Skip the Q&A. How to Facilitate a Discussion That Digs Deep.
In the life cycle of any drug, it is essential to understand the state of the health care market, the forces influencing market stakeholders, and the thinking driving physicians’ decisions. But this is not an easy task in a field defined by constantly shifting dynamics, complex regulations, and an ever-evolving competitive landscape.
To attain deep insights that lead to effective development strategies, you must carefully design your interactions with experts and stakeholders, choosing group type and collaboration formats based on your particular needs.
Once you have gone through the design process, the biggest challenge is still ahead: facilitating a discussion that dives deep beneath the surface. Here are some key insights we have learned from our work guiding such discussions for groups at crucial inflection points in their strategic decision-making:
What Is Discourse and Why Is it Necessary?
Drug and treatment development are high stakes endeavors susceptible to erratic forces and fraught with uncertainty. When it comes to strategic decision-making in an environment as complex as the pharmaceutical marketplace, a simple exchange of opinions will never be enough to achieve clarity and certainty as a basis for strategic decisions. True discourse explores and exposes the underlying and unspoken perspectives of different stakeholders.
Facilitating Discourse
The outcome of this sort of discourse depends on the quality of facilitation, not only during the meeting but also in the preparatory stages. This person must accept that in meetings of any kind being able to understand each other is the exception rather than the rule. It requires great effort to follow the content of the conversation while also considering the speakers’ underlying considerations, and it is perhaps even more challenging to find ways to reconcile the spoken and the unspoken. In the case of complex problems, the facilitator must ensure that targeted discussions take place among the participants. Therefore, the facilitator must take on a pedagogical role, ensuring distinctive discussions through visualizing the discussion and fostering interactions.
Create Discourse Through Means of Visualization
By synthesizing elements of the discussion and laying them out in a simplified visual format, facilitators can create a real-time visual record that allows participants to quickly understand and respond to complex matters. It is best to use a mix of written language and graphic elements and arrange them spatially on a neutral backdrop to simplify and direct discourse. This visualization of the main arguments doesn’t need to be beautiful or even aesthetically pleasing. It merely serves a pragmatic function, reducing language to a minimum, with no more than a half-sentence to express each core idea. The facilitator places each of these core ideas in a box and then uses placement and graphical elements to clarify how they relate to each other. This creates a picture of both the substance of the conversation and the underlying elements that give it context.
Seeing Improves Listening
Participants are more likely to follow and engage in a discussion if it is simultaneously supplemented with both visual and auditory aids. If charts or other data visualizations are being used, the facilitator should make them visible to all while also reading the chart information out loud. This method discourages duplicative comments, maintains a good speed of discussion, and allows participants to make corrections if they feel misunderstood. It also allows participants to easily refer to points already made, creating a more active and vibrant session.
Create Discourse by Sparking Reactions
If you’re looking to provoke true discourse, you must avoid both one-way presentations and dry question and answer sessions. Participants must be allowed to raise and address the issues that are important to them.
However, this doesn’t mean the facilitator shouldn’t be keeping a firm grip on the reins of the discussion. Hereby the visualization performs another function: it can be used to provoke stakeholder reactions. The facilitator can prepare a visualization of stakeholders’ viewpoints acquired in preparatory meetings beforehand. Then in the meeting, the facilitator introduces these planned topics which organically lead stakeholders to raise other points, which then leads other stakeholders to respond with thoughts that matter to them.
Are you facing the challenge of planning and conducting an expert meeting? Let’s talk about how to best facilitate a discussion based on your strategic intentions: please contact Dr. Sebastian Barnutz or Dr. Wiebke Gronemeyer.