Use a Story to Prime their Brains and Jumpstart Small Group Discussions

A very observant friend and colleague of mine, John Brubaker  www.coachbru.com gave me some feedback after a program of mine (Leading By Example). He said how he noticed what I did before I sent audience members into paired discussions.

The exercise focused on them coming up with an example of a time in their lives where “knew” they couldn’t do something and then—to their surprise—they were able to. The goal of the exercise was to give participants a firsthand experience of how a “I didn’t think I could…but I did!” story can shift the listener’s emotional state, which then shifts their mental state. In this new, empowered mental state, they can see options and opportunities they couldn’t when they were in a disempowered state.

John said that he noticed I gave an example from my own experience before sending them off to come up with their own experiences, whereas he had typically shares his own examples after these kinds of exercises.

A couple of weeks later he shared with me that he used the same approach at a conference he spoke at and how the conference organization came up to him afterwards and said how blown away he was by how much audience participation John got.

The conference organizer told John how typically at this conference, people did not participate or share their perspectives and experiences.  One of the reasons they were able to come up with their own examples and stories was because John’s sharing first primed their brains to access these experiences by sharing his first.

I started using this very simple technique years ago based on my Ericksonian Hypnotherapy training. Dr. Milton Erickson, whose hypnotic and storytelling abilities are legendary, used to say something like: “If you want a patient to talk about their childhood, start telling them stories from yours.”

If you want audience members to think of a difficult conversation they need to get better at having, share an example or two of some you’ve had.

If you want audience members to come up with a managerial challenge where they used too much power and control and could have used more listening and  understanding, share an example first.

As they’re listening to your story, their memory system is being activated, searching for similar experiences.

To Put This Into Action

For each paired exercise you have in a program where you want participants to share examples from their own lives as part of learning a principle or applying a skill, come up with one or two examples from  your own life or someone else’s that you can use to prime their brains. You’ll be pleasantly surprised at how much more easily people will come up with their own examples when you do that.