Conversational Roles

People unused to open discussion often find it difficult to participate and cede the floor to more experienced group members or extroverts. By assigning conversational roles, people are given specific guidance and direction on how to participate. Surprisingly (at least for the two of us), many who are unused to discussion experience this as helpful. Having a specific role to play provides a reassuring focus.

Purposes

• To create diverse ways of engaging in discussion
• To prevent a discussion from focusing on only one topic
• To provide reassuring guidance on how to participate in discussion for those unused to this activity
• To make sure the discussion stays fresh

How It Works

• Facilitators prepare a number of discussion roles on 3' × 5' cards, together with a brief description of how each role is played.
• These cards are placed face down into a bowl, hat, or box and participants choose one at random. They look at their role and its description without showing their card to anyone.
• Facilitators tell people that in the upcoming discussion they should try to play their particular role whenever possible. However, they explain that participating in the discussion in ways that don't conform to the role is also welcome.
• Common roles people are asked to play are the following:
  • Problem poser. Start the discussion off by describing how the problem, question, or issue relates to your experience or what part of the topic you think is the most important to address.
  • Devil's advocate or dissenter. Listen carefully for any emerging consensus. When you hear this, try to formulate and express a contrary view.
  • Umpire. Listen for judgmental comments that sound offensive, insulting, and demeaning and bring these to people's attention.
  • Connector. Do your best to show how participants' contributions are connected to each other.
  • Appreciator. Show how you find another's ideas interesting or useful.
  • Speculator. Try to introduce new ideas, new interpretations, and possible lines of inquiry into the group, for example, “I wonder what would happen if…?” “I wonder what [major theorist] would say about…?”
  • Illustrator. Provide as many examples as you can of points that illustrate the arguments others are making.
  • Active listener. Try to paraphrase others' contributions to the conversation (“So what I hear you saying is…” “If I understand you correctly you're suggesting that…”) or provide illustrations that extend someone's contribution.
  • Underscorer. Emphasize the relevance, accuracy, or resonance of another person's comments and explain why these are so pertinent.
  • Evidential assessor. Listen for comments that generalize or make unsupported assertions. Ask for the evidence that supports the assertions expressed.
  • Questioner. When possible try to pose questions that lead to a deeper discussion, for example, “Can you give an example of that?” “What would that look like?” “How does your point connect to theory A?”
• At the end of the discussion people share the roles they were asked to play and talk about the challenge of doing this.

Where and When It Works Well

1. Academic settings. Incoming freshman often appreciate the guidance and structure of playing a specific role as an introduction to college-level discussion.
2. If a group's culture is too competitive or adversarial. If group members see being effective in discussion as arguing for their viewpoint as strongly as possible, taking on a connector, appreciator, active listener, or underscorer role can help broaden their range of discussion behaviors.
3. When you wish to alter habitual participation patterns. When people are assigned different roles it helps break up the usual way that members interact with one another.

What Users Appreciate

1. Structure. Being given a role to play provides the security of knowing what is expected of you during a discussion.
2. Variety. The different roles tend to keep the discussion more interesting and stop it from running out of steam too soon.

What to Watch Out For

1. Focusing too much on a role. Sometimes people become so preoccupied with playing a role that it stops them from participating in the discussion. It's important to emphasize that playing the role should not prevent anyone from making other kinds of contributions.
2. Complexity. Some of the roles are more demanding than others. Being devil's advocate, evidential assessor, or umpire, for example, requires more skill than being an appreciator or connector. Sometimes it helps if you assign the more complex roles to people whom you think can handle these so the less-skilled participants can see what they look like.
3. Roles being played inexpertly. Without some detailed demonstration of what playing these roles looks like, people can blunder in and cause more harm than good. For example, an umpire can point out an infraction against group ground rules in a way that's highly personal and judgmental. To show what each of these roles look like, you as facilitator can model playing them in meetings and discussions: “now I'm going to play the role of devil's advocate” or “for the next five minutes I'm going to be an evidential assessor.”

Questions That Suit This Protocol

The questions that are being asked will determine many of the roles being played. For example, if your question is one designed to challenge groupthink or organizational norms, then the devil's advocate or dissenter, speculator, and evidential assessor roles become more important. If the question is designed to assess participants' understanding of complex material, then the illustrator and questioner roles are crucial.