Four Tips for Leading Group Discussions

Leading a group discussion can be difficult. Don’t be discouraged if your first few meetings are a bit rocky; effective moderation takes practice. Experiment with different approaches to figure out what works best for your group. The following quick tips will help you get started.

1. Initiate discussion yourself. Begin your meetings by briefly introducing the week’s topic and presenting an initial point of discussion yourself. This sets the tone for the meeting, helps other members feel comfortable sharing their own ideas, and establishes your position as the leader of the discussion in case you need to intervene later.
2. Ask open questions. Ask questions that will provoke many different ideas from your group, questions that different Objectivists will answer in different ways, none of them necessarily wrong. Avoid questions with short, obvious answers or a single correct answer.
3. Revive discussion when it hits a lull. Prior to your meeting you should prepare a list of five to ten points of interest you can bring up when discussion needs to be revived or re-focused. These can include quotes or scenes from Objectivist literature, moral dilemmas club members are likely to encounter in real life, or questions and insights you have about the day’s topic.
4. Intervene when necessary. It is your responsibility as moderator to see that discussion flows smoothly and that all club members are able to participate. This will not always happen spontaneously. While you should not try to determine every twist and turn the conversation takes, you must take active steps to resolve problems. Whenever possible, you should address problems during meetings rather than outside of them, and you should explicitly identify the problem you are trying to correct. For example, “I’m going to interrupt the meeting here because people have been presenting their positions in terms of concrete examples, and we need to turn our attention to the abstract principles underlying these examples.” However, if you’re having recurrent problems with a particular individual’s conduct, you may want to discuss the matter with him privately after a meeting rather than singling him out in front of the whole group.

Good luck with your meetings, and don’t hesitate to contact the Objectivist Club Network or your club mentor if you need more specific advice.

Maria McRaven is a former president of the University of Chicago Objectivist Club.