How To Impress The GTO In A Group Discussion

Group discussions are important part of any selection procedure as they give your clear picture regarding many qualities. How well could you gel with members of the team, do you have a leadership quality, do you want to gel with the members of a group, are you a good team player, can you handle conflict in a team. These are the essential qualities of any member of a team and all should know them. Also for an officer these are needed badly. In real life situations we get to see conflict, and we should know how to handle it properly. In battlefield if any matter shoots up within your team how you will handle it. What action will prevail in that important time? How will you satisfy the ego states of all the members simultaneously making no one feel offensive?

GTO wants to see a good human being in you. You should have the power to command and the power to resolve the conflicts. GD is all about expressing what you think for any particular topic and how your views differ / are similar with that of the group. Also how you tackle the difference or the gap if there is any. You should remember you are being judged for the following:

Communication skills
Listening skills
Team work
Depth of knowledge
Sharing comrade with the group
Leadership
Caring for others
Taking care of feelings of the group

Various phases that come in a GD:

Initiation: this forms a very important part of GD as the opener not always but yes has an added advantage. It requires a lot of courage to open about a topic which is given immediately. Also a participant should remember that if you have in detail knowledge of the topic and can talk relevant then only jump into this else it backfires too.
Describing topic: this forms the middle part of the discussion where every member tries to pour in their views on the topic to make the discussion rich and healthy. Often the heard fish market situation arises in this phase only. Such situation should be avoided as there is always a sufficient time to speak your views and fights should not be done to get a turn. Also if you speak relevant the group hears you or else you are ignored by the group.
Questioning: This is a phase where one member of group might raise an issue or a question to the other members. Such situations are meant to enrich the discussion and should not be taken as a chance to demean others. If done so you will be marked negative.
Conclusion : Ideally the conclusion should be provided by the group at the end of the GD by themselves and this marks the perfect ending of it but if the fighting persists and the group was not able to conclude , officers might ask to do so. In such situations speak the groups point of view and not yours.

These were some simple things which if kept in mind can make discussions effective and worth listening. For other help I could be connected on FB and clear your doubts. Feel free to do so.

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Jayendra Singh, Editorial Team

Jayendra is pursuing MBA from IIM Ranchi and is a die heart counsellor for defence aspirants. He was recommended in the first attempt for Indian navy UES entry and is willing to help aspirants to make use of his experience in this field.

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