Coaches are trained to listen, but what exactly are we listening for, and how do we know whether our listening has changed the conversation?

This session introduces the Dialogic Orientation Quadrant (DOQ), a research heuristic developed by Dr. Haesun Moon to make the orientation of meaning-making visible in coaching and helping conversations. Built from microanalysis of recorded coaching dialogue, the DOQ maps talk along two dimensions—time (past and future) and preference (wanted and unwanted)—producing four orientations that any moment of a conversation can occupy. Once a coach can see those orientations, the invisible becomes trackable: where a conversation has been, where it is now, and where it can be headed.

Dr. Moon will work from real dialogue excerpts, moving line by line, to show how coaching conversations are built collaboratively rather than delivered. Participants will see how a client's turn opens several possible directions, how a coach's response selects among them, and how a sequence of such selections accumulates into what we later call"a good session." The emphasis throughout is on what is observable in the talk itself — not on inferred intentions, personality, or technique labels.

The DOQ is a research instrument, and this session treats it as one. Coaches will learn how it is used to study dialogue rigorously, and equally how it works as a practical reflective tool: a way to review a recording, supervise a colleague, or notice mid-session that a conversation has drifted into problem-talk and choose differently.

Coaches at every stage of practice are welcome; no prior familiarity with conversation analysis is assumed.

1. Read a coaching conversation through the Dialogic Orientation Quadrant — identifying the four orientations in live talk and recognizing which one a given exchange currently occupies.
2. Apply the DOQ as a reflective and supervisory tool: reviewing a recording, a transcript, or a colleague's session to see how the dialogue was jointly built rather than judging it against a competency checklist.
3. Notice, in the moment, how one's own next response selects a direction for the conversation — and make that selection deliberately rather than by habit.