ABSTRACT
The chief role of the co-leaders in discussion is to direct traffic, that is, to direct and control the flow of ideas among the participants. Co-leaders fulfill this role by introducing prepared questions to initiate discussion, basic or otherwise, and by asking spontaneous follow-up questions to develop and to connect ideas that help solve the problems under discussion. Experience shows that the co-leaders ask an average of one follow-up question for every two or three responses. Unless the leaders maintain this average by asking enough follow-up questions, discussion soon reverts to a series of random, unrelated, off-the-cuff comments characteristic of mundane conversation. For example, what follow-up question could a leader ask when: there is no response at all; the response ignores the question; the response has multiple ideas; the response is wrong; the participant does not understand the question; the response is incoherent.
