Thursday, November 5, 2009

On leading a (philosophical) discussion

I recently had occasion to reflect on the question of how to lead a good discussion. What happened, in fact, was that I needed to give someone advice on how to do this, and didn't know quite what to say. I've since sat down and thought about it, and here's what I've come up with.


Ideally, the members of a discussion would be able to take care of the conversation themselves. What would this look like?

  1. People would speak clearly, concisely, and to the point.
  2. People would listen to one another, respond to one another, and build on what others have said.
  3. People would move the discussion in productive directions by raising the right questions at the right times, staying on topic, and keeping the conversation from scattering in different directions or going off track.
In most discussions, however, some or all participants can't be counted on to do all these things themselves. That’s okay. Your job as discussion-leader is to do some of this work for them, to supplement their contributions so that all the things that need to get done, get done. Depending on who the participants are, you'll have to do more or less of this work. When I've taught undergraduate classes, I've found that I have to do most of this work for my students. (This usually means speaking after almost every student contribution.) When I'm in reading groups with my peers, we all share this work. But no matter what the situation and the composition of the group, this work has to get done, otherwise the discussion won't go well.

When I lead discussions, I find myself doing three different kinds of work, corresponding to the three points listed above:
  1. Reformulating
  2. Relating
  3. Redirecting
1. Reformulating
It often happens that participants will make contributions that are interesting but not sufficiently clear. In these cases, you need to help them to articulate their point more clearly. One way of doing this is to ask them to reformulate what they’ve said more clearly. If you have no idea what they’re talking about, you may just have to ask them to say it again in a different way. If you have some idea what they’re talking about, you may be able to ask them a more pointed question that will help them to clarify their point. If you think you understand their point, but suspect that other participants may not have sufficiently grasped what it is or why it’s important, then you can reformulate the point yourself. I find myself doing this a lot when I lead student discussions, e.g. “I hear two really good points in what George has said…” or “So if I understand you correctly, Michael, what you’re saying is…”

2. Relating
In the best discussions, participants will make an effort to respond to other people’s remarks, and say explicitly who they’re responding to and how (disagreeing, asking a question about, expanding on, etc.). In many discussions, however, the participants will not do this themselves, and so you have to do it for them by pointing out how the thing they’ve just said is related to what was said before. For example, it often happens in student discussions that someone will say something that contradicts someone else's earlier remark, but without noting this explicitly. It’s important to point out that the two claims are incompatible, since other participants may not necessarily have noticed this. You can then open the disagreement to further discussion, if you think it’s important, or redirect the discussion elsewhere.

3. Redirecting
At any given point in a discussion, there are many different directions in which it could go, and only some of these will support the overall goals of the discussion. Ideally, everyone in the discussion will have these goals in mind, and make their individual contributions with an eye to the big picture. In student discussions, however, this is usually not the case, and so it’s your job to keep the discussion on track. This usually involves setting the stage at the beginning of the discussion so that everyone starts off on the same page. As the conversation goes on, you may need to pose questions or suggest topics of discussion to the group. You may also need to interrupt the movement of the conversation if it’s getting stuck or moving in an unproductive direction, and bring discussion back to the things it’s supposed to be about. And you may need to correct people who are going about the conversation in the wrong way – talking too much, not listening to their colleagues, not being polite and respectful, etc.


In my experience, a good discussion is one in which many people think better together than any of them could on their own. But this means that even in situations where you are responsible for leading the discussion, you can't decide in advance how the conversation is going to go. Of course, if you’ve led a discussion on the same topic with students before, you may have some idea of the sort of things they’re going to say in response to certain questions. And there’s nothing wrong with having a plan for the sort of discussion you want to have, the topics you want to cover or the questions you want to pose. But you also have to be open to the possibility that things will go in a different direction than you planned. It can be difficult to strike a balance between achieving the goals you’ve set for the discussion and allowing it to develop spontaneously and organically. But the best discussions I’ve led are the ones where my students surprised me, and I managed to be flexible enough to keep the discussion productive even as it went in a direction I hadn’t expected.