Mastering Group Dynamics: Communication & Creative Workshops

Effective Group Debates

A group debate is organized after a presentation of information, and can follow a lecture or panel discussion. Its purpose is to request the public to ask questions and provide further clarifications on a topic. Large-group discussions can be organized with oral or written questions. In all cases, a large-group discussion requires a session facilitator to conduct it with skill and firmness.

To ensure a productive debate:

1. The discussion should not degenerate into confrontations; all participants must be able to express themselves, and no one should monopolize the floor.
2. The moderator should establish the rules of engagement from the outset (e.g., speaking times, avoiding private dialogues) and be responsible for their enforcement.

Optimizing Plenary Communication

While work in subgroups is almost always dynamic, communication in assembly or plenary sessions is, however, often long, boring, tedious, and difficult. There are some techniques that help to maintain interest and reuse all produced content.

Technique 1: Sequential Reporting with Synthesis

1. Each spokesperson is invited to present their report while one or more session secretaries take notes on a whiteboard or paper visible to the public.
2. When the report has been completed, group members are invited to add comments, and so on.
3. Upon completion of all reports, the moderator proceeds to a concise synthesis.

Technique 2: Collaborative Report Building

Another approach is that each spokesperson is invited to complete the previous report, so that only the first speaker presents it in full; subsequent speakers merely add new or different points.

The "Day After Tomorrow" Workshop

This is a meeting where a group of people (typically five to forty) design an aspect of reality as they would like it to be, regardless of immediate difficulties. Its purpose is to facilitate the development of a group's creativity for project design.

Its development is as follows:

1. Identify the aspect of reality that is to be changed, built, or designed (e.g., neighborhood, citizen participation, teamwork, home, culture, teaching methods, etc.).
2. Each individual thinks of loose ideas, trying not to limit their imagination, even if the ideas seem unrealistic.
3. All ideas are discussed and reflected on a whiteboard.
4. Develop new ideas in light of the above (by association, combination, development, inversion, etc.).
5. Ideas are categorized by their feasibility into:
   1. What to do now.
   2. What to do if certain steps are taken under certain conditions.
   3. That which, for now, cannot be achieved but serves as a guiding principle for collective work.