Question

The planning for the community building session is almost complete. The last details are how to conduct the plenary sessions for sharing information across groups to develop key priorities and themes that will need to be addressed.

There are 2 sessions that need to be planned. One is to review the work done by intact work teams. In this larger session, the goal is to spot patterns and identify themes that can be used to plan actions. These patterns or themes will come from the stop–continue–start charts developed by each functional group. In this way, not only will the changes that need to happen be identified, but aspects of effective work (those things that work well and should be continued) can also be reinforced.

The external consulting team strongly recommended a "cross-functional, by-level grouping" for the first step. Their aim is to promote understanding of priorities and show how different issues at different levels of the organization can be aligned. The internal consulting team is excited about being the primary facilitators for these sessions. Everyone recognizes that a structured approach will be critical (for timing and to control decision–making inputs). The approach called Nominal Group Technique (NGT) seems to be ideally suited to this task.

You want to prepare yourself for conducting the session. Use the library, Internet, or other resources to research NGT. Because each grouping will be of a differing size, you want to tailor the overall steps of NGT to the situation you will facilitate. To do this, you must create a meeting session plan (a document of 4–5 pages) that will answer the following questions:

• What is the goal of the session?
• How will the nominal group technique be used to achieve this goal?
• How will the members of the team work together (guidelines for effective participation)?
• What specific steps and tasks will be involved in achieving the goal?
• How much time will be allocated to each step or task? What voting mechanism is most appropriate for the size of the group and the specific stage of the process?

Answer 1

Nominal Group Technique (NGT)

1. It is considered that NGT is a group process in which problem identification, and solution generation, as well as decision making occurs effectively and efficiently . It is basically utilized in groups of many sizes that wish to build their decision quickly through casting a vote. However, this process wants everyone's opinions taken into account that is different than the traditional voting where only the largest group is considered for voting.

In this consideration, this paper has been taken to create a meeting session plan to tailor the overall steps of NGT to the situation for group brainstorming that encourages contributions from everyone of each group that is a differing size. These can be described as below:

Goal of the Session

The main goal of the session is basically related to sharing information across groups to develop key priorities and themes. This group can specifically identify what they do well and what needs to be changed for successfully sharing the information across groups(McGough, 2006). Now, the assign priorities to these themes can identify the importance at the specific level of organization for which the cross functional team is composed on the regular basis.

Ways to Use the NGT to Achieve the Goal

The utilization of Nominal Group Technique to achieve the goal is an extensive way that occurs by small groups to identification of key problems or in the development of solutions. The Nominal Group Technique (NGT) is considered as a structured variation of a small-group discussion in order to reach towards consensus (Hamilton, 2013). Therefore, NGT in general way helps to gather information through asking individuals to respond to the questions when a moderator or facilitator posed the questions. Now, NGT would be use as a tool to achieve the goal.

In this, under NGT, a moderator would ask participants to prioritize the ideas or suggestions of all group members that how to share information across the groups. However, the process would prevent the domination of the discussion by a single person (Hamilton, 2013). Thus, NGT would encourage all group members to participate to develop results in a set of prioritized solutions or recommendations to show preferences of the group.

Facilitator Notes: As a group facilitator, I will say to the group to complete the task that I will help a group to discuss an issue and also make a decision to solve a problem. Further, I will also keep the group moving to come to the best solution always towards its stated goals. Moreover, I will always ready to listen, and observe, as well as use the group members’ intuition to facilitate every individual’s needs and desires. At the same time, when the group would focus on the task, I will focus not only on the process, but also the people to make the session effective.

Now, it does not matter what kind of discussion is needed in the session to achieve the goal. Therefore, I would say to the group that it would be a brainstorming session in order to help a group come up with fund-raising ideas to give benefits to all. Therefore, I will show my proper facilitation skills, and knowledge, as well as understanding to help any group to achieve its goals effectively, efficiently, and enjoyably (Hamilton, 2013). Addition to this, I will also show my experience and other talents to make the session useful and effective, such as use of visual aids (overheads, flipchart, etc.) in case of requirement.

At the same time, I will also records ideas legibly of the group, and ask probing questions, as well as think quickly to show my generosity to complete the task. The acknowledgement and responding to the emotions, as well as resolving the conflict would also be the part of my talent to show to the group and complete the task. At this stage, the uses of my humor would be beneficial for the session because it knows a variety of techniques for group discussions, and problem-solving, as well as decision-making designs.

Ways in Which Members of the Team Work Together

The members of the team work together after developing some guidelines or structure that facilitates the work of the team and their effective participation. Further, these guidelines would be developing to facilitate the team work together from the following kind of action:

The Designing the Operating Policies and Procedures: The team members should first discuss the policies and procedures the team will use in the session. The policies and procedures would help to inhibit some serious problems or misunderstandings later. In this, there should some ground rules that the team will follow (Fox, 2014). There should be communication among members, and expectations about good behavior, as well as the way to deal with conflict.

The Getting the Team to Decide How to Decide: At this stage, the group members should try to get the group to generate several alternative courses of action for a decision. Further, they try to persuade the team in order to use some form of structured evaluation process. Now, the team can select a decision procedure to give the vote.

Specific Steps and Tasks in Achieving the Goal and Allocate Time

Now, from the above procedures, the members of the team would work together to achieve the goals effectively and efficiently (Fox, 2014). In this concern, following are the step-by-step outline with time frames for the group to follow in achieving the overall goal.

Steps to Conduct NGT	Activities/Tasks	Time Frame
Step 1: Generating Ideas	In this step, the moderator would present the question or problem to the group in written form and reads the question to the group carefully. Further, the moderator would now direct everyone to write some ideas in brief phrases, but to work silently and independently. Every member would now silently generate ideas and writes them down on paper.	20-30 minutes
Step 2: Recording Ideas	In the second step, the group members would be engaged in a round-robin feedback session to concisely record their idea. Here, the moderator would write an idea from a group member on a flip chart that would be visible to the entire group. He then proceeds to ask for another idea from the next group member, and so on. However, there is no need to repeat ideas when the group members would believe that an idea provides a different emphasis or variation. It would be continue until the ideas of all members have been documented.	1-1.30 hours
Step 3: Discussing Ideas	At this stage, the recorded ideas are then discussed to determine clarity and importance. In this, the moderator would ask about each idea that “Are there any questions group members would like to make about the item?” Here, this step would provide an opportunity for members to express their understanding of the logic relative to the item.	30 minutes

Team Group Items: The team group items that are taken together are impressive because it has used cards and marker like items. These two items are important in the NGT session because the members would create their ideas on the cards. This is the easy process that can assist moderator to conduct session effectively. Thus, this team group items are useful together after encouraging them to work for achieving the goals (Fox, 2014). Now, based on the above choice, it would be a controlled group task because there are several partispationtion create ways of communication process between team members and it is controlled by a moderator. This controlled group task is now creates a tally sheet on the flip chart with the help of numbers down the left-hand side of the chart, that generally correspond to the ideas from the round-robin.

Voting Mechanism/Method

The voting method would be based on individuals and privately to prioritize the ideas. In this method, the votes would be tallied to identify the ideas that are rated highest by the group as a whole. Further, the moderator would establish effective criteria that are used to prioritize the ideas (DuBrin, 2011). At the same time, the voting would start through selecting five most important items by each group member from the group list and they would write one idea on each index card. In the next stage, each and every member would rank the five ideas selected from the most important receiving a rank of 5, and the lowest priority would receive a rank of 1