Standards and Norms: An Opener from SCORE! Volume 3

Use this activity to have workshop participants create their own ground rules for what would make a meaningful training for them. As Bob says, people don't argue with their own data.

Author: Bob Pike

Description: Use this activity to allow the group to establish their own ground rules for the training.

Objective: To create ownership by the participants around ground rules for the training

Audience: Any training audience

Time: 10-15 minutes

Group Size: Best for groups of 10 or more (in subgroups of 5 people)

Materials: One pad of sticky notes for each group, a felt tip marker, two sheets of chart

paper posted on the walls

Process:

1.Each table is asked to divide participants into two approximately equal groups. One group will be the “I” group, the other will be the “P” group.

2.Each group is given a pad of sticky notes and a marker.

3.The groups are then told that “I” stands for Instructor. “P” stands for participant. Then say, “You have 3 minutes to come up with five guidelines for you as participants to follow to help each other get the most from this program or that I, as the instructor, can follow to make sure that you get the most from the program.” Share an example for each category such as “If you are a P group, one of your guidelines might be that there should be no side bar conversations. If you are an I group, one of your guidelines might be that the instructor should allow at least 10 minutes for Q&A [questions and answers] every 90 minutes.”

4.After 3 minutes, all of the I groups in the room meet at a poster on one wall and print “Instructor Guidelines” at the top and then merge their guidelines into a total of 10 guidelines to follow.

5.P groups do the same thing on the opposite wall. After 3 minutes, have the I’s present their guidelines to the rest of the groups. Groups can suggest additional guidelines.

6.Follow the same process with the P’s. Then, as an instructor say, “I am willing to commit to following all these guidelines, if each of you as participants agrees to follow the participant guidelines. Do we have an agreement?”

Note: There are times when you may want to add a guideline to the P chart. For example, if the group has not said anything about cell phone usage or texting during class, ask that this guideline be added.

7.After two hours and periodically throughout the rest of the class, stop and ask each table to discuss and come up with a score from 1-7 for both the instructor and the participants (1 is low and 7 is high). Post the average of these scores on the respective charts. If we do not have 7s, ask the groups what you, as the instructor, need to do or change to improve to get a 7, as well as what each participant needs to do or change so that they feel they can give themselves a 7 as a group.

This activity is in SCORE!: Super Closers, Openers, Revisiters, Energizers, volume 3.

 

Here is a video of Bob modeling this exercise.

 

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