But more to the point, it was another suggestion, and the crowd in the reading room was breaking up into small groups along preferred language lines and starting to argue and discuss, to come up with ideas. Trying to help. I didn’t care that all the ideas were useless; we’d literally only just started thinking.
By Naomi Novik – The Last Graduate
Working with new groups, the important thing is to get them to start talking, sharing perspectives and ideas. Don’t focus on quality, reinforce the act of talking and listening. Each new group needs to learn and decide how they want to talk and act. They need the chance to get to know one another both how people act and what knowledge, skills and experience they bring to the group.
The biggest challenge to get a group going is not if people are quiet, it is if you have one or two people dominating the conversation. If they have more experience with the problem and use that to push their ideas forward too quickly then the group might get too dependent on them. I have often tried to identify these people beforehand and either talked to them and asked them to let people in or I divide the group into smaller groups where I either put all the talkative people in one group or try to place them in a group where there are people who can manage them.
Do Books Read? 