The meeting
Featured in the The Team Working Activity Pack training manual
By Rod Storey
Category: Team Building
Credit price: 4 download credits (Single user)
Within any team, effective discussion is essential in order to fully share and develop ideas, to come to agreement, to debate future plans, and so on. In successful teams the members listen to others’ ideas, add their own, argue their cases positively and come to a workable agreement or consensus. This training activity gives the participants an opportunity to practise these skills, where each member of the team is pushing for their own wants and needs (‘fighting their own corner’). The exercise can be run with four, five or six participants. For larger groups, two discussions can take place simultaneously in separate rooms.
You explain the need for good discussion, perhaps quoting some examples from previous activities where participants’ discussion and verbal communication have not been particularly effective. (Such examples are only used if the participants are receptive and the atmosphere is suitable.) After a briefing, each participant is given a different role to play in the boardroom and allowed time to prepare. The participants come together to discuss the problem as the board try to reach agreement. You act as observer during the discussion and make notes in order to give feedback at the end of the exercise. The participants debrief their discussion first, before you give a more detailed feedback on performance in the discussion.
Who is it for: This training resource is intended for use by trainers to give participants the opportunity to practise chairing a meeting and controlling a discussion as well as listening and questioning skills.
| Resource Type: | Activity |
| Min Group Size: | 4 |
| Max Group Size: | 8 |
| Typical Duration: | 01:30:00 |
| No of Pages: | 25 |
Resources: View standard resources for Fenman training activities
Purpose: This training resource is intended for use by trainers at a fairly early stage in a training programme to enable participants to improve core skills that may be used in later activities. It is effective for further developing skills after activities such as ‘The post office robbery’ and ‘What was that question?’ It is a helpful exercise for developing consensus and getting participants to recognise that they may be speaking or listening too much or too little and hindering the effectiveness of the team in other activities.
Download the training activity, The meeting as featured in the Fenman training manual; The Team Working Activity Pack