Purpose: To understand behaviors of difficult participants and brainstorm strategies for dealing with them
Audience: Any size
Materials: Six index cards per person, post it notes, flip chart
Time: 45 minutes
Have participants break into teams of three to seven people. The teams brainstorm four different difficult participants at their table. Be sure they personify them. They write the name of each difficult participant on a post-it note so they have four post-it notes.
Example: Chatty Kathy, the person who always has a low level of conversation going that disrupts her team members. Kathy may also try to dominate the group conversations.
Team leaders bring their post-it notes to the front of the room and display them on the flip chart. Team leaders explain the behavior of the participants. As each team comes forward, encourage them to group similar behaviors together.
When all teams have shared, teams decide which three difficult participants they want to strategize about. Team leader then retrieves three post-it notes. Each team member is given a six index cards. They write the name of each difficult participant on one index card so they will have three index cards with one name each. Teams then brainstorm three strategies for dealing with each difficult personality and write the strategies on the index card.
When all the teams are finished, the audience takes their index cards and a pen and meets with one new person with whom they have not yet worked. Each person shares their three personalities and strategies while the other person fills out three new index cards. Participants should now have multiple ways to deal with several challenging behaviors in their class.
Debrief: Ask if there are any challenging behaviors with which they still would like additional help. Stress the use of positive strategies only and the appropriateness of informing a supervisor or manager if serious problems arise.
Priscilla Shumway is a training consultant with The Bob Pike Group.
