The good, the bad and the ugly

It's the first coffee break on the first day of the innovation workshop. The majority of the participants are engaged and involved. One person is not. He arrived ten minutes late. He has made no contribution to date. He is constantly playing around with his BlackBerry. He is also starting to have side conversations with his neighbours.

You are slightly worried that you have not managed to get him on board yet, but you are even more concerned about the negative effect that he is starting to have on the rest of the group.

So what do you do?

The good

1) It is always an idea to set the ground rules upfront. Everybody must arrive on time. No laptops or mobile phones to be used during plenary sessions. Full attention and participation. And so on… Make sure that the group 'contract' to the rules, even get them to set these themselves. Make them visible on the wall, for all to see. When any of the rules are broken, you have every right to come down hard on the offender.

2) Check him out during the coffee break. Try to get to the root cause of his lack of involvement. Try not to pre-judge and give him the benefit of doubt. It could be that he has problems at work or at home. It could be that he should not be at this workshop at all.

3) Whatever the underlying reasons are, make sure that you SORT IT OUT! The ground rules have been set, you have had the empathetic coffee break conversation. If things don't improve, speak to him again at lunch time and give him the option, assertively but not aggressively, of leaving the workshop.

The bad

1) Try your best not to confront him publicly. This might well have a negative effect on the rest of the course and it could end up alienating you from the rest of the group. The public dogfight would not enhance your professional standing either.

2) Equally bad would be to do nothing at all. If you let things go unchecked, it is likely that his disruptive behaviour would spread like a virus. Some participants might follow suit, others might be frustrated that you were not doing your best to sort things out. The net effect would be a poisonous atmosphere.

3) Even though you will have found yourself with one 'bad apple' in the bunch, try not to focus on him alone, giving him a disproportionate amount of your time, energy and attention. Don't sacrifice 15 participants in order to try and save one who might not be salvageable after all.

The ugly

(Or what ever trainer has been tempted to do, if only there were no evaluation forms at the end or need for ongoing business with the client)

1) When he next uses his BlackBerry, ask him politely to hand it over and then drop it into a fish bowl inhabited by your pet piranha called Disruptive. Tell him that it's Disruptive's birthday and he has always wanted a BlackBerry. Do your best to look a little crazy.

2) When he embarks on yet another side conversation, tell him that you are handing the baton over to him. Give him the PowerPoint clicker and flip chart pen, sit down with the rest of the group, take out your own BlackBerry and casually say: "Over to you buddy, good luck!" Eyes down. Don't flinch.

3) Approach him sheepishly, fall to your knees, start sobbing uncontrollably and beg him to forgive you for being so utterly boring. Then walk out of the room dramatically… still weeping. Don't ever come back.

Mike Barrett and Mark Simmonds are independent trainers, specialising in marketing learning programmes. Barrett can be contacted at bridgebusiness@btinternet.com and Simmonds can be contacted at mark@brandtalk.co.uk