What is the Socratic Method?
According to the philosopher Plato, the Socratic Method was conceived by his mentor, the early Greek philosopher Socrates, in which the facilitator assumes an ignorant position so that students can take the active and more knowledgeable position in the search for an answer.
Actually, Socrates is said to not have seen himself as a teacher, rather he tended to see his role in the process as that of a midwife, as a means to assist others in giving birth to their ideas and sparking curiosity to achieve new insights through dialog and critical inquiry. He wanted to inspire his students to seek real truths through logic instead of defending mere opinions through rhetoric. In our knowledge and innovation-driven society, this has become a critical skill set.
Conducting a Socratic Dialog – Bringing your inner philosopher to life
There are five stages of which the Socratic Dialog is composed:
- Wonder or receive what the other person has to say, listen to their view or premise
- Reflect. Sum up the person’s viewpoint and clarify your understanding of what you have heard.
- Refine and cross-examine. Ask the person to provide evidence that supports their view. Discover the thoughts, assumptions and facts underlying their beliefs. Challenge these assumptions to test their validity. “Why” questions are frequently used in this stage to identify any fallacies in their reasoning.
- Restate the new assumption resulting from the inquiry.
- Repeat. Start back at the beginning with the new assumptions. This iterative process helps drill the premise down to the core issues in an attempt to strip away all fallacies and to arrive at the truth, best answer, most appropriate decision – whatever you happen to be looking for.
The Socratic Method has a number of dialog rules to facilitate the emergence of the conversation. Here are a few of them:
- Postpone your own judgment.
- Reflect with each other rather than against each other.
- Keep things concrete, stick to the facts.
- Postpone reflection.
- Postpone empathy.
- Listen carefully.
- Refrain from interpreting or paraphrasing, and come back to what the other person has literally said.
Socratic Dialog topics
Apart from being a philosophical method of inquiry, the Socratic Method is used in a wide variety of fields such as law, medicine, education and business to achieve a greater understanding of the complexity of our awareness. It is highly useful in practical situations to:
- reflect on teamwork, frictions, and obstacles,
- conduct an in-depth discussion or during a retrospective,
- resolve moral dilemmas,
- improve the relationship within a team,
- address major (cultural) differences between those involved in the discussion,
- develop visions and missions and discuss team and company values,
- identify underlying issues,
- develop new ideas and innovations.
When to use the Socratic Method
- For new ideas and innovations
- To reach a consensus
- To foster people-centered cultures
- To foster a culture of curiosity
- To resolve conflict
- To improve relationships
- To achieve new dimensions of communication
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