Understanding the Crowd Before Intervening

Recently I spoke on one of my teleworkshops about dealing with resistance (see my website for a list of teleworkshops that I facilitate). I reviewed particular strategies on bringing 'anonymity' in the discussion when 'being the one to state the resistance' may be a CLM (career limiting move) or could potentially provoke others. Methods used include breaking people up in to small groups to remove the 'large' group feeling, or having people write ideas on post-its and tossing them into the middle of the table. One of the participants wrote back the response below as follow-up to the teleworkshop, which I think we must always keep in mind when using an intervention technique …

"Sorry [Michael], one thing for us here at our company (not sure how relevant it is to your other regular participants) is thinking about context. Facilitating a bunch of mid level managers vs. front line employees vs. execs is a very different thing. So for example, I would never ask an exec to use voting dots or throwing cards in a pile to read out, so I would have to find other more strategic or sophisticated ways to engage them and get their input. I think understanding your crowd and what's going to work or not work for them is really important.

Angie
P.S. thanks Angie for letting us post this!