Making out thinking explicit
Featured in the Knowledge Management training manual
By Mike Bagshaw & Paul Phillips
Category: Management
Credit price: 3 download credits (Single user)
How we interpret messages is critical for the effectiveness of communication. The interpretation of messages is affected by a wide range of factors including education, culture, values, past experience, need to be liked, need to win, and so on. These are factors that affect how we respond to the information presented to us. Each of us has a model of the world but those models are only representations of reality. We delete, distort, and generalise information to fit our model of the world. This can have dramatic effects on the process of knowledge sharing and transfer, as this training activity will demonstrate.
You start the training activity by exploring with the participants the nature of the communication process, particularly how information can be ignored and distorted by assumptions we make. The participants then conduct an exercise which encourages them to analyse the assumptions they have made in difficult interactions in the past. You follow this up by a similar small-group exercise which focuses on the same processes in the here and now. Finally, you discuss with the group the Johari Window framework as a way of explaining how we can create new knowledge and understanding through a process of disclosure and feedback. This is backed up by a short pair-working exercise. You summarise by asking each participant what they have learned.
Who is it for: This training resource is intended for use by trainers to give the participants the opportunity to identify some of their assumptions and underlying mental models.
| Resource Type: | Activity |
| Min Group Size: | 4 |
| Max Group Size: | 12 |
| Typical Duration: | 01:55:00 |
| No of Pages: | 13 |
Resources: View standard resources for Fenman training activities
Purpose: This training resource is intended for use by trainers to help the participants develop their interpersonal and communication skills. It can be an effective component of coaching, teamwork, counselling skills and general communication skills programmes.
Download the training activity, Making out thinking explicit as featured in the Fenman training manual; Knowledge Management