Connections with and between learners

Building closeness and intimacy in workshops

Pitched under the banner of ‘10 min to connect, 3hrs to bond’ this is a blog reflecting a workshop I recently delivered for Sport NI and their casual tutor workforce.

The session focused on making connections from ‘the first hello’ within workshops and training sessions and considered how you may go about ‘building a bond over time’.

The inspiration for this session came from an episode of the ‘Big Bang Theory’ – check out the clip below:

So the nerd in me set out to track down this article and yes it’s a real thing, the article by Arthur Aron and colleagues provides a protocol for creating closeness between strangers and yes one of their pairings who were previously unknown to each other actually did fall in love and marry.

Aron, A., Melinat, E., Aron, E. N., Vallone, R. D., & Bator, R. J. (1997). Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23(4), 363–377.

Now I not proposing that you apply this methodology to your workshops but maybe there is something to be learned from what it is thats happening in this study, what is going on between the pairs over the course of the 45min of self disclosure that creates the closeness.

In their research they state:

Perhaps it’s this that we should consider as tutors, trainers, educators…

I’m going to pause this thought for now and return to the study at the end of this blog.

Some simple things beyond the hello and handshakes (oh with this please make eye contact and be present – there is nothing worse than a half hearted hello where the facilitator is looking over your shoulder at something else). So try these:

This is a great guide for you as a trainer/facilitator if you know nothing about your learners before they arrive. You are able now to capture some insight into your learners, connect content to their context and even connect them based on sport, subject, geography, feeling or what ever else you decide to capture in the sheets.

Note: You can learn as much about your learners by observing how they do the task as you can by the actual output – how they interact, engage, take risks, step forward, hold back, grab the pen or quickly pass it on. This is all valuable ‘data’ for you to use and can inform your delivery.

The more I do workshops, the more I really think about this. My introductions are never the same and I always look to find ways of connecting professionally and personally with my audience.

Some environments are more appreciative of your professional experience and others your personal story. What is credible and valued by one audience is not so important to another. So before you arrive at your workshop think about this, think about how you will connect and compel learners to want to connect with you..and remember the activities above are great opportunities for you to refine this based on what you have seen and learnt about your group.

In the next image are a few pointers to consider around the feeling you are looking to evoke – stick close to the middle in a balanced space if possible:

Get this right and you will find learners empathising with you, get this wrong and you risk losing people either through under or over playing something. A task you may like to set yourself is to create a series of loose into’s for 3–4 audiences that are really out of your normal field just to challenge you to find connections (personal and professional).

As you journey through the workshop, assuming the tone is right and connections have been made you can crank up the bonding through a number of whole group and smaller group provocative activities.

For brevity I’m just sharing 3 graduated options here, each gradually asking more of your learners both in terms of how they interact and what they share.

Circle – have the whole group stand in a circle looking inward, you stand in the middle and ask a number of low level awareness raising and knowledge gathering questions and in answering these the learners step forward e.g. who is already coaching (step forward), who has a coaching qualification (step forward), who has a degree in sport (step forward). There is equal power in seeing who steps forward and what knowledge is in the room vs asking those to turn around and think about those you have stood still. What does this tell us and how might this influence how we engage with each other over the course of the workshop so that we ensure everyone is learning/moving forward.

Question – in small groups set up opinion, perception and exploration type questions. Both to help people to share thoughts on topics of interest and to support engagement. These types of task help people to see what others think, their emotional attachment and responses to agreement and disagreement. An outcome could be to come to a shared understanding and where that wasn’t possible lets discuss the why? This is an opportunity to connect through similarities and differences.

Debate – this is a great one to use to raise the temperature in the room, especially if you have 3 groups. Have two groups with conflicting views and one as the judgement team (who get to create their own criteria and can choose not to share this). A good twist is to get groups to defend a view they actually disagree with. This really challenges the thought process and the angle they take. Watch out for people slipping into attacking the view of others over defending self. Give teams 5 min to prepare their position and 1 minute to present their view. Sit teams directly opposite each other (almost knees touching) during this. Once the debate is over get the judges to cast opinions and declare a winner. Again the experience and feelings that come with this task are as powerful as the content that is shared and help bonds people through a topic. Doing this before lunch or before a break is good as then people continue the chat into the social space.

Check out this document by the Behavioural Insights Team, there is some interesting thoughts on grouping people based on similarities vs differences and the impact this has on social trust, connections and creativity.

Back to Aron et al (1997) and their paper on ‘The experimental generation of interpersonal closeness’. The power of what happens in this process is captured in this quote by Mandy Len Catron author of ‘how to fall in love with anyone’ – which is based on this article…

She went on to say:

So I’ve taken a look at the questions to try and work out the trick of disclosure happening here, see the right hand column of the image below. I am in my early thoughts on this but if you want a copy of this and the other questions just get in touch and I’ll ping it over along with some thoughts on how you may use this within a workshop setting.

Oh and ….. Whilst I haven’t looked in detail at this next article on closness I did come across this which may be of interest – the Relationship Closeness Induction Task. The questions for developing closeness and the protocol are in the back of the document.

I invite you to have a play with it and let me know how it goes for you. I’meen to hear about your experiences…

This all links back to my thoughts on the ‘Social Learning Equation’ (SLEQ) – in that learners learn more without you than with you… so we do well to connect them with each other…

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