Scenario: Please Explain
As an action learning coach, how would you handle the following situation:
A participant asks another participant to explain what the intent behind their question was.
Tags: Action Leaning, Action Learning Coach, WIAL, WIAL Action Learning, WIAL Talk
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Jonathan Tice
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As an action learning coach I would certainly pay close attention to this situation. If the participant asks the other participant of their intent behind the question because they truly are trying to comprehend then I would allow the situation to continue. If this question causes confusion then I would use a standard intervention to keep the group on track and subsequently ask them what they thought about the quality of their questions. This will remind everyone to not only be creative, but deliberate with what questions they ask each other.
However, if the participant asked the other participant of their question’s intent because there may be conflict between the individuals then I would potentially seek to intervene at that moment. If this is the case I would simply give the observation of there being some difficulties with this question, and then ask the group how they are doing. I could also ask the group about the quality of the questions being asked or what is the impact of the questions being asked. It is important to mitigate any personal conflict and questions are the best way to intervene in this situation.
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Dina Guo
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I would not intervene at once. I would observe how the other participant faces the question and replies to it. If he/she explain the intent behind the question directly, I would let their conversation continues. If he/she shows some conflict, I would write down the key note and not intervene until something like this occurs several times. At that time I would ask all the members, “Dear all, I observed that the conversation like this occurred several times. What do you think the effect of such conversation? What change would you take next?”
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SAGOONSRI JINAPUNMONGKOL
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As a coach you should not ignore this event as it may cause the atmosphere of the meeting to not be positive. Coaches should increase observation and should use SID to help solve this situation.Above all, coaches should be the person who fixes this place by asking the question to everyone before someone asking each other understand the question or not.
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Min Ge
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Depending on the atmosphere at that time, if the environment was relaxed, I would choose to be silent.
If it was in the intense atmosphere, I would choose to intervene and ask the member, “Do you feel uncomfortable with the question?”
If this member answers “yes”, I will tell him that if he feels uncomfortable with the question, he could refuse to answer it.
If this member answers “no”, I will let the questioner try to ask the member again in a different way.
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Huong Doan Kim
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As a coach, I would let members exchange their ideas as well as asking questions to each others in order to clarify uncertainties, if any. However, I should be very attentive when it comes to questions about “idea or meaning behind”. In this particular case, I would only intervene if I find out that the question is not constructive and can lead to conflicts between members.
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Jiajing LE
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I will not intervene directly, and members will inquire, clarify and respond to each other. I will pay attention to the communication process, the body language and tone of the members, the state of the team atmosphere, if there is a conflict between the members, I will intervene: is this your idea or a question you want to inquire about? How are you feeling at the moment? How does this affect our ability to solve the problem? What can be done to reduce this impact? It is up to the team to decide what to do next.
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Puja Vijay
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This was an interesting scenario and something that I havent encountered so far. I think if the participant is genuinely trying to clarify the question, it is important not to intervene and interrupt the flow of the conversation. However, if any conflict or dynamics that might be of concern seems to surface, I would intervene if this the line of questioning is useful for the problem presenter.
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