Thinking Together Talking with each other beats talking to ourselves

We make sense of the world through conversations with ourselves and with others. But thinking alone can leave our assumptions, biases, and blind spots unchallenged. Conversation with others brings different perspectives into play, helping us question our thinking, see what we have missed, and develop a richer understanding together.

Thinking and spoken discourse are the same thing, except that what we call thinking is, precisely, the inward dialogue carried on by the mind with itself without spoken sound.

Credit: Plato

External conversations are often triggered by questions from other people such as “What do you think of this idea?” A question invites us to pause, reflect, and put our thinking into words. In doing so, we may discover that we are not quite as clear about what we think as we imagined.

Internal conversations work in much the same way. They may be triggered by questions we ask ourselves, such as “That’s curious; I wonder why that happened?” We question ourselves, consider possibilities, make connections, and gradually develop an understanding of what is going on.

However, our internal conversations have a problem when we try to make sense of something. We largely rely on our existing knowledge, experience, assumptions, and ways of seeing the world.

• We are full of biases, emotions, and blind spots.
• We can be overconfident and think we understand far more than we do.
• We tend to accept what we have been taught, or assumptions deeply embedded in our culture, without questioning them.

This is where conversation with others becomes so important. In a good conversation, other people bring different experiences, knowledge, assumptions, and perspectives. We can challenge each other, question each other’s thinking, point out biases, fill blind spots, and help burst the thought bubbles we live in.

The value is not simply that other people give us more information. Through conversation, we can test our thinking, make connections we hadn’t seen before, and develop ideas that none of us may have arrived at alone. Our thinking develops through the interaction itself.

These small group conversations are not free of bias either. Groups can reinforce shared assumptions, defer to dominant voices, or too readily agree with one another. Although we can’t eliminate these tendencies, awareness of them can help us convene conversations that encourage questioning, different perspectives, and thoughtful disagreement.

Much of the real work of managing knowledge happens through small-group conversations. We share what we know, question what we think we know, make sense of different perspectives, and develop new understanding together. Knowledge management is therefore not simply about capturing and distributing information. It is also about creating the conditions in which we can think together.

We can pay closer attention to where and how we think. When an issue matters, we can bring our thoughts into conversation with others, invite questions, seek different perspectives, and remain open to challenge. By thinking together in small groups, we can test assumptions and deepen our understanding.