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getting back in touch with the fact that i have strong opinions about how to facilitate group conversations and that that might be one of my rarest marketable skills
okay hmm i've never tried to articulate any of this in writing before
i think what goes wrong in most unpleasant / unproductive group conversations in practice is that something is happening that most of the group is not bought into but they don't know how to change it
i think what goes wrong in most unpleasant / unproductive group conversations in practice is that something is happening that most of the group is not bought into but they don't know how to change it
the simplest example is one person dominating the conversation: interrupting a lot, not allowing others to interrupt them, but also subtler stuff around implicitly setting the topic, setting the agenda, setting the frame, etc.; most people don't know how to talk about this ime
but there are trickier examples that are really about the group dynamic and not localized to one person, like everyone's talking about a topic they're not really into but everyone thinks everyone else is into it so no one is willing to change it
i have a decent amount of experience playing around with unusual formats for group conversation like circling, authentic relating, etc. and one of the many things i learned from those formats is how little agency many people feel around changing the dynamic of a conversation
this is related to a thing i see happen on twitter where people feel like twitter is something that just happens to them and not an experience they can actively shape by changing who they follow, what they tweet about, *how* they tweet vibe-wise, etc. etc. etc. etc.
anyway there are in fact many conversational options for interrupting and changing the flow of a group conversation and you can get more skilled at using these without unnecessarily harshing the vibe. some examples:
1) someone (usually male) is dominating the conversation and preventing other shyer people (often female) from speaking up. there are better and worse ways to handle this. i do not recommend the "call-out" option where you berate them for being bad
options for handling this depend a lot on the context of the conversation, e.g. i would do different things in a chill hangout with friends vs. something more like a business meeting. but you can e.g. unobtrusively encourage quieter people to speak up
like "hey, X, what were you saying before...?" (you don't even say "...before you got interrupted by Y", this can be very gentle)
obviously this sort of thing works better the more comfortable you feel wielding social power in the group
obviously this sort of thing works better the more comfortable you feel wielding social power in the group
if the conversation has a more structured purpose like "brainstorm ideas for a project" you can "reset" the conversation by refocusing attention on the shared purpose and suggesting a new format
e.g. "hey guys, why don't we take turns to talk about each of our ideas"
e.g. "hey guys, why don't we take turns to talk about each of our ideas"
if it's more like hanging out with friends then it doesn't exactly have a shared purpose but you can instead "reset" by refocusing attention on the friendship
e.g. "hey guys, i think we've been interrupting X a lot and i don't feel good about how we're treating our friend"
e.g. "hey guys, i think we've been interrupting X a lot and i don't feel good about how we're treating our friend"
i think people often don't know that moves like these are possible but they're also scary moves! they have the possibility to generate a lot of conflict if someone reacts poorly to you pushing back against what they're doing in the conversation
so you need a combination of enough skill and social power in the group to be able to deal with conflict somehow. that's a whole nother thing and i could probably churn out multiple threads and blog posts about it. touches on a lot of stuff: defensiveness, triggers, etc.
maybe i will limit myself to one comment: the main fuckup i see people making around orienting towards conflict is the need to pick one party to be The Good Guys and the other party to be The Bad Guys
i don't think this is how almost any conflict in a group works in practice
i don't think this is how almost any conflict in a group works in practice
mostly i take the pov that we are various kinds of hurting and suffering and fucked up and just trying to get our needs met in the ways we've learned how, and sometimes that involves pulling coercive conversational moves so we feel safe or respected etc.
hunting for The Bad Guy in a conflict makes it harder for everyone to be vulnerable. when you give people space to say things like "i'm really angry at you, enough to want to insult you in front of all of our friends" then everyone gets to find out what's *actually happening*
