Teaching Students to Enhance the Ecology of Small Group Meetings

Abstract

Students need to understand how the interplay of ideas, personalities, and environment-the ecology-of a meeting contributes to productivity and satis faction in group process. Only when the ecology is right can the meeting work. To address that ecology explicitly, instructors should help students assess their prior experience in small groups. In a classroom exercise, student teams answer one of a set of questions about meetings: 1. How participants know when a meeting is productive (or not); 2. How they know when warm hospi tality has been extended (or not); 3. What happens before, during, and after meetings that generates broad enthusiasm—or produces apathy. A class period spent on such discussion helps convince students of the need to proactively apply effective meeting management principles in their own workplace. Key words: Group process, meetings, participation, hospitality, enthusiasm

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