GD Preparation 2

How do I take my chance to speak: Trying to interrupt others while speaking would only harm your chances. Instead, you may try to maintain an eye-contact with the speaker. This would show your listening skills also and would help you gauge from his eye-movement and pitch of voice that he is about to close his inputs. You can quickly take it from there. Also, try and link your inputs with what he has spoken whether you are adding to or opposing his arguments. This would reflect that you are actually being participative rather than just doing a collective monologue.

• How to I communicate in a GD: Be crisp and to the point. Be fact based and avoid making individual opinions that do not have a factual base. Make eye contact with all the members in the group and avoid looking at the panelists while speaking. The average duration of the group discussion provides an average of about 2-3 minutes per participant to speak and you should try to speak about 3-4 times. Hence, you need to be really crisp to reflect the most in those 30-40 sec. slots.

• How do I convince others and make them agree to my view point: A lot of candidates make it their mission to make the group reach to a conclusion on the topic. Do not forget that some of the topics have been eternal debates and there is no way you can get an agreement in 15 mins. on them. The objective is not to make others toe your line but to provide fact based, convincing arguments which create an impact. Stick to this approach.

• Do leadership skills include moderating the group discussion: This is a myth and many people do try to impose their order on the GD, ordering people when to speak and when not to. This only reflects poor leadership. Leadership in a GD would be reflected by your clarity of thought, ability to expand the topic in its different dimensions, providing an opportunity to a silent participant to speak, listening to others and probing them to provide more information. Hence, work on these areas rather than be a self-appointed moderator of the group.

• Listening: This is a key quality assessed during the GD about which many participants forget. Active listening can fetch you credit points and would also provide you with data to discuss. Also, if you have an average of 2-3 minutes to speak, the rest of the 20-25 minutes is required to spent in active listening. For this, maintain eye contact with the speakers, attend to them (like nodding, using acknowledging words like -I see ok, fine, great etc.). This would also make you be the centre of attraction as you would appear non-threatening to the speakers.

• Behaviour during the GD: Be patient; don't get upset if anyone says anything you object to. Stay objective and don't take the discussion personally. Also, remember the six C's of communication - Clarity, Completeness, Conciseness, Confidence, Correctness and Courtesy. Be appreciative & receptive to ideas from other people and open-minded but do not let others to change your own viewpoint. Be active and interested throughout. It is better to participate less if you have no clue of the topic. You may listen to others and take clues from there and speak. You would be assessed on a range of different skills and you may think that leadership is key, you need to be careful that you don't dominate the discussion.

• Quality Vs Quantity: Often, participants think that success in group discussions depends on how much and how loudly they speak. Interestingly, it's the opposite. Also, making your point on the topic, your views are important and the group needs to know. This will tell you are knowledgeable and that you participate in groups

• Summarizing: If you have not been able to initiate the discussion, try to summaries and close it. Good summarizing would get you good reward points. A conclusion is where the whole group decides in favour or against the topic and most GDs do not have a closure. But every GD can be summarized by putting forth what the group has discussed in a nutshell. Keep the following points in mind while summarizing a discussion:

  • Avoid raising new points.

  • Avoid stating only your viewpoint.

  • Avoid dwelling only on one aspect of the GD

  • Keep it brief and concise.

  • It must include all the important points that came out during the GD

  • If you are asked to summarise a GD, it means the GD has come to an end.

  • Do not add anything once the GD has been summarised.

Some Positive Task Roles in a Group Discussion:You may want to play one or more of them:

• Initiator

• Information seeker

• Information giver

• Procedure facilitator

• Opinion seeker

• Opinion giver

• Clarifier

• Social Supporter

• Harmonizer

• Tension Reliever

• Energizer

• Compromiser

• Gatekeeper

• Summarizer

Negative Roles to be Avoided

• Disgruntled non-participant

• Attacker

• Dominator

• Patronizer

• Clown

Feedback template: While doing mocks for GD preparation, you would get benefited by the feedback of others. For the purpose, we are providing a template for feedback - both quantitative and qualitative. The items described over there are a suggested list and not a complete one. You may make changes in it depending upon your need.