How to run your own “Work Check podcast” style debate (for events, online discussions)
If you want to bring a debate-style discussion to your events or forums, this article breaks down one approach to assessing a longstanding collaboration ritual or habit.
Improving the way you work requires an analysis of how you already work. Our Community’s local and digitally-connected groups already engage in this process–questioning how they approach teamwork and sparring ideas on how others do it and how they might improve. In this article, we’re sharing principles behind the Work Check podcast–how the team of producers and debaters re-evaluate popular workplace practices for the show.
For the remainder of this article, we’re featuring Pippa Johnstone, a producer on Work Check, for how she’d outline our process.
First off, you need to find the question you’ll be debating; it’s trickier than you might think. Look for topics that feel relevant and relatable, easily understandable, and will foster a diversity of opinions. In other words, you don’t want to pick a topic that everyone agrees on.
Start with a giant list of ideas.
- What are different habits that are status quo in the way you work? What are newly formed habits? Are they working?
- Consider even the topics you’ve heard before but might spark new ideas. Things like – how you hold standing meetings, the pace your team communicates over chat tools or email, or even areas that have been in place since before you joined a team.
- ProTip: think about things that bug you in your day-to-day work lives – pet peeves are a great place to find debate topics, too!
Once you have a bunch of ideas, you need to whittle it down.
The criteria we apply to our potential debate topics is:
- Is it tangible and relatable? Try to avoid topics that feel too cerebral or heady. ProTip: look for topics that make people want to tell you their story!
- Is this something most people can connect to on some level? Ideally, it wouldn’t just be for an exclusive few but something universal to many types of teams.
- Avoid insular or jargon-based practices that leave people out.
Frame the debate question.
- In the statement or question, ensure it has two, strong, defendable sides.
- There may be many ways to rethink a practice, but to get a conversation going, it’s often helpful to position your topic as binary: to have the practice or not.
- If the sides don’t feel totally even, this doesn’t rule the topic out, but if you’re looking to foster a useful debate in your team, look for a topic or a framing where you would be comfortable arguing on either side.
- Nice-to-have consideration: does it level up to larger, broader questions about how your team is working together?
We’re narrowing in on a specific, tangible practice to make the topic easy to engage with, but we want to make sure there’s more depth there. For example: a debate asking “should you add your coworkers on social media” might level up to a larger conversation about what ‘bringing your whole self to work’ really means for teammates and their work-life boundaries. For each of our debates, we want the conversation to really interrogate how we are working together and how we can make our work lives better.
Once you’ve decided on the debate question, it’s time to research. Find supporting evidence to form your points.
- The debaters on the show draw from their own experiences to start with, but it’s often useful to poll friends or communities. Sometimes we learn a lot just by asking our coworkers about their feelings on a topic!
- Also look at pop culture, other podcasts, or internet forums for how others perceive the practice. What are people outside of our bubble saying?
- Consult studies. Are there scholars writing about or studying this topic? What studies can we draw from? (...and importantly, do we trust these studies – how big was their sample size, is it representative of diverse people, how were they conducted?)
- Play the comparison game. Is there another country or company that is approaching this practice differently? What are they doing about it, and how is that working?
You don't have to do all or any of these options. Hold the conversation you want to have :)
- Feature your two debaters, the folks who have done the research and have formed opinions on specific sides. In the end, the whole group can vote and award the best way to work, the most compelling point, or even the best debater as a winner.
- Another approach is letting everyone participate. This can be an open forum where every attendee or forum user chimes in with their ideas and replies to each other freely. Or, if colocated, divide the room into two sides where attendees walk over to the side they agree with as different attendees take to the stage with their point of view.
- Ask everyone to share their intel for a portion of the time, and then later, ask everyone to share their final perspective after reviewing everyone’s research.
We hope to see your version of a “Work Check” debate either online or in person. If you get something going and have a recap or even a recording, please share it in the comments!
Until then, please share ideas you have for debates on workplace practices. Let us know in the comments.
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Christine P. Dela Rosa
About this author
Principal Strategist, Brand Advocacy
Atlassian
San Francsico
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