Conversation Tokens Technique for Group Discussions

The conversation tokens technique is a good activity for encouraging everyone to participate and to regulate differences between those who talk too much and those who talk too little.

Gather the group and give all participants the same number of tokens. If you don’t have chips, you can use cut paper of the same dimensions, buttons, candies, poker cards or whatever you can think of that works for the exercise.

Explain to the group that to participate in the discussion and be able to speak it is necessary to ask to speak and use one of the tokens received. During the discussion, every time a person speaks they must throw a token at the middle of the table.

When a person runs out of tokens, they automatically become a “listener” of the discussion and listen carefully to the rest of the participants who can still speak. It is important to clarify that tokens cannot be transferred or given away between people.

This technique not only regulates and equalizes the number of participations per person, but can also cause a jump in quality in the content of the discussion.

When people know that they cannot talk all the time and at any moment, they limit themselves to listening more, thinking and reflecting with more data, and making deeper and more complex observations. Complex thinking raises the quality of discussions and makes them more fruitful.

Use this technique repeatedly to practice the art of discussion and debate with your work team. To develop active listening, complex thinking and argumentation skills, it is necessary to exercise them.