{"id":28928,"date":"2026-11-10T21:12:11","date_gmt":"2026-11-11T02:12:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/?p=28928"},"modified":"2026-11-10T21:12:11","modified_gmt":"2026-11-11T02:12:11","slug":"leading-a-discussion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/?p=28928","title":{"rendered":"Leading a discussion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today I led a discussion on a technical topic of great mutual interest. There were a tremendous number of great ideas.<\/p>\n<p>We started a Google doc, and everybody wrote down their thoughts. In the end, the number of wonderful original ideas greatly exceeded my expectations.<\/p>\n<p>I think the key for me, as the discussion leader, was to give everybody space to take ownership of their train of thought. That wasn&#8217;t always easy, since my natural tendency is to jump in a say &#8220;Yes, but what about this?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Somehow I managed to mostly repress that tendency, and the results were very positive. It turns out that the most difficult thing to do when you are leading a discussion is also the most productive: Just shut up and listen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today I led a discussion on a technical topic of great mutual interest. There were a tremendous number of great ideas. We started a Google doc, and everybody wrote down their thoughts. In the end, the number of wonderful original ideas greatly exceeded my expectations. I think the key for me, as the discussion leader, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/?p=28928\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Leading a discussion&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28928"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28928"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28928\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28929,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28928\/revisions\/28929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}