Facilitation Class

Common Problems

The repeater

This is the person or set of people who say the same things over and over again. At a recent discussion of a Laptop Exploratory Intern, people were tripping over each other to say that the store could sell more laptops if we had more. Everyone had a story about how many laptops they sold in one shift in the store. Even after it was pointed out that we were being repetitive, people kept saying "I'd buy a laptop!"

This is a significant challenge for a facilitator. How do you tell people to shut up because someone already said what they're saying?

• Write it on the board as a given. Say "Does anyone want to disagree with this?" Then declare it an agreed statement and ask that anyone who just wants to say that skip it.
• Ask the scribe to put it in the minutes as an agreed statement.
• Frequently this sort of statement doesn't fall into the Question/Concern/Concern Response dichotomy at all. Clarify that we don't have this as a concern and it's not a question, so it doesn't need to be part of the discussion.
• Finally, cut people off. This can be very rude, so leave it until it's necessary.