After an Activity with a Large Group, How Do You Get Their Attention/Quiet Them Down/Transition to the Next Thing?

[Shana Merlin]

Okay, this is a pretty simple question, but something I'm still struggling with.

When I do interactive sessions with large groups (larger than 30, up to several hundred) I'm great at explaining the game, getting people up and having fun, but I'm not satisfied with the ways I get them settled back down for the next activity.

I try talking, waiting, dinging a bell, clapping in a rhythm (for them to respond to), yelling, walking around the room and getting the attention of smaller groups at a time. But I can't help feeling rude and it still seems to waste a lot of time. I'd love any tricks for getting a large group of people (who may be doing an activity or debriefing in pairs or small groups) to get quiet and bring their focus back to the front of the room.

Thanks!
Shana

[Dan Weiss]

Shana:
When the situation warrants it, you can also use music for a bumper to get the energy into celebration mood after an exercise - ("give your selves a big hand!") then when you lower the music, people naturally quiet and look to the front...works well in most cases (I hesitate to say all cases after reading the earlier comments!

Dan

[Avish Parashar]

Here's an old training trick (I didn't invent it):

Loudly say, "if you can hear me, clap once." Then clap once. A few people can clap with you.

Then say, "if you can hear me, clap twice." Then clap twice. A few more people will join on.

Repeat, adding the one more clap each time. Usually by 4 most people are with you. Though the one time I saw someone tried this with a group of professional speakers, they had to go to at least 5. Go figure. :-)

Another idea, if people are moving around: A friend of mine puts a countdown clock up on the screen and tells people that only people who are sitting back in their seats when the clock hits 0:00 are eligible for a raffle. Of course, then you have to have a raffle...

Avish

[Shana Merlin]

Ooh! I might be able to use this countdown idea. With large groups, I usually use power point and I'm sure I could set that up so that people have a big, visual cue of when to get settled down.

[Jerry Kail]

Hi, Shana. One thing you can do is set a ground rule upfront: Anytime anyone in the room sees someone else raise their hand, that person must also raise their hand and become silent. When you want to quiet the group, all you do then is raise your hand, which will cause someone else to raise their hand and become quiet, and so on, and so on ...

(But one facilitator horror story: In one session, I had a group of wise guys decide that they would first raise their hands in the middle of an activity, before everyone else was finished. In that case, after everyone else fell silent (and confused), I just held my hand up and said "Who else in the room has psychokinetic powers? Raise my hand." [Thanks to Emo Philips for that one])

[Shana Merlin]

Nice idea. I love it when even the mechanism for getting people quiet is a game.