Time.... is what we want most but use the worst. (Wm Penn)

How many times have you been in a class or a workshop or some other event and the facilitator tells you to turn to the person next to you or huddle with the folks at your table and for five minutes brainstorm, discuss or analyze a given point, a situation or a mini-case study?

Before you answer, think about the demographics of the people in the audience – at least those you’d just been asked to interact with. Did you know them? At all? Were you comfortable opening up and sharing your thoughts and opinions on the subject with them? Had you had enough time to think through the question, case study or whatever yet to form an opinion on it?

Have you ever been to such an event and felt like you or perhaps your group was just beginning to engage with the question when the facilitator says BUZZ! Time’s up; time to turn around and report to the audience what you or your team came up with. And you’re left thinking, “Wait a minute! We’re just getting started here.”

Often, far too often, presenters get so eager to 1) involve the audience in some participatory exercise and 2) to keep things moving and on schedule that rarely is there adequate time allotted for people to properly engage with the material and their peers to give effective input.

And hence, this becomes more an exercise to say we did rather than to actually and effectively do.

In fairness, it’s easy for we facilitators who are oh-so-familiar with our topics to mistakenly assume our audiences are almost equally as familiar with the material. Hence, it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that such exercises really won’t take that long to accomplish with our audience.

Most workshops, meetings and the like where this technique is – IMHO – ineffectively implemented are attended by folks who hardly know one another. They may be industry peers or even members of the same company or group in a company but there’s a LOT of dynamics for facilitator’s to consider here and design into the agenda.

For one, even if these people know one another intimately and are very comfortable speaking their mind in one another’s presence, not everyone analyze something and form thoughts about it at the same speed. So time should be built in for these different rate people to all have adequate time.

And, some people may be shy in general and take awhile to warm to the group they’re teamed with at the event enough to feel comfortable offering an opinion about anything to the others.

Dynamics like these are all things that facilitators should consider when laying out the agenda. And – most importantly – and they must be designed into the presentation and the timetable. Otherwise you risk participant frustration, disengagement or continued discussion amongst audience members as the facilitator tries to get things moving along.