Monday, September 10, 2001

Dynamic Format
How to Run Better Meetings, Groups, Clubs and Classes

by Win Wenger, Ph.D.

Have you ever had the experience of having something important to say but no opportunity to say it? How easy or hard is it for you to really hear and respond to what someone else is saying while you're sitting there seething with your own thwarted urgent contribution?

The same goes for your participants. Every time you've done your job as chair or moderator so well that your people have gotten interested and involved, you inflict that perception-inhibiting frustration on your brighter members and in direct proportion to the degree that each has something important to contribute.

The same for your students. Every time you've done your job so well that your lecture starts to get interesting, you inflict that perception-inhibiting frustration on your brighter students and on your class generally.

In a corporation where time is money, how much time is wasted in board and staff meetings, either in lengthy discourse by the chair or CEO while expensive specialists and executives sit mute, or in pre-orchestrated speech presentations whose "discussion" outcome was determined long since, or in a chaos ended only when the chair or CEO goes out and either does things himself or by dictate, dismissing 99% of all that was said at the meeting? Or where everyone is saying only what the chair or CEO wanted to hear, providing no meaningful feedback or direction?

Here, then, just a few paragraphs below, is a summary of a very few, very simple provisions through which you can build interest and sustain tight topical focus while fostering dynamic expressive interaction. It wonderfully integrates and develops your group's various perceptions and perceivers.

This highly efficient group, boardroom or classroom management process is also a way to discover and focus your people's (your people's!) very real genius.

Read the full article...