Another frequently encountered obstruction to productive group dialogue is that participants tend to behave too passively or too aggressively, or both alternately. Either they won’t speak or they won’t stop speaking, and they won’t or can’t stay on target. This problem obviously dovetails with the debate vs. dialogue one discussed above.

Some active individuals enjoy competitive debates, becoming excessively or even compulsively oppositional, aggressive, and argumentative.

At the same time, other participants feel intimidated and upset enough to withdraw from the interaction and become intractably silent or they might just drop out when they feel challenged by dominant or aggressive individuals. Some may stay committed to a specific point of view, and remain silently passive but still involved.

Other participants prefer just to follow the leader, try to agree, and comply a good deal of the time. Some enjoy the excitement of being spectators, rooting for one individual or sub-group, and opposing another.

A few assertive or aggressive group members might come on strong enough to vie for leadership roles. These individuals will often be more energetic than other members of the group. They will probably have very definite opinions and might try to monopolize the available acoustic space. This can be a serious impediment to the collaborative process. In fact, it might just stop the interaction completely.

On the other hand, such dominant and self-appointed leaders are also often the most articulate and attentive members of the group. Sometimes they come up with valuable ideas and good feedback for the other group participants. These assertive group members tend to wield a lot more influence than most of the others. In fact, many participants (with the facilitator’s encouragement) might choose to combine proposals with them because they come to agree with their ideas and like the way they’re presented.

Solution: Facilitators will limit attempts to dominate or drop out of the interaction by enforcing preset speaking time limits, and by calling on everyone in the group to speak at least once in each meeting. Facilitators will see to it that all input is understood and responded to and all participants in dialogue groups are at least verbally committed to try to help.