Last night I attended a seminar on Emotional Intelligence at Cabrini. For the time being I’ll spare you my thoughts on EI. However, I did pick up an interesting facilitation tip.
We had a couple break out groups, which are popular amongst us corporate trainer types, and I was impressed with the speakers simple tactic to get us back on track after the group.
She asked the whole group to do something (i.e. raise your hand, stand up) and like sheep we all followed her command.
After she told us to sit down she went on with her topic. She confessed that this was a tactic to refocus things. It worked well until she told us what she was doing.
Now getting participants out of their seats is hardly ground breaking and I (like others)use activities often to lively things up. However, never for the sole purpose of getting people to be quite.
I look forward to trying it.