue requires an intelligent conversation partner. In that context, he was speaking specifically about, let’s say, self-talk, turning that lens onto oneself. Which makes me want to look again at dialogue — how far do I actually need a conversation partner for insight, or for gaining insight? Meaning, can I ever gain insight purely for myself, exclusively, or to what extent do I actually need something external? We had that room before, for instance, about inspiration and so on, and the underlying question, or insight, from that room was essentially, do I always need impulses from outside in order to arrive at new thoughts, new ideas, in order to actually generate insight? And especially if we want to establish the connection between communication and insight, there’s a link there too, in terms of needing a dialogue partner, so that through the communication that takes place, I can actually arrive at insight. And this dialogue partner — and here I’d like to bring in both dialogue with others, and dialogue with oneself. Because I constantly have thoughts running through my head, I’m essentially talking to myself, regardless of whether I do that out loud or internally. That’s where we get to these inner parts, so to speak, that keep sending us different thoughts, language in the form of thoughts. Which means I’m actually occupied with communication quite a lot throughout the day, and that’s exactly where the aspect of insight is embedded in this dialogue. How important is this dialogue, whether with others or with myself, for actually arriving at insight and gaining insight in the first place? Raphael, go ahead.

What’s fascinating about this whole thing with communication, dialogue, and intelligent conversation partners is first of all the mandatory prerequisite that you yourself need to be capable of holding a really wide range of conversations. If you work in consulting or coaching, you meet an incredible variety of personality types you have to be able to talk to. The length of a dialogue is actually measurable through interest — if it’s interesting, it lasts longer and is successful. If it doesn’t work, well, it just isn’t successful. That’s actually the fascinating part about it. Honestly, my problem is that my phone calls tend to run way too long, and I actually think that’s great. And on top of that there’s the core NLP assumption, the most flexible element of a system dominates that system, meaning flexibility in thinking and acting really pushes you far ahead within any system. And, well, that was my little nugget on that. Thank you.

Sonja, go ahead too.

Yes, a really lovely nugget. I can only underline that too. Coming back to the question of whether we need another conversation partner — I don’t think that’s strictly necessary, but I do think it’s fundamentally necessary that we’ve had experiences with other conversation partners at some point, because that’s exactly what leads to that flexible inner thinking. When I’m in inner dialogue, ideally I try to take on different positions, rather than just repeating like a mantra that I’m right and the other person is wrong, and instead really try to arrive at solutions, understanding, and insight. And the more different perspectives I take on within that inner dialogue, the faster insight actually sets in. And it’s exactly through that inner perspective-shift, thinking, how would person XY see this, or what would person XY say back to me, that I can access little fragments of information that I wouldn’t have if I only thought about it purely cognitively, without entering into some kind of inner communication, just piecing together facts — though what counts as a fact is difficult in itself anyway, what’s really fact and what’s interpretation? So my thesis is, yes, we don’t strictly need — no, let me put it differently — we don’t strictly need other people to arrive at insight even within inner dialogue. There, that’s better.

Thank you so much. Let me reformulate the question a bit — regardless of whether we actually need the other person, let’s also look at it this way. Once we do have the other person in the conversation, whether that’s a stranger, or a third party, not a stranger but a third party, or whether it’s a self-dialogue — what ultimately leads to this insight and gaining insight? You’ve already brought in one aspect, taking on different perspectives, or the inner perspective shift. Maybe we can find further elements here. What do you all think about that? Who raised their hand first just now? Layla, then Sonja, go ahead.

I was just thinking about that line that was mentioned earlier, I’m still a bit stuck on it — that you need an intelligent conversation partner. And I thought, who ever describes themselves as stupid? Hardly any of us would probably do that. And most of us consider ourselves, unless we have very negative beliefs, somewhere on a scale of 1 to 10, at least not completely stupid. Intelligence, you’d mentioned that before too and we’ve talked about it several times — we often tie that to formal schooling, which is why I wanted to bring up that my father, for instance, is a very, very intelligent person. He doesn’t have a university degree like I do, and yet he’s an extremely intelligent person, and some of the wisest things I know actually come from him. I think that plays into this too. And in that context I also found myself asking a question I’ve asked myself before — do we need the other person as a mirror, to recognize ourselves? Do we need the other person to know what’s moral? If we go by Kohlberg, he said that first come punishment and reward, then we orient ourselves toward a peer group that eventually extends beyond our parents. And I think what Sonja said, about this perspective shift, is a really important point, because I believe the more perspectives I have, the more expanded the whole picture becomes. Of course I also have to watch that I don’t become arbitrary, because if I have too many perspectives, I also end up with an overwhelming number of options, from my point of view. And then I’m a bit like being in the supermarket, having to choose between twenty different jars of jam, and it becomes really hard, whereas sometimes it’s actually nice to just have three options in a small corner shop and say, okay, I’ll decide between these three. I honestly don’t know, I’ve often wondered whether a hermit living alone in the desert can even be moral. And then you mentioned the inner monologue — I think the inner monologue is really important too, and I don’t just listen to myself in there, I also hear sentences I’ve heard before, my own beliefs certainly don’t all originate from me either. That’s why I’m such a big fan, and I really love that book “Games People Play,” the idea of asking yourself where all these things actually came from, and writing that down. Because inner monologues are of course shaped by your own intelligence, and you’re all very intelligent, and I mean everyone in this room and outside of it too, of course. And yet I still think it’s true that within my inner monologue I only have my own perspective, only what I’ve personally experienced, which is why I think that, beyond perspectives, actual impulses are important too, engaging with new things. I believe that engaging with what’s foreign, with the other, looking beyond my own horizon, leads to insight. A lot of people who travel say the same thing, they say, that’s where I really gained insight, because I didn’t just know it from television anymore, because I actually engaged with other people, because I saw how they lived, and yes, that’s how I gained insight too. And of course that can also be a kind of documentation in itself, but I think, beyond the perspective shift, impulses are important too, to answer your question.

Thank you so much. Before I switch over to Sonja in a moment, one more impulse from me too, since I want to pick up on a quote from Martin Buber myself. I don’t know who’s familiar with him — he published various writings on the philosophy of dialogue. One of his well-known quotes is, “Man becomes an I through a You.” This partly touches on a kind of identity formation, or a question of being, which is being considered here too, and dialogue plays a really, really essential role in that. He opens up various conceptual pairs here too, I, you, it, and so on. We don’t need to go too deep into that, but I remember covering this section during my studies, and dialogue playing a really special role in identity formation — because we, as humans, are also socially oriented. We need the people around us to grow, to develop, to even be able to survive at all. If you think about it, and compare us to other living creatures, humans actually take relatively long to be able to stand on their own two feet, so to speak. And that’s where the other person plays a really special role for me, also in relation to the personality development that takes place. How I perceive myself, how I relate to myself as a person, how I develop — that has an awful lot to do with what happens in my environment, and of course also with how I experience that, how I interpret it, what insights I generate from it. And dialogue plays a really special role in that. So I’d like to bring that in as an impulse too, and I’m really curious whether you can, and want to, connect to that too. Sonja, go ahead.

That’s a wonderful quote, and it also fits nicely with a thought I had too — that it’s really only through the resonance of others that we come to recognize who we are. And that’s exactly what the quote is saying too. The moment we stop communicating with others, whether in thought, in a mental thought-experiment, or in reality, we don’t get to find out who we really are, because we can’t establish any relationships, any connections. We need those connections to create meaning, and insight arises out of that meaning. If we go back to those earlier examples of communicating with others, an insight could also be that if my conversation partner is using dark rhetoric, they don’t actually want to enter into dialogue at all — they want either themselves or me to end up looking a certain way, and it’s really more about clarifying hierarchy than about the actual topic being discussed. That’s an incredibly valuable insight too, if I notice that I’m the whole time staying on the factual level in this dialogue, trying to convince the other person, and they’re just hurling killer phrases at me. Then it’s important that I use that insight to adjust my own communication style, to meet them on the same communicative level, provided my own values allow for that, so that I can steer them a little bit, so that they have to revise their original strategy. And I think that’s actually a really lovely dynamic within communication. But for that we need to be incredibly watchful, able to observe closely, analyze quickly, and regulate our own emotions extremely well — because otherwise we just act on impulse, and then the other person has the upper hand anyway. Thank you.

Wonderful, thank you so much. We’ve got a few more terms in the mix now that clearly play a role. You mentioned resonance earlier — that resonance can take the form of verbal feedback, for instance, a form of feedback in some way, and it can also be nonverbal. Especially when we think about body language and so on in communication, in the spirit of you cannot not communicate, that’s also a form of resonance taking place, especially in encounters with others. And then we also have an inner resonance, in a manner of speaking, which quickly brings us to things like our own feelings. If we go into mindfulness here, we can, for instance, notice that something gets triggered in us by something external. We can, for example, perceive which feeling is currently present, whether we’re doing well or not, and so on — that’s a form of bodily resonance too. There are different forms of resonance we can perceive, to recognize, at least to some extent, how we’re feeling right now, who we are, how others react to us, in a manner of speaking. And in describing that experience, Sonja, you also just used another term, relationship. And I think that’s actually another really important key term. It’s essentially already resonated through what we discussed earlier around attitude, in the sense of how I approach others, even when I might hold a different view, represent different opinions or similar — that light shining from within, and by that I mean this openness and so on. And then the relationships that I actually establish through that. And communication, whether with myself or with others, always has to do with the relationship I’m maintaining in some form, whether that’s in dialogue with another person, or in dialogue with myself. So the relationship, and also the self-appreciation I hold toward myself, for instance, and toward my own thoughts, that has something to do with my relationship to myself too. And that brings us quickly to this question — what ultimately makes up this dialogue, and what basic foundations, or what basis, so to speak, is actually needed here to enable insight and gaining insight, or to shape it as well as possible? In other words, opening up the space for it in the first place, that’s how I’d put it. Layla, go ahead.

I was just thinking, because I think this question is sometimes a bit difficult for me, being neurodivergent, since I always keep thinking while I speak — I think we maybe also need to take a look inward here too. And looking inward, because you said, if I understood correctly, that it’s about whether dialogue generates insight, whether we actually need it — did I understand that correctly, Yasemin? That was one of the questions. Right, great. And I think if we do take that inward look, we also recognize the resentments we ourselves carry. And if we think about it, well, I can’t exclude myself from that, and I don’t know if you all can. If so, mashallah, I think it’s wonderful that you don’t hold any resentments toward certain topics or people. If that’s the case for someone, it can certainly be justified, in the sense that we’re also supposed to take ourselves seriously, to value ourselves. And then you can ask yourself, why do I actually think this? There are, for instance, people I wouldn’t have spoken to in the past, or I wouldn’t even have had the opportunity to, and above all I wouldn’t even have sought out that opportunity. I have to say, Clubhouse was really a genuine game changer for me, because I’ve spoken here with so many people, both positively and otherwise, where I thought, no way, I would never have gotten coffee with you on the street. But it turned out to be a good conversation, and it actually moved both of us forward. And I think that’s exactly the kind of point where you can put yourself on trial, so to speak, and ask, why do I actually hold this resentment? Is it even justified for me to have it? Because, well, I don’t know. Of course there are people, if someone is very far on the political right, for instance, that’s not someone I’d automatically go into conversation with. And yet discussions like that can still move you forward — and move the other person forward too — instead of telling them, what you think is nonsense, and here comes combat rhetoric, and the other person says back to me, cancel culture, surely one’s still allowed to say that. That doesn’t actually move me, or us, forward at all — but this dialogue, and you already described this, this getting to know each other, giving the other person the chance to see, oh, they’re actually not all the same, that’s just not true. And that goes for me too, thinking, well, people are just like this or like that — that’s simply an experience I’ve had, those are attributions I make, and I can’t exclude myself from that either. Even though I’m a person of color a hundred times over, I still surely carry my own resentments toward certain topics and people. I wouldn’t want to go get a drink with a Nazi, for instance, and yet that conversation would probably still be good, in the sense that both of us could expand our perspectives, and I think that leads to gaining insight. That wasn’t an invitation, by the way, but I do think it’s important, and you also shouldn’t talk to everyone — with some people, as Sonja described so nicely, it’s really just about who’s right, it becomes this whole authority display, or I want to show you exactly what’s what. And internally you think, ugh, I could really do without this conversation, this is really just wasted lifetime in that case. So you shouldn’t talk to everyone. But it’s still true that conversations like this can expand what we gain in insight — I can say that from my own experience. Yes, I think that’s going to be my highlight of the morning — Clubhouse as a game changer for dialogue and gaining insight. How cool is that?

I think that’s going to be my highlight this morning too — Clubhouse as a game changer for dialogue and gaining insight, how cool is that? I honestly find what you just shared, and pulled together, really impressive. And that brings us to this idea of giving the other person the chance to show, they’re actually not what I assumed — that’s one perspective. At the same time there’s also the perspective of giving yourself the chance to recognize, the other person really isn’t what I assumed either — that would be the other lens, complementing the first. And that’s actually exactly what I was trying to get at, in a way, with my opening question, which is why I went in so directly with, do I need communication, or dialogue, in order to generate insight? Of course there are various contexts where I can generate insight without dialogue necessarily being involved, meaning we can, to some extent, also use other means for that. And at the same time, this means, dialogue, is an incredibly, incredibly strong element, a phenomenon where an enormous amount of insight and gaining insight can actually take place, provided that the right attitude is present, that a space is opened up for it, that personal encounter is genuinely allowed to happen, so to speak, that certain prejudices or unconscious biases that exist get pushed aside a bit, in order to enter into exchange, to actually listen to one another — and that also builds the bridge to tomorrow’s room, because tomorrow we continue with insight and gaining insight in the context of listening, that’s exactly where we want to go deeper. So this fits perfectly right here. And really using this dialogue, and thinking once more about what ultimately makes up this dialogue — you described it so beautifully. Clubhouse as a game changer, in the sense that, elsewhere, I probably wouldn’t have gone for coffee, or whatever, with this particular person. And this encounter, which became possible on Clubhouse, doesn’t mean I now have to adopt their opinion or anything like that — it’s really about creating that encounter and exchange in the first place, opening up that space, with certain framework conditions, rules, whatever, so to speak, to actually get into a conversation, to be able to perceive the other person’s perspective, to be able to experience it, to sense it, and based on that, to sort through my own thoughts again, to gain new insights, regardless of whether I actually agree with every opinion or not. And that brings us to another aspect — suddenly something like empathy plays a role too. And there’s actually going to be another room specifically on the topic of empathy and gaining insight, I believe that’s coming up sometime next week. So really fascinating. I think that’s genuinely my morning highlight in this round today. Thank you so much for that. And with that, given the time, I’d like to move into our closing round — let’s start with Sonja, then Layla, and then I’ll wrap up the room for today. Sonja.

Yes, then let me bring in my closing statement, I’ll just tie it in here. There’s one more point I think is important to mention in this context, namely, what intention do I actually have in a given communication. If I notice that I myself want to connect with the other person, or that the other person wants to connect with me, and I share that interest, then I simply put in more effort to communicate well, in a way that makes the other person genuinely interested in the communication, or that makes them feel comfortable. But if I notice that the interest isn’t there, that no connection is really wanted, then I put in a lot less effort, and that insight actually saves an incredible amount of energy, and that ties in a lot with listening and with empathy too, as a bridge to tomorrow’s topic. Thank you.

Wonderful, thank you so much. Layla.

I was just thinking to myself — I was once in a really unpleasant situation, where someone made racist remarks, and I was stuck in a forced community setting, so I filed a complaint up the hierarchy and said, excuse me, but you can’t say things like that, and I was told, oh, you know, Ms. Bellaid, sometimes a group is just the mirror of society. And I said, well, if that’s the mirror of society, then maybe we should clean it once in a while. But it’s still good to keep looking into that mirror, again and again. And whether I clean my own mirror so that others can see me more clearly, or whether, well, I don’t know, I don’t have to necessarily go at it aggressively with rubbing alcohol and say, this is completely unacceptable, you can’t express yourself like that — but it’s still important to see the other person’s mirror, in order to maybe recognize yourself again, and gain insight.

Absolutely. And here too, one’s own reaction within the dialogue absolutely has, potentially, an effect. Raphael isn’t in the room anymore, but I wanted to pick this up anyway — I’ll gladly use this as an example, though we’ve had other rooms where examples like this came up too, it happens again and again. He actually opened his contribution earlier with, “I have to strongly disagree with you.” And those are often stylistic devices we use, so to speak, sometimes maybe without even being fully aware of it, that can trigger very different reactions in a dialogue, depending on who I’m actually exchanging with, depending on whether we’ve maybe already met in other rooms, whether a certain relationship already exists, and so on. And we’ve actually had this happen in this very room before, where, to be fair, the relationship maybe wasn’t quite right from the outset, in the sense that certain judgments were already present that of course triggered things further. And a contribution that started out that way ended up almost turning into an argument, in a manner of speaking, simply because the reaction matched the opening. And why am I bringing up this example? Because you just mentioned intention, which was another aspect that got named, and also this question of which terms I actually use. And here we can look at ourselves too — it plays a really essential role in dialogue, which terms we actually use. You, for instance, neutralized that beautifully earlier, and I’d actually like to highlight and underline that even more, for anyone who didn’t consciously notice it, when you said, I don’t actually see this as a contradiction, but as a complement to what I said. That was a form of neutralization through language, within the dialogue, so to speak, that you carried out. But it could also have triggered a completely different reaction from you, possibly set off by the way the contribution opened. And I’m not trying to pass judgment here, along the lines of who did what right or wrong, but rather to make conscious once again that the language we choose, or this you-cannot-not-communicate idea, whether through gesture, facial expression and so on, the underlying stance behind all of that, really does contribute significantly to whether a dialogue even comes about at all. Not every conversation, in my view, is a dialogue — that might actually be worth its own room sometime, to look at more closely. Not every conversation is a dialogue, that’s my bold thesis here. And turning a conversation into an actual dialogue really does require something more. And that brings us back to the aspect Sonja also mentioned, in the direction of empathy again. So there are various elements at play here, relationships, underlying attitude, and so on, that ultimately, taken together, enable a space that’s respectful, at eye level, and so on. We could add even more terms here too, to open that up and enable a genuine encounter. That doesn’t mean I have to adopt the other person’s opinion, or hold the same view, or anything like that — I’m still allowed to represent my own opinion and stand by it. Maybe I also gain insights along the way and correct myself here and there. But to lay that foundation in the first place, I need certain “framework conditions,” so to speak. And the more consciously I handle that, the more I can ultimately contribute, through how I handle certain situations, how I handle them in communication, to turning conversations into actual dialogue, and opening up a space where insight and gaining insight becomes possible. I find that genuinely fascinating. Thank you so much, this was really a mega room for me. Thanks for your contributions through the chat too. And I’m really looking forward to tomorrow, because then we’ll actually take a closer look at this aspect of listening. And, yes, we’ve often had Andreas Wollermann’s line here too — many people listen in order to respond, not in order to understand, so to speak — and picking up on that quote from him, we can gladly dive into that topic tomorrow, and look at what role listening actually plays in relation to insight and gaining insight. With that, you’re all warmly invited to join again tomorrow morning at 8am. With that, take care, until tomorrow. Ciao!