Excerpt: Many small group leaders must deal with people who dominate the discussion during a meeting. Here are a few tips for dealing with a dominator.
Hook/Intro:
So what’s the problem?
- A common problem many small group leaders face is dealing with people who dominate the discussion time during the meeting.
- Dominators like to contribute their insights early and often to every question.
- They often speak up before others have a chance to say anything and often give long rambling answers to questions.
- There is a limited time available for each question and dominators tend to take up most of the time with their own contributions rather than allowing others in the group to participate.
- When denominators are allowed to continue unchecked in a small group setting it will likely lead less vocal people to check out, become passive or eventually leave the group in frustration.
- If you let a dominator go unchecked, people will become discouraged. Eventually they will drop out of the group. Worse than that, they won’t be able to process the truth together with the group and their pursuit of God will be stunted.
- Before you were leading your own small group, have you experienced a SGD as a member of a group? Explain. How did it make you feel?
- Have you ever been in a small group where the host was the dominator? Be sure as a host you’re not dominating the conversation
So what’s the solution?
Set discussion ground rules
- At the outset of your group make sure to set up the expectation that you want lots of participation from everyone in the group which means giving everyone an opportunity to share. You can speak directly to the issue of conversation domination before it becomes an issue so that everyone is aware.
- As the group continues, remind people occasionally at the beginning of each meeting’s discussion time of the importance of everyone participating and not having one person speak too much.
- If domination becomes an issue, say at the beginning of each meeting something like “I want to make sure everyone has a chance to talk tonight, so let’s give everyone an opportunity to share before anyone speaks twice.” When this encouragement is given broadly to everyone it helps the dominator not feel singled out or offended but hopefully to understand the issue.
- Transition: Easier said than done b/c if this worked we would not be having this discussion. =)
- In tougher situations, I will make myself available for a small, quiet side conversation in the moment, while Rich continues to lead the group. I do my best to wrap up quickly with something like “let’s dig more into this later” and then rejoin the larger group conversation with the dominator.
Use gentle correction and/or humor
- If a dominator hasn’t picked up on the ground rules, sometimes using more direct tactics can be necessary during the discussion.
- If you need to address the dominator directly during the meeting, it can be done so gently, casually and using light-hearted humor.
- You could say something like “Now, I want to make sure everyone has an opportunity to respond, so who else has a thought?” or “Okay, Bill has already used up his answer allowance for this week, so someone else needs to step up.”
- Talk about some personal examples you have experienced as a leader or member of a group…
- Other ideas?
- In our group now, we like to choose at least one question where we ask everyone to answer. Usually an easy question early in the conversation about “what jumped out at you about this topic” or “how did you most relate to this message”. We have found if we begin with getting everyone talking, it is easier to keep everyone talking.
A few more tricks up the sleeve
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