Focussed Group Discussions

The week gone by was a week full of FGD’s J.  I have already written a few posts about these FGD’s. Here’s another one! In this post I have penned some of my thoughts, observations, and reflections on the week gone by.

I love the word ‘we’. Someone stands up and says ‘We feel this way!’. I am left wondering ‘Who is the we out here? I saw no-one even nodding his/her head in acknowledgement of what you were saying?’. So finally I had to tell someone ‘I acknowledge the concern you have but would you please use the word ‘I’. Let others speak for themselves.’

How does one hijack a conversation from someone else - make someone else stop dead in his/her tracks and veer the conversation towards what one wants to discuss? In Group Discussions at college, it is common to hear ‘conversation hijackers’ like ‘Taking forward your point….. ‘, ‘I agree with you… ‘, ‘Let me flesh that out a bit more…’.  In the week gone by, I heard another version of a conversation hijacker.  ‘He is right. Let me illustrate through an example……..’ ; by the time the hijacker finished enumerating the example I was left wondering ‘Where was the linkage between the example given (which in some cases was not an example) and what the first person was trying to say?’

‘Let me tell you what happened to me once…’ statement is a conversation diverter. Well if I really had to know what happened to you once, I would ask you so.  We are attempting to look at what is our current state and how can that be improved. Events in the past that have no or little bearing on the present don’t help us improve the present.

‘Let me tell you what happened to someone …’ statements is another conversion diverter.   We are here in FGDs to explore your experiences. Let everyone take responsibility for sharing their experiences.

Whenever I talked about concepts to participants, I found them discussing issues.  But whenever I started asking them specifics, they could easily latch on to the same and discuss. Maybe when one works with an hourly focus, one’s mindset becomes very ‘event specific’ and ‘here and now’.

I managed to put together a HR toolkit for these discussions. I went in and said ‘We can discuss processes or we can discuss networks. Specifically, we can choose 1/2 processes and discuss how we can improve them; or we can choose 1/2 stakeholders and discuss how do we improve the ‘conversations’ between you and these significant stakeholders.’ The toolkit did provide a structure/framework for the discussion.

There was one particular conversation that has stood out in my mind.  During one of FGD’s, the group was insistent on understanding what my role would be when it came to process escalations.  Every few minutes the conversation would veer towards this point. After some time I realized that this was becoming a stumbling block – if I didn’t address this the discussion would just not move forward. I was not sure if I could make a commitment. I myself am learning the ropes - the way things ‘currently’ get done here. But I also realized the group was looking for answers. I told them ‘I don’t think I can make a commitment at this point of time on what my role in process escalations’ would be. But I am committing that I would come back to you with an answer. Would this commitment do?’. The group accepted the commitment and we could make progress on a number of other things we wanted to discuss.  I realized ‘Sometimes a group is not necessarily looking for an immediate resolution. What they are looking for is a commitment that a resolution would be reached.’

I was told, People Manager for the group should not be present in FGD’s. I am not sure why – somewhere you would need to get both the parties face to face and make them talk. So I did do the FGDs without the people manager being there in the room, but I also am aware that in some form or the other the people manager would need to be, and s/he would need to feel, involved in the process.

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Sourav