How to Manage Different Personalities in a Workshop
Facilitating a workshop can be challenging, it can become even more difficult when there are different personalities in the room.
Common Personality Types in Meetings & How to Manage Them
To ensure your meeting or workshop runs smoothly, here are the common personality types you encounter in most groups, and the techniques you can use to to manage them.
The Loud One
Sometimes workshops or meetings become dominated by an extroverted individual or a group of individuals. This person may not even realise that they are speaking the majority of the time. By doing so they are inhibiting others from participating fully.
To combat this, try asking for one idea from each person to distribute contribution time evenly across the group. If this doesn’t work you could ask these individuals to let others speak more.
The Quiet One
Some people take longer to process information and prefer to delay speaking up until they have carefully considered the problem.
Try to incorporate time for everyone to think about their answers before giving them. Also ask everyone to give one suggestion. This will ensure everyone is participating equally.
The Difficult One
When one person is hostile or negative this can dampen the environment and even compromise the psychological safety of the group.
If there is an individual in your meeting or workshop who is difficult, talk to them individually and let them know that their behaviour is compromising the discussion. If they are still being problematic consider removing them from the session.
Those Who Cluster Together
Try splitting people up when they arrive. Consider having a seating plan or asking everyone to sit next to someone they don’t know too well or don’t work with, if this makes sense for the workshop.
Tailor your strategy for the different personality types you have to manage in your group sessions and you will have a much smoother experience and everyone in the session will benefit the most from it.
Managing the people is the cornerstone of techniques in facilitating an effective workshop or meeting.
