Chapter 14. Assessing Concordance and Discordance
This workshop corresponds with Chapter 5, “Collaboration.”
It’s helpful to know how easily the members of a team are influenced by the rest of the membership. When a leader knows if a team has more conformant versus discordant tendencies, it’s easier to determine how closely a team’s decision-making behavior must be managed. When the results of this exercise are shared and discussed with a team, the team may be more open to improving the efficiency of discussing topics and making decisions.
Materials
Materials include the following:
• Weight Plot Chart
• Three blank slips of paper per person
Setup
The most important element of this exercise is a prepared facilitator who has the confidence and willingness to expose his/her weight to the group. A different measurable attribute could be used, but body weight tends to work well.
Start by handing out three blank slips of paper to each participant and make sure that everyone has something to write with. Prepare the blank weight plot so that it may be revealed with plotted data during each of the three rounds of the exercise. This could be done on a white board, on a spreadsheet, or simply plotted on a piece of paper that is passed around the room. Figure 14.3 contains a blank weight plot template.
Facilitation
Start by asking everyone in the room to guess your weight. Have them write down that guess on one of the slips of paper without discussion or collaboration. Gather up everyone’s guesses and plot them along the first column of the weight plot. Be sure to plot the guesses along a straight vertical line (see Figure 14.1). When plotting two guesses with the same value, go ahead and offset the plots a bit to depict that there is more than one guess for that value.
Figure 14.1 Weight guessing plot (Round 1)
When plotting the guesses, do not reveal who made each guess. After all the guesses have been plotted, reveal the chart to the group and ask everyone to make another guess. Do this without further explanation or instruction. Plot the results, reveal the results, and repeat for a third round.
After finishing three rounds, assess the graph and discuss the results with the group.
Post-Exercise Discussion
The goal of this exercise is to understand the conformance/discordance level of the group. The shape of the plot created in this exercises reveals this. The facilitator starts by showing the plot and explaining the group’s behavior that it reveals.
The depictions of plotted data presented in Figure 14.2 show two contrasting possible outcomes: On the left is a group with a high level of conformance and a low level of discordance. The plot on the right depicts low (or no) conformance and high discordance. The facilitator may choose to draw these shapes and discuss the different behavior characteristics of each of the groups that each of these shapes represents. It could be interesting to ask how individuals would feel if they were a member of each of these groups; then contrast those feelings with the actual group plot from the exercise. This discussion can expose opportunities for improving the dynamics of the group.
After reading Chapter 5, you may now realize that the point of this exercise is not to grade the group as positive or negative. Rather, the point is to better understand the magnitude of influence members of the group have on one another. When discussing the conformance profile of the group, accept the behavioral tendencies of the group and focus the conversation on how to operate most productively because of (or despite) what the profile indicates.
Figure 14.3 Weight plot chart template
