Just a minute

There is a long-running British radio show called Just a Minute. The object of the game is for panellists to talk for sixty seconds on a given subject, 'without hesitation, repetition, or deviation'. The content does not really matter, as long as one remains (broadly) on topic, does not pause excessively, and avoids repeating oneself.

This is not a good model for sharing at meetings.

Sometimes sharing can be rambling riffing, without any sense of a particular point to be made, a direction, or a structure, relieved only by the bell or the yellow card, which the sharer invariably waits for (rather than taking responsibility for constructing a share to sit neatly within the time allotted ). There can be the sense of the speaker looking for a needle in a haystack but not even sure what the missing needle looks like.

However, when I am invited to share at a meeting, I am given the opportunity to do a job. If I do not know what my job is or I do not know how to do it, I do not take up the opportunity; I do not speak for the sake of speaking or fill up the time with words like filling a bucket with water, where any old water will do.

I much prefer listening to speakers who have worked out roughly, before they open their mouth, what their point or points will be; who make those points; and who then stop. There's a satisfying sense of being led along a torchlit path, being shown around an attractive property, or having some point of German grammar explained by an excellent teacher.

This, therefore, is the model that I try and adopt when I am sharing.