All that glisters is not gold

“Mining group gold is a process that helps in the establishment of a concerted effort between team members so they can accomplish tasks that are in keeping with an organization’s strategic initiatives and vision.”

Mining group gold helps focusing on group interaction skills in organizational meetings. The mining group gold process is designed to help managers draw out ideas, knowledge and information from the people they work with. Mining group gold brings improvement in teamwork, and effective communication.

There are five basics for mining group gold; 1. Determine the purpose of the session or meeting; whether you are mining for gold, coal or group gold you have to know where to mine and what you are mining for. 2. Determine the desired outcomes of the session or meeting, if you don’t know where you are going, how will you know when you get there. 3. Assign the roles of facilitator, scribe and timekeeper; most groups will have a primary and a secondary facilitator. Dictionary.com defines facilitator as a person responsible for leading or coordinating the work of a group, as one who leads a group discussion.

The role of the primary facilitator is to lead the group in drawing out answers; create a fully participative climate that motivates everybody to get involved. The more input the group collects and channels, the more creativity is released. The secondary facilitator helps monitor the group and informs the group when consensus has been reached which helps to keep the conversation from dragging on. The secondary facilitator steps in to redirect discussions that goes off on a tangent, keeping the group focused on the original desired outcome. The timekeeper monitors how long the group is taking to accomplish its tasks. The scribe keeps track of what is being said on flip charts during the meeting. When a page is complete, it is taped to the wall for future reference. 4. Set the agenda, a clear statement of the session or meeting purpose. The agenda lets everyone know why they are gathered, are they gathered simply to share information, or are there decisions to be made? 5. Another job of the facilitator is to establish the time allocation for each item on the agenda.

During the mining group gold process, the facilitator will use a term called safe guarding to include another person in the group’s conversation. If one person is dominating the group’s discussion, the facilitator will use a term called gate closing to reduce the input of the dominating person. By using both terms each person will feel they have an equal say in the groups discussion. When dealing with emotions, use the sub-process of feelings, facts and solutions. Each member of the group should take a moment of silence to relax. During this time, everyone writes down their feelings in order to express them later. Then, the primary facilitator asks everyone in the group to read what they wrote. From this information, additional and pertinent information is mined, and then a path forward to solve the problem can be determined and implemented. The mining group gold process helps create open communication, which can be very inspiring and motivating to employees because they feel they have a voice in what goes on in the company. This leads to happier employees and job enrichment, more formal strategies to inspire motivation, wherein the characteristics of a job, or the work itself, are emphasized. Job enlargement combines tasks to make work more interesting.

References
Bloomberg Finance L.P. Copyright © 2012 Retrieved from
http://about.bloomberglaw.com/practitioner-contributions/business-development-training/ Dictionary.com, LLC. Copyright © 2013 Retrieved from
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/salesman
The Phrase Finder Copyright © Gary Martin, 1996 – 2013 Retrieved from http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/all-that-glitters-is-not-gold.html