I have a friend in men’s ministry who did his Ph.D. dissertation on what seating arrangements work best in small groups, proving the old adage that higher education is the process of learning more and more about less and less until you know everything about nothing.
Since my focus for seventeen years was doing workshops at men’s conferences, I asked him what the best seating configuration for a workshop is. He said it’s curved seating with the focal point of the curve on where the speaker stands.
He said the reason is because people listen better and retain more with curved seating than with straight seating.
Since that conversation, I’ve always made it a point to sneak into the room where my workshop was going to be held and rearrange the seating – which was always in straight rows – into curved rows.
Besides curved seating making it easier to see and hear, I’m also thinking that straight seating says “I want to lecture to you,” while curved seating says, “I want to relate to you.”
And one more tip: men need space, both between chairs and in front, so leave at least 3 inches between the chairs and at least 18 inches in front of them. No man wants to feel like he’s flying coach on a discount airline while he’s listening to you.
This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.
Since 2003 New Commandment Men’s Ministries has helped hundreds of churches throughout North American and around the world recruit teams of men who permanently adopt their widowed and single parents in their congregations for the purpose of donating two hours of service to them one Saturday morning each month. We accomplish this with a free training site called New Commandment Men’s Ministry
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