That trick with giving everyone a specific role in the discussion actually works

My book club was dragging through the last three meetings with the same two people talking, so I tried assigning a "devil's advocate" and a "quote finder" before the session. It forced everyone to prepare something and the chatter went up 50 percent - has anyone else tried rotating roles like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

kim_johnson5122d ago

My friend tried this with her knitting circle of all things. They were six women who'd known each other for years but the same two would talk about their grandkids the whole time while everyone else just nodded. She assigned someone to be the "history keeper" to track what patterns they'd already tried and another person to be the "materials scout" who brings in a new yarn or tool each time. The scout showed up with this weird hand-dyed alpaca wool and the history keeper realized they'd never done a cable stitch project before, and suddenly even the quietest person was asking questions about how to hold the yarn. My friend said it turned into their best meeting in months.

seanjackson23d ago

Oh man, my group did the EXACT same thing last year and it saved us from dying a slow death. We rotated roles every meeting and it was wild how much more people actually showed up ready to talk.

dianahayes23d ago

Can you break down how you decided who got which role? That sounds like a smart fix for a problem I've seen in my own group.