This research study was done in the framework of a Professional Doctorate in Systemic Practice at KCCF, London, and the University of Bedfordshire, England. It was a study in how dialogical communication and collaboration could improve how social workers, listening to the children’s invitation, could make children’s and other client’s voices heard in social investigations. In all, 55 social workers participated in systemic coaching and this dialogical participatory action research (DPAR) study, conducted for five years in all.

The research was conducted as an Appreciative Inquiry (AI) process emerging from within the intertwined and reflexively co-created joint actions emerging in two actions projects in where systemic coaching inspired social workers to invite children and other clients into dialogical collaboration called partnership.  In the study these processes became metaphorically talked about as going on cycling voyage tour riding in the peloton. In this dynamic flow of dialogical collaborative joint actions the participants, including the researcher, found the directions how to go on (with whom, when, where, how, with what and why) exploring and reflecting both in the actions during the ride and learning by doing in an ongoing flow of joint actions. Sometimes the peloton stopped for replenishments in the tour, reflecting on the progress and on the impact of the actions as well as the collaboration, exploring from different views and positions. The focus on dialogue developed the participants’ approach in relation to clients and one another and others.  The participating social workers’ awareness of the impact of their own contributions, and their own importance in relation to children and other clients, improved. The expressions listening ears and listening questions were invented, capturing how to place yourself completely at the other participants’ disposal, completely accessible in the mutual responsiveness in the moment. The systemic methods were reflexively influenced and adapted from within the relational dynamic of joint actions in the dialogical interplay, becoming living tools in both the social workers’ practice and the coaching researcher’s practice, facilitating learning-by-doing with methods and approach connected to AI.  One of the living tools was so called ‘reflecting teams’ emerging also into ‘delta-reflecting teams’­ with open narrating included.