Leading the Discussion

Discussion leaders for civic reflection are guides to and through conversation by way of a text. Below are some suggestions for facilitating civic reflection, borrowed from our own experience and from wise teachers among us.

Be deliberate.

The decisions you make about your arrangements matter less than the fact that you make them. How will you set up the room so everyone can participate? How will you begin? How will you call upon people? How will you manage time? How will you manage the people who want to speak—and those who do not? How will you end the conversation?

Be prepared.

Read, re-read and read the text again.

Honor preparation.

When you ask participants to read or think about something in advance or in a small group, always honor that preparation during the meeting. Don't assign three readings with the intention of only discussing one. Don't tell participants to come prepared to answer a question and never ask it.

Exorcise the academic ghosts in the room, don't exercise them!

Civic reflection conversations are not intended to be replays of happy college experiences for the good students among us. They are intended to create a needed meaningful conversation among citizens about the challenges before us in trying to improve our common life. Participants' previous academic experiences, good or bad, are powerful ghosts in these discussions. Discussion leaders need to be especially wise to do things that will exorcise these ghosts—or at the very least not exercise them—and get people engaged. Things that may help:

• Invite participants to read aloud a phrase of the reading that stood out to them, or talk with a neighbor about a passage that struck them.
• Begin with a question that is easy to respond to—something small and concrete.
• Start with a short writing assignment. Ask everyone to identify a question they have about the text. Or, ask people to write in response to a question or two about their own experience. If you will be asking them to share their responses with a neighbor or with the group, tell them so ahead of time.
• If working with a mixed group of academics and non-academics, direct first questions to the non-academics.

Listen, don't lecture.

Participants should do most of the talking. Use your personal understanding about texts and contexts to ask open questions. Listen to what participants are saying and help them articulate the insights and assumptions underneath their words.

Encourage and affirm.

Encourage participants along the way, because the way will likely feel uncertain.

Allow differences to emerge.

Any group of people has important differences, even if at first it seems like a homogenous group. As participants respond to a complex reading, these differences will emerge.
Help people perceive and explore them. Recognize and honor disagreement and pluralities of interpretation.

Start with the reading itself.

What does this text "say?" Provide a short summary if necessary, a few sentences only. Then, ask a question.

Good first questions are open-ended and ones that everyone can answer. Avoid opening questions that invite opinion without interpretation (Do you like this story?), assert debatable propositions (Why is the concept of social capital so useful?), or put people on the defensive (What percentage of your income do you give to charity?)

Help the group understand the narrator's perspective before they begin to argue with it.

It is important to establish some empathy for the voice of the text before you move to argue with it. Ask a question that invites participants to explain and defend the narrator's point of view. Trust that more critical views will emerge. At the same time, as facilitator, resist the temptation to defend the text.

Help the group examine the reading from many points of view.

Good texts invite a variety of interpretations. Try to elicit that variety. One way to do this is to point to places that puzzle you and ask for help in understanding (Just what does Gwendolyn Brooks mean by 'mercy and murder hinting' in the faces of the women in "The Lovers of the Poor?").

Return to the richness of the text whenever participants begin to polarize into camps of opinion or settle into a single, simple answer. For example, if people seem to condemn a particular character, retrace that character's actions. Why did she behave that way? What motivated him? Could there be alternative explanations?

You may want to invite quieter participants to speak. If one person dominates the conversation, you might say, I wonder what other people have to say about this? If necessary, ask the question (or a new one) directly of another person.

Another technique is to ask the same question again and again. This helps people speak up who may feel shy about expressing themselves, and brings out more and richer perspectives on a question or situation which in turn helps people think more deeply.

Help connect the reading to the experiences of people in the group.

Once you have explored what the text says at some depth, connect it to the experiences and shared concerns of participants by asking what it means. Examples of effective "connecting" questions include:

Is Tocqueville describing the kinds of associations in which you participate?

Do you recognize these characters/dilemmas?

Is this the kind of leadership your organization has been called upon to provide?

Are these the kinds of choices we are confronted with in our community?

Finally, don't be afraid to ask the "So What?" question. What are some implications of what we have said for your work, organization or community?

Be "voluptuous" in your facilitation.

Think of facilitation as having two axes–one vertical and one horizontal. The vertical axis is your plan in advance. The horizontal axis is the group's own responses in the conversation. You want to let the discussion widen out to include the group's own questions, but then bring it back to the line of inquiry. This pattern of approach makes for shapely or voluptuous facilitation (not voluptuous facilitators, necessarily!).

Beware of your own agenda.

Discussion leaders sometimes become determined to have a group think about the reading in a particular way which the group for whatever reason resists. Let go of your agenda if you meet with clear resistance from the group, however appealing that agenda still seems to you. There may be a variety of reasons why people are silent, "don't get it," or resist taking the conversation in the direction a discussion leader wants to go. Relax and let it go! Listen to where the group is; forget about where you think they should be.

In all matters, ask instead of tell. Avoid contributing perspectives as a participant. In particular, resist the temptation to answer peoples' questions. Turn questions back to the group. What do you think?

And finally, in civic reflection, the discussion itself is important—not the number of questions asked. If you've got a good discussion going, don't cut it short to "get to the next question."

Consider small group work.

Find as many ways as possible to connect personal experience to the text and participants to one another. One way to make both kinds of connections is to ask one or two key questions in the form of reflective exercises in small groups. Small groups provide more opportunities for individual participation and generate more perspectives on a question than a large group discussion can in the same amount of time.

To queue or not to queue.

That is the queue-stion. In a large group, be deliberate and consistent about how you will respond to people who want to speak at the same time. Some groups use a signal—holding up one finger—to indicate when someone wants to make a point on the topic under discussion, and facilitators call on them in turn.

However, queues can play to the talkers in a group. You may want to pause a moment when people are in queue and say, before we proceed I want to make sure everyone has had a chance to talk. Solicit a comment from someone who has not talked.

You may choose to queue or not. But you need to choose.

Pay attention to time.

Managing the time is very important for putting people at ease. If people are writing or breaking into small groups, let them know how much time they have for that activity and alert them when that time is almost up. End the discussion on time. If it spills over into the hallway or parking lot, that's great!

Keep the energy going.

It can help to cut people off at the height of their energy, rather than to continue the discussion to a point where it sputters to a close.

Be intentional about how you will end.

Different facilitators end their conversations in different ways, depending on their instincts and their gifts. Some of us like to synthesize and feed back key points. Others like to stop the conversation and conclude simply. What will you do to mark the end? Again, recognize that there is a decision here and be deliberate about it.

Try a one-minute reflection to close the conversation.

You might ask participants to write down their answers to two questions at the end of each conversation:

What was useful (or interesting) about this conversation?

As you leave, what is your question?

The quiet activity of responding in writing brings closure to the conversation. Also, planners have a rich source of data on the conversation that can inform planning for the next event.

Remember, the take-away is the conversation itself.

Resist the temptation to give people a concrete product. You have given them a conversation, and that is the gift. To put this another way: You don't get something out of a conversation. The conversation gets into you. And it stays with you. You carry the conversation with you when you leave.

And finally,

This kind of facilitating is hard. If you meant to be quiet and talked, forgot to ask that really good question, missed a great opportunity to tie remarks together, let the loud guy dominate and didn't attend closely enough to the quiet woman in the back of the room… forgive yourself. You will be more ready to meet the challenge next time!


See our Facilitators' Forum and find out what other civic reflection discussion leaders think about their experiences.

See Finding a Discussion Leader for ideas about what to look for in a civic reflection facilitator.

Contact us if you would like to talk with someone about planning your discussion or locating a discussion leader near you.

Then, when you've held your discussion, share your experiences with others through the Facilitators' Forum!