Introduction
You all know the scene. Another day, another meeting, and a feeling of complete pointlessness descending on you as you make your way to the conference room. Or you trudge to a mandatory leadership, staff, or professional development workshop expecting to be alternately bored and chastised while an “expert” tells you how you can be a better teacher, leader, decision maker, team member; how you can think out of the box, incorporate technology, address diversity, and generally be a pedagogic superhero. Alternatively you plod to class knowing that your efforts to get students to discuss the assigned reading will be met by awkward silence, averted eyes, and a reluctance to talk that swirls in the classroom atmosphere like a thick, Victorian London fog.
If you're a participant in a mandatory training workshop or departmental meeting you ask yourself, “Is there any way I can surreptitiously get some useful work done while this charade is happening?” When the leader or chair opens the session by saying he welcomes all questions and that nothing is off the table you think, “Yeah, right, how many times have I heard that before?” We have all endured counterfeit meetings and discussions: those that look as though some form of democratic group decision-making process is happening but in which the currency on offer—people engaged in apparently open-ended talk—is a forgery. It's counterfeit because although it looks like a genuine consideration of alternatives is happening, everyone knows the major decisions lie outside the room. And, although it seems superficially as if people are interested in, and eager to hear, what others have to say, you know this is really a sophisticated form of organizational playacting. You do it because this is what good teamwork is supposed to look like. But take it seriously? No way.
If you're running the event, it's even more stressful. You enter the room expecting a mix of apathy and resistance. If it's a class, you're betting that the students won't have done the prereading that's been assigned to inform the upcoming discussion and that getting people to speak will be like drawing blood from the proverbial stone. If it's a meeting, you know that the usual egomaniacs will dominate, often blocking any new initiatives you propose. If it's professional development training, you know there will be clumps of resisters with their arms folded and locked high across their chest. Their body language screams, “Motivate me to find this interesting, I dare you!”
People are bored and burned with group routine. We have all sat through so many lifeless classes, meetings, and PowerPoint-dominated trainings that it's no surprise that we have become skeptical or cynical. As a bumper sticker we saw once said, “no one dies wishing they had gone to more meetings.”
But this doesn't have to be the case. The truth is that bad group deliberation usually happens because no protocols or exercises are used that involve everyone and that use multiple forms of engagement. In The Discussion Book we provide our top fifty strategies that get people talking in a purposeful and energized way. From urban high schools to Ivy League doctoral education programs, corporations to the military, international development agencies to social movements, and community groups to health care organizations, we have found that what people say they want is very consistent. They ask for very practical techniques to help them do the following:
- Get students, employees, reports to, colleagues, and citizens to participate more fully in group deliberation and decision making
- Provide new ways of running groups so participants feel more energized and engaged
- Encourage groups to keep focused on important topics, contentious issues, and key questions instead of getting diverted into trivia or avoidance
- Spur creativity so that people are actively asking unusual questions, uncovering new perspectives, and proposing novel solutions
- Increase genuine collaboration and teamwork, right from the outset of a group's time together
These goals are not easily achieved. But they will hardly ever be realized if you rely on the mystery of group chemistry. The keys to activating purposeful, productive, and participatory discussions are actually very simple. In every institution, organization, or community we have worked, good, engrossing talk only happens if the following conditions are in place:
- Protocols used are designed to equalize participation, keep people focused, and encourage new questions and perspectives.
- A variety of deliberative and decision-making formats ensure that people don't lose energy by falling into typical routines
- The leader, consultant, or trainer models her or his commitment to the protocols they ask others to engage in.
The Zen of Protocols—You Have to Plan for Spontaneity
We both used to have faith in spontaneous group process. Early on in our careers we thought that whether or not groups worked well was essentially inscrutable. If the right people came together there would be a joyful combustion of energetic brainstorming with everyone involved. We're not saying that this never happens, but it's the Bigfoot of classroom, organizational, and community life—secretive, rarely seen.
However, there are things you can do to ensure that groups work well. You have to make sure everyone gets a chance to participate and that no one dominates by force of personality or organizational rank. You have to find ways of discussing problems and developing solutions that accommodate the different ways people process information and communicate with each other—visual, graphic, and kinetic, as well as through speech. Quieter, more introverted members need to feel there is time to formulate their contributions. Pretty much all the protocols we propose in this book are designed to elicit maximum participation from all involved.
Groups will also inevitably stray off topic as people become fixated on how an issue, topic, proposed change, or problem affects their little corner of the world. They want to follow their agenda or interest, even when it doesn't connect with what is being talked about, so you have to find ways of keeping the group focused while not losing the value of an unexpected idea or insight. It's a tough balance, but you have little hope of striking it unless you introduce protocols to help a class, meeting, case conference, or training refocus. That's a second intent built into most of our fifty techniques.
One of the hardest things to do is to keep people fresh and open so that a new way of looking at an old topic, issue, or problem can pop into their head. Some of the best sessions we've been involved in where those when someone said something like “you know maybe A is not the real problem. Perhaps what's really behind this is B.” Problems can be recast spontaneously when a light bulb goes off in someone's head. It's making it a daily element of classroom, organizational, and community life that's the trick.
Protocols that institutionalize this behavior can be enormously helpful, particularly if the teacher, leader, trainer, department head, or consultant models his or her own engagement in this. Much of this boils down to the art of asking good questions, so embedded in many of our protocols is guidance on what good questions look like. Of course we have to model our own attempt to do this, something we'll say a little more about in a moment.
Spicing It Up—An Energetic Blend
Even the most energizing discussion protocol becomes routine if it's overused. You need to make people feel that they're not quite sure what's going to happen in the class, meeting, or training today. It's a kind of pleasurable uncertainty. Being surprised is one of the joys in life, and if that's built into how you convene people to talk with each other then you have far more chance of keeping them engaged.
No one technique will do all the things we want. There is no Holy Grail of group process. And if someone tries to convince you that they have it, you can be pretty sure they haven't done much facilitation and can promise you a steal of a deal on the Golden Gate Bridge.
Variety is the spice of life. The way to keep group gatherings spicy is to have lots of flavors in your spice rack of protocols. A pinch of Chalk Talk today, a soupcon of Methodological Belief tomorrow keeps the pot boiling pleasurably. The fifty techniques in this book are the top fifty we use most frequently, but we have a lot more and we're constantly developing new ones. You'll find these on the website we developed to accompany this book: www.thediscussionbook.com/. If you conduct weekly classes, trainings, or meetings, then, counting out holidays, this book provides a new protocol to try every week of the year!
Modeling Your Commitment—Walking the Talk
Nothing produces cynicism quicker than the message, “Do as I say, not as I do.” This is the basis of counterfeit democracy and counterfeit discussion. One of us was once part of a task force examining ways to think critically about every aspect of organizational life—except the office of the CEO. A sure recipe to guarantee no one took our report seriously.
In our experience all kinds of leaders are also victims of the myth of innocence. This myth assumes that if your intentions are pure, people will somehow mysteriously breathe in this purity and know that everything you do is in their best interest. It's leadership by osmosis.
But leadership by example is what everyone, including the two of us, craves. The most common criticism we hear of teachers, leaders, and supervisors boils down to “he doesn't walk the talk” or “she doesn't practice what she preaches.” So if you use group protocols you need to show you take them seriously enough to engage in them yourself. For example, before asking people to practice these techniques the two of us always try to demonstrate how we do them with each other, perhaps using a topic or question suggested by a participant. Whenever possible we also participate in any exercise we have assigned.
It's important to model commitment, not perfection. Your intent is to show how you strive to implement a protocol, not to demonstrate it flawlessly. When we model a technique we take frequent pauses, talk about how hard it is to do well, and admit when we're struggling. Of course, we also own up to times when something is working really well for us. Our conviction is that we have no right to ask anyone else to try something out until we've done it first.
To the Techniques!
We present each of our techniques in a particular format. We begin with a statement of the purposes the technique is intended to accomplish followed by a clear and concrete description of the technique and how it's implemented. Then we report where and when each technique works well and what users say they like most about it. Next we alert readers to potential difficulties we have noticed when using the technique. We finish, when appropriate, with sample questions we have posed to groups.
A final comment. People often contact us asking for permission to use a technique we've written about. Please know there's no need to do this: we grant you permission to use anything you find in this book that you think might be useful. We urge you to steal from the book!
You can also change any technique in any way you want. Delete things, add things, blend elements of different techniques together, change how you implement them; do these all with our blessing. And we'd love it if you'd let us know about your experience trying out anything you find in the pages ahead. You can contact us at [email protected] or [email protected].