| Responses | Date | Author |
|
That's fantastic Tim - thank you! Just what I was looking for, Sally. |
| 01/08/2014 | Previous |
Hi Sally,
I tried a variation of something that a friend suggested to me recently in a course on difficult conversations and it worked really well. I broke the 12 participants into four groups and asked them to watch my co-trainer making a very short (imaginary) phone call to a colleague. There was obviously something going on but it wasn't clear what. He ran his hand through his hair but it could have been worry or frustration or just that he liked running his hand through his hair. He said something like "I need to talk to you about that project. What? No, today. George wants to know." It could have meant almost anything. Then I asked each group to discuss briefly amongst themselves what they had noticed and agree one thing. I flipcharted each group's "noticed thing" - hand in hair, particular word, tone of voice etc - in columns and then took them through the ladder of inference step by step - how would you describe what you noticed? What do you assume from that? What conclusions can you draw? and so on - flipcharting each group's answers as we went. I didn't give them long to discuss amongst themselves before they agreed a joint answer so as to keep the process flowing. By the end, one group had decided he was untrustworthy and they would never work with him; another group thought he was under stress and needed counselling; a third firmly believed he was the sort of manager they wanted to work for and the fourth were worried about his project management skills. I pointed out where they had started from and how they had very quickly formed completely unjustifiable beliefs based on false assumptions and the message certainly seemed to hit home.
I hope that's helpful.
Tim |
| 01/08/2014 | Tim |