posted on Friday, April 04, 2008 5:43 PM by AnjaliSastry

How do you make the most of an opportunity to run a discussion?

So, how do you best use your few minutes in front of a room full of people?
First of all, let me say that I love having the chance to share my indeas and interact with others in classrooms, talks, meetings.
Second of all, I know I could be better. The good news is, I'm still learning new things! But I also feel pretty humble: over the years, the more I get to stand up in front of others and talk, the more aware I've become of my own responsibility to make the most of their time (and patience....).
I thought I'd start by taking this opportunity to thank all of you who've given me your time, attention, smiles, frowns. And especially those of you who've made comments, asked questions, or answered them.

I also thought I'd share with you some of the things I've learned, usually the hard way and usually by seeing other people do it better. I am sharing some resources here too.

Even if you only have a few minutes, planning and forethought are essential. You can be professional and engaging in even the shortest opportunity. You can be professional and engaging in very informal opportunities. You may have to be. I was talking to an old friend who runs meetings--big meetings--at Google the other day. She told me that her weekly meetings even draw attendees who don't need to be there! I'm guessing they are pretty good.... one standard element of her meeting is a 5-minute "dig in" session. The task of the presenter is to frame just one issue to share with the group. Here are some of the things that people there use the "dig in" for:
  • sharing new ideas that they think will be generative, provocative, interesting, or useful for the rest of the meeting participants (even if it's outside the traditional areas of concern);
  • sharing a piece of new learning that people will want to think about and possibly follow up on later (such as a new development in the industry)
  • sharing a specific issue or problem (e.g. in trying to work out a new deal with a potential partner) to get some feedback on;
  • eliciting leads, contacts, or other info in cases when a project seems stalled.
So, there is such a thing as a 5-minute session! Going forward, you'll sometimes have to present your current work, and even raise issues, in very short time segments. This puts the burden on you to figure out how to frame the current situation as pithily as possible, and then to figure out how best to elicit ideas, feedback, or other input. Being prepared (and experienced) are a big part of it. So prepare, act, reflect every time you get to talk in front of others, and seek as much feedback as you can. Sign up for extra opportunities whenever you can!

Any time you present, you should be thinking about how to engage your audience. This need for engagement is, naturally, highlighted in a session in which participant input is an explicit element, but to my mind, it should be your central concern in any presentation. Some things to ask yourself:
  • why do they care?  or why should they care?
  • usually, you can't escape the related question: why do I care?
  • what do they need to know? in what order?
  • what can I cut?
  • and perhaps the biggest of these questions: what do I want them to do as a result? this is not a trivial question, and it's worth asking it a few times. Imagine if your session went really well--what would the audience do next?
Once you have some answers, take a critical look at your presentation plan with these points in mind. (Hint: If you cannot imagine wanting them to do anything next, ask yourself, why I am doing this talk?) Reconsider your plans:
What can you pare back on? What can you present in a dramatic or humorous way? What can you hold off on telling them, so that you can move toward the action or result as quickly as possible? What information should you give them in response to their questions? If your session is an interactive one, you're also going to need to design this portion of your session.

Getting input: what kind of information do you want?  In my current class, students sign up for class clinic sessions, in part to get feedback or ideas on a pressing problem and in part to get an opportunity to work on this key skill. In my class you have twelve whole minutes! We think that's long enough to run a session that draws in ideas and input from the entire class.
The most common usage of the time (it's up to students to choose how to use their 12 minutes) is to elicit ideas from the rest of the class. Usually, students run a brainstorming session of sorts. Brainstorming--which in this case is only feasbile in an abbreviated form--is aimed at generating as many ideas as possible to address a critical open issue or to come up with feature ideas, attributes, etc. Brainstorming makes sense in some situtations, but is not the best for every one. For instance, if there is a fairly clear set of choices, then brainstorming options may not make sense. So students also try the following approaches:
  • given a specific case or situation, what are some analogies - for instance to generate a list of similar organizations, historical examples, or other situations that heir team could research for ideas that might apply to current issues facing the project
  • given the situation, what are the, say, three alternative courses of actions we should consider? What steps does each of these entail? What are the requirements of each? What are their pros and cons?
  • asking for contacts, information, or past experiences from the group, to enable the team to do more research; or
  • getting evaluative feedback on a prototype or working idea.
Getting input: methods to try.  I'll leave the many ideas for eliciting input from a group for another time, but here are a few things to consider:
  • To get lots of ideas fast: run a game of sorts ("OK, you have 60 seconds, form pairs, and see how many ideas you can generate. the pair with the most gets a prize!")
  • To get feedback on alternatives: have people vote, then explain why. You may elicit these alternatives from the group or present them yourself. Give each alternative a snappy name.
  • If a participant advocates a course of action, choose someone else (on the other side of the room) to take the role of the host or client and aruge against it
  • Encourage them to take on the prespective of, say, a customer or a client to give you feedback
  • Design forms or other methods for written input; try using post-it notes that can be reordered; try pros and cons lists, and set a goal (let's see if we can come up with 17!)
Your most effective use of time may be to use the session to set up the issue or question you'd like to explore, to get some input from the group then and there, and to set the stage for getting more input from them afterwards. Perhaps you can give everyone a paper form to fill out and hand in at the end of class with at least one suggestion for you. Or perhaps you could ask students for input in a follow-on email, or via comments on a web page.

Thought to leave you with. The best presentations--even the most formal ones--are conversations. They may not be traditional conversations, but to engage others, an excellent strategy is to have them asking and answering questions either out loud or even in their heads. Here's an interesting article by a consulting firm called "Dialogue: Art or Science?" (they're British). Here's an excerpt from the piece:
 Conversation, when it's working, is a receiver-driven affair....
we don't stare at each other. We tend to look all over
the place as we speak and come back to the listener - the receiver - to
get acknowledgement. That 'did-you-get-that' pause with eye contact
elicits a response, usually a nod, a grunt or some other signal that is
telling us that the idea is logged and we can carry on. So the listener is
driving the pace. If we get a quizzical or a bored looking response, we
react accordingly, using stock phrases or figures of speech such as: "are
you with me?" or "Do you see what I mean?" The listener is intimately
involved in the communication. He or she is forced to think about what
we are saying. That signal to carry on may be replaced by a comment
or opinion and so the dialogue gathers pace.
How are you building a dialog in your presentation? The article has an encouraging point of view--that you need your own style of conversation, and that you can draw on what works for you in one-to-one settings to build skills in front of groups.
I also found this post on Garr Reynold's interesting blog: presentations are conversations (if the "Cluetrain" stuff leaves you cold, give it a pass!). And here is a nice short article--pretty general, but it could be helpful: Executive Summary: A Guide to Effective Presentation Preparation.

Hope this helps! Let me know what else to add....

Comments

# re: How do you make the most of an opportunity to run a discussion?

Tuesday, April 15, 2008 9:00 PM by Mahnaz Hatami
I would like to comment on your idea that "the best presentations--even the most formal ones--are conversations". I could not agree more with this statement.

Based on my experience as an actress in New York, I know that the only way to get an audience interested and most importantly to KEEP their attention is to make the presentation personal and authentic. Even in educational settings, people want to learn and be entertained at the same time.
So there are two factors missing in this discussion: the entertainment and the "emotional connection" factors.

After my undergraduate studies, I decided to pursue my passion for acting for one year. I applied and was admitted at HB Studio, an acting school in New York City. After passionately preparing myself for roles and attending many auditions, I managed to get the lead role in the off Broadway play “Joys of Lipstick”. I had to perform every night in front of 100-120 spectators. One scene in particular energized me: a ten-minute monologue where I had to stand alone on stage and deliver a message to the audience, while conveying personal emotions. To prepare myself, I carefully studied speeches by inspirational politicians, such as Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy. I realized public-speaking can only be effective when the speaker addresses individuals and makes it sound like an intimate conversation. Likewise, “talented” actors are those who can affect the emotions of each individual in the audience. People want to identify themselves with the person who's on stage or who's presenting. I truly believe that people want to learn about themselves! They want to see how they can use the information presented to advance their own life.

My presentation technique is to tell a story every time I can because I can use personal examples that people can relate to, while adding humor for example to entertain them. Sometimes I also engage them by picking one person that I know well in the audience and addressing them directly. This kind of "soft intervention" can be energizing and fun.

# re: How do you make the most of an opportunity to run a discussion?

Wednesday, April 16, 2008 11:32 AM by Joanna
This posting made me think about one of the most important types of discussions to manage, a conversation with your boss. Most of us have limited time to spend with our bosses, so when we get valuable air-time with them we go into the meeting with a laundry list of topics to cover. While trying to get all of the questions answered in one sitting may seem like a good approach on the surface, it often backfires. Supervisors get overwhelmed with the barrage of questions being thrown at them, and supervisees get frustrated at feeling like they didn't have enough time to get all of the information they need to move forward.

One way to make these meetings more effective and productive, is to hone your list down to three items of less, prioritized by importance. Taking this approach allows a person to address the most important information first, and if time allows you can move down the list. In addition, it structures the meeting in such a way that even if you are interrupted after 5 minutes (which happens often) it will still be productive.

This strategy may seem like common sense, but very few people actually do it. In fact, some people leave the most important topics for last, thinking that they will have more time to discuss them at the end. In reality, meetings get interrupted, the first topics discussed take longer than expected, or attention wavers and the most important items never get discussed.

The same structure is helpful in running group discussions and writing e-mails as well. Keeping the list of topics to cover short, with the most important topics first ensures that the most important topics will actually be addressed. In conclusion, carefully honing the list of topics to be covered in a meeting can help to ensure that all participants leave feeling that it was a productive (and painless) use of their time.

# re: How do you make the most of an opportunity to run a discussion?

Monday, May 19, 2008 12:58 PM by Kate Clopeck
I have always been told that I am a good public speaker. I had my first opportunity to address a large audience 6 years ago, when I was the honor essayist at my high school graduation. Before that day, I had never even given a presentation to a group larger than about 10 classmates, but my parents begged me to try so I went for it. I really attribute any public speaking skills that I may have now to this experience. Nothing is more gut-wrenching then being a self-conscious 18 year old and trying to get 200 people that you have known since kindergarten (and their parents) to listen to you and care what you have to say. I wanted to be funny enough for my peers to think I was ?cool?, intellectual enough for the administration to know that they had chosen the right person, and inspirational enough for the audience to remember my speech in years to follow. Luckily, the speech was a big success and since then I have been pretty confident and comfortable speaking in front of a large crowd.

Despite my confidence about public speaking, running a discussion with a team, a group of peers or professionals is a different story. When you are giving a speech or presenting your project, it’s important to engage the audience, but you may not have to solicit a lot participation. I think my lack-of-skill in this area was obvious in our class clinic. We could not seem to keep the class focused on the topic that we needed help with. I thought that your blog on this topic was really useful, especially the part about methods for getting input. Vanessa and I tried to put this into practice during our class by passing out papers for the class to give us written comments on. However, I do not think we framed our questions correctly at the beginning of the clinic. Next time I do a similar discussion-based presentation, I plan on trying out many of the methods your blog and find a few tools that work well for me.