Making Silent participants SPEAK out!

One of the challenges I have faced in my training & facilitation career is how to make timid participants speak! There are few who are ready to voice and at times dominate; there are many who 'get in the groove' with churning questions, however there are those who just keep "mum" even with the best of my efforts.

One way I still got many to participate, is by flip-charting answers to questions and then probing further and deeper. The learning was high and interaction was great too.

However deep in my heart, I knew that there were the miniscule few who had not been heard. Slowly I learnt to leave them to themselves (come on!, possibly I couldn't really make everyone contribute). And that became a mindset.

And then I discovered process facilitation. Not that I was not facilitating whilst training however the truth was that it was still loaded with content and at the back of my mind I had many agreed (With client) learning deliverable to cover.

Process facilitation has some amazing methods that can make even the timid voice their opinion however mind you, in small (safe) groups. Divergence brings about processes that build safe conversations in safe environments and Convergence collates the 'voices' from those safe diverged groups. And it can be integrated beautifully with the training workshops.

And this was magic! Get to know more about facilitation, check out www.iaf-world.org.

The India chapter of IAF (International Association of Facilitators) actively meets in Mumbai and Bengaluru.

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Ajit Kamath Wizzes

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