If you are looking to address a wide range of different issues in your groups, there are a number of things you need to consider. When talking to a group, you need to be sure that you relate to everyone there and ensure that nobody gets bored or feels left out of the conversation. To make sure that you involve everyone in your group sessions, you need to consider some of the following points:
• Be concise. If you have a wide range of points to get through in one session, you need to be thoughtful but fast. You can't spend forever musing over one subject in one set allocated time. You need to be quick and address the people that need addressing, supplying a brief overview without leaving people thinking that their views and opinions are going unnoticed.
• Be thoughtful. If you are talking to a group, you want to be sure that you don't offend some people that are present. Some topics may be relevant to others and perfectly fine to discuss with them, whereas, others may not take as kindly to some conversation topics. Be sure to think about your target audience when you're thinking up your topics for your talk.
• Be firm. It may be hard to do, as you're going to be dealing with many opinions and voices in one small group but, you need to make sure you don't let other people take over the conversation and lead your discussions off track. If you only have a certain amount of time to get your views and points across, it will be made difficult with debates striking up between members. So be firm and try to agree certain amounts of time allocated to different topics, or just give each person a certain amount of minutes to speak. Make sure that one person doesn't try to take over and ignore your points.
• Be concise. If you have a wide range of points to get through in one session, you need to be thoughtful but fast. You can't spend forever musing over one subject in one set allocated time. You need to be quick and address the people that need addressing, supplying a brief overview without leaving people thinking that their views and opinions are going unnoticed.
• Be thoughtful. If you are talking to a group, you want to be sure that you don't offend some people that are present. Some topics may be relevant to others and perfectly fine to discuss with them, whereas, others may not take as kindly to some conversation topics. Be sure to think about your target audience when you're thinking up your topics for your talk.
• Be firm. It may be hard to do, as you're going to be dealing with many opinions and voices in one small group but, you need to make sure you don't let other people take over the conversation and lead your discussions off track. If you only have a certain amount of time to get your views and points across, it will be made difficult with debates striking up between members. So be firm and try to agree certain amounts of time allocated to different topics, or just give each person a certain amount of minutes to speak. Make sure that one person doesn't try to take over and ignore your points.
