How to effectively start a Group Discussion

February 14, 2022

How to Effectively Start a Group Discussion?

Group Discussion aka G.D. are a means to evaluate your communication and opinion providing skills in a group of audience. It is used as a tool by most of the top companies that are likely to hire a candidate on a high paying job. On this page we will see How to Effectively Starts a Group Discussion –

Advantages of Initiating Group Discussion:

Opportunity to speak first
Chance to impress the interviewer
Favorable first impression
Means to prove yourself vocal and confident
Creates pressure on other candidates

Steps for How to Effectively Starts a Group Discussion

Initiating a Group Discussion can be easy but staying on the same level of attentiveness and maintaining your head can get tiring. So, initiate only if you have a knowledge of the topic and can express your opinions in an unbiased and polite manner.

Methods or Tools to use to initiate a group discussion:

1. Short stories for reference

2. General statement to put forward your opinion

3. Substantiate with facts, figures and statistics

4. Quote personalities to make it powerful

5. Define difficult terms for better context

6. Put across questions

7. Providing shock statements can give it extra weightage

Methods / Tools of Group Discussion

QUOTES

Quoting personalities or thoughts is always a good idea if you need to have an impact on the minds of the listeners but sadly quotes do not work with every topic. If it’s a more socially related topic using a quote would help but a topic that leans towards business, a quote would be an understatement.

DEFINITIONS

Starting a GD with definitions is always a very good idea because it starts the flow of incoming points from other group members and can turn the group discussion into a very health discussion. The flow of points starts incoming because the topic becomes understandable to the members who were finding it difficult to understand and moreover this also creates an impact on the observer.

QUESTION

Question after Quotes creates the most impact in a Group Discussion. That does not mean that question should be asked to insult the other candidate or hamper the flow of the discussion.

It implies asking a question, and answering it yourself. Any question that might hamper the flow of a GD or insult a participant or play devil’s advocate must be discouraged. Questions that promote the flow of points and convert the discussion a healthy discussion or revives a dead discussion is always appreciated and is always noticed as well.

SHOCK STATEMENT

The reason why this point has been added to our list of How to Start a Group Discussion suggestions is because putting forth a shocking or eye-opening statement or statistic positively reflects on your in-depth knowledge of the subject matter along with being a great way to grab the attention of all your competitors. Strategically distribute your shock statements so that the GD always goes in your favour and you never lose your bit of attention. If handled well throughout the GD, it can create an awe factor for you to ride on!

Facts figures and statistics

If you decide to initiate your GD with facts, figure and statistics then make sure to quote them accurately.

Approximation is allowed in macro level figures, but micro level figures need to be correct and accurate.

Short story

Short Stories are as good as quotes to initiate a group discussion but use of short stories have very skeptical views whether to use it in the beginning or in the end to conclude the discussion. But lecturers or English professors say that stories can be used in both situations to express the point. But in GD if you want to initiate with a short story that will only be possible in the topics based on behavior or on behavioral pattern. Other than these topics Short Stories to initiate will not work.