I absolutely hate those “let’s go around the circle and introduce ourselves” exercises. Making children do them seems especially cruel.
Don’t you think it’s good to train children to be able to talk to strangers, in public and introduce themselves? I know it’s stressful but I think it is useful.
That’s just not how people introduce themselves out in the real world though.
work is the real world and i have some news
The problem is the lack of structure.
I organize a lot of workshops involving people from experts to executives, where you always need an introduction round, and I give them a structure to follow. Makes the task it easier, but it’ll also be much more useful for the group, as we’ll focus in the aspects of a person that matter for the context of the workshop.
For a class intro in primary school, it could be:
- name and age
- nickname you’d like others to call you
- favorite subject
- favorite hobby / free time activity
I just made this up, but a teacher could probably come up with something even more fitting.
The point is, always give people structure or guidance, you’ll get much more out of similar introduction rounds.
Sure but in the real world you will sometimes get this and sometimes get no structure. It’s been about 50/50 for me so far. Being able to do either on the fly is good.
What do you think is different compared to when you join some new company, training or club and you are asked to present yourself to the group?
