The German sociologist Hartmut Rosa (2019) talks about resonance as a possible way to further develop society. He describes the current societal situation by processes of acceleration on three levels: the technical, the social and the individual. As a counter weight to these acceleration processes, he suggest to (re)consider the importance of our relationship to the world. For this reason, Rosa reflects on the term resonance by focusing on family and politics, work and sports, religion and art - in which we as late modern subjects can seek out resonance. From a sociological perspective, Rosa’s focus is less on the psychological dimensions, which – on the contrary – is the focus of interest of this presentation. However, the societal analysis is the foundation for the argument of reconsidering dialogue as a central phenomenon, which is decisive for the quality of life and the psychological well-being of individuals and social communities.
Being inspired by Rosas concept of resonance, the focus of this presentation turns towards coaching as a transformative dialogues, where resonance can be applied as the central term to describe what is necessary and central to establish the dialogical relationship as the foundation towards personal and social development. In this presentation, resonance will be investigated as a relational quality in transformative dialogues. The coach or dialogue guide becomes a fellow-human companion for their dialogue partners (Stelter, 2016).
Transformative dialogues go in depth by focusing on meaning making, value reflections and ethical anchoring. Transformative dialogues ultimately affect both/all dialogue parties in their self-understanding and in their way of seeing certain events and challenges from a renewed angel. A decisive condition for this type of dialogue is that the parties are resonant bases for each other: Largely, the reflective process is anchored in a fellow-human and value-based level related to the challenges of life that the individual concretely face. Transformative dialogues can be the foundation for emergent conversations, which open up for a co-creative approach in different context in civil society, professional welfare services and organizational development. Transformative dialogues can help to develop the professionals and other dialogue guides towards inner and social sustainability, i.e. the orientation of people towards their empathy, feelings, motives that help to understand themselves and their relatedness to the world. Resonance is the foundation to create gracious space between all participants of transformative dialogues.
References:
Rosa, H. (2019). Resonance - A Sociology of Our Relationship to the World. Wiley.
Stelter, R. (2016). The coach as a fellow human companion. I L. E. van Zyl, M. W. Stander, & A. Odendaal (red.), Coaching Psychology: Meta-Theoretical Perspectives and Applications in Multi-Cultural Contexts (s. 47-66). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31012-1_3