You will experience many situations when you present your ideas to a group and invite those in the group to contribute to the discussion and debate. The usual format for this type of communication will be a team or group meeting, held in person or live online via Teams, Zoom or similar.
Discussing and respectfully debating ideas can result in the following:
- processes, situations, or relationships improve
- problems are solved
- progress is made
- people feeling that they have had some input, and not just being told to do something
- people feeling valued for their ideas
- increased productivity
- stronger work teams
- stronger relationships.
We will investigate and explore the skills and knowledge needed to discuss and debate ideas in a group in this final topic. Specifically, we will cover:
- how to organise the event
- how to prepare for the discussion
- how to structure and conduct the discussion
- how we can help others to contribute to the discussion.
It’s important that you formally invite others to the meeting. Usually, this would be done via email so that people have the notice in their calendars.
Your email invitation should include:
- meeting details (time, date, location)
- meeting purpose (e.g., ‘We’re meeting to discuss why we need to stop working from home’)
- an encouragement for attendees to bring their thoughts and ideas (for example, ‘At the meeting I’ll be presenting my views on this, and I’m looking forward to hearing yours.’).
Invitations should be sent out no later than one week before the meeting to give people enough time to think about and prepare for the meeting.
- Welcome everyone and thank them for coming. If people don’t know each other, let people quickly introduce themselves.
- Set some guidelines about how people can contribute and speak. Consider:
- respectful behaviour
- when participants can speak
- listening
- respectful and inclusive language
- respecting other people’s views
- how to handle disagreements and conflict.
- Purpose and goal – what the meeting is about, what you want from them.
- Open with a story or interesting fact about your topic.
- Tell them why this is important.
- Outline the 3-5 main ideas you are going to present.
- Discuss your main ideas in detail in the order that you outlined.
- Invite questions, views and comments*.
- Summarise what was discussed and the next steps.
*Note: you may like to stop and invite questions, views and comments after each of your main points rather than at the end of the discussion. This way, it’s less of a presentation and more of a conversation.
Remember what you learned from any previous presentations or group discussions you’ve done and incorporate any relevant feedback.
Even though you’ve told the attendees in your email that you would like to hear their views, they may be reluctant to speak up. Here are five techniques that will help others to share their ideas:
- Encourage them to share ideas by using phrases like:
- What do you think?
- I’m interested in your views.
- Do you think this could work? Why/Why not?
- Tell me more.
- Tell me why you disagree with me.
- Acknowledge their contributions, feelings and emotions:
- I appreciate you telling me.
- Thanks – I can understand why you would think that.
- I can see you feel strongly about this – can you tell me why?
- Show empathy – put yourself in their shoes and try and see the situation through their point of view. Here are some suggestions for how you can show empathy:
- I understand. This is important to you.
- I appreciate why you feel that way.
- I think I can understand why you prefer that way.
- Ask open questions to keep the conversation going:
- How would you do this (not ‘Will you do this?’)
- What would you like to see happen? (not ‘Would you be happy to see this happen?’)
- Why is that important to you? (not ‘Is this important to you?’)
- Why do you think this won’t work? (not ‘Do you think this won’t work?’)
- Summarise what you heard in your own words:
- Let me see if I’ve understood, you said… [summarise what you heard]. Is that right?
The secret to great communication is to approach it with an open heart and mind. In this TED talk, journalist Celeste Headlee shares some great tips that she’s learned about having better conversations. And remember – listening well will tell you everything you need to know.
In this final topic, we investigated how to conduct facilitated discussions where we discuss and debate ideas with a group. We learned about:
- how to organise the event
- how to prepare for the discussion
- how to facilitate the discussion
- how we can help others to contribute to the discussion.
