Effective Group Presentations One of the most I

It is important at the very beginning of a training session to elicit the participants' reasons for being there. What do they hope to learn? Gloria Pearlstein (1983, p. 15) found, much to her surprise, that employees may attend training groups for reasons other than the purpose of the meeting. This information needs to come out right away, or the training session will "blow up". She cites various "blow up" examples. One woman had been instructed by her boss to get an answer to a complicated policy question and to not "come back to work until I got the answer" (Pearlstein, 1983, p. 15). The training session was not geared to the topic of the woman's question, but it did not deter her from continuously asking questions that were off the subject of the seminar.

Creative icebreakers set a comfortable climate for a class. Corrine Brue (1985, pp. 79-81) describes several types of icebreakers that start the process of warming up a group. If you could take a bath in something other than water, what would you choose? If the government prepares a

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plan the timed silences to follow critical moments in the learning curve. Effective, courteous listening furthers the learning process. Trainers listen for emotion as well as content in respondents' voices. They hear sighs and fidgeting. They hear laughter and the "aha" of recognition when a student understands a concept. They hear negative responses and include these as valuable assets rather than obstacles (Laird & Belcher, 1984, p. 54). Courteous responses require that the instructor summarize what the student said accurately. During flip chart sessions, the instructor writes down what the student said in the student's own words, not the leader's paraphrase. Problem students at times present obstructions to the classroom dynamics. Laird offers suggestions for problem participants who generally fall into a few types. The "mouse" is silent or talks very little. To elicit more response from the quiet person, the instructor may ask safe, open-ended questions, converse with the student during breaks, or divide the class into smaller groups and reinforce the mouse's participation. "The parrot" never shares an original idea but always quotes someone or aligns with someone else in the group. This person may respond to op
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