Dominant Ideas

A peer-consultation method for a standing group of four to eight colleagues, in seven steps around one case. The presenter briefly describes their situation and the question they are stuck on (three minutes); the group names which beliefs and assumptions it hears in the story, without advice and without judgement, while the presenter listens and takes notes (ten minutes); the group lists all the ideas named and picks the two or three that matter most (three minutes); the presenter says which ones they recognise as their own and which surprise them (five minutes); everyone in turn names one alternative idea (four minutes); the group discusses the yield for the presenter and for the group (five minutes); and the group looks back at the process (five minutes). The second step is the method: the group says what it hears, not what the presenter should do.

A belief that steers thinking and action without being spoken — and usually without you hearing it yourself, because it feels self-evident. "A good teacher solves this alone." "If I keep asking I'm being difficult." "Calm in the team is my responsibility." Such ideas are not wrong; they are invisible, and that is the problem: whoever keeps hitting the same wall in different situations acts from the same idea in all of them. The group does hear it, because the idea sits in the wording of the story — in what the presenter takes for granted, in what they do not consider. The sentence form the method uses, "I hear: …", is deliberate: what follows has to be something the presenter could believe, not a description of their behaviour.

The seven steps add up to thirty-five minutes with the default times: 3, 10, 3, 5, 4, 5 and 5. With settling into the circle, the transitions and the reflection questions at the end, one case comes to forty to fifty minutes in practice — plan it as the whole subject of a session. Whoever prepares the structure sets the time per step; the player counts down. One step carries the method and keeps its ten minutes: the naming. The short steps around it can be tighter, and with four colleagues the alternatives are named in three minutes. Two cases in one session are an hour and a half with a break.

Four to eight, in one circle. Below four the group hears too few different ideas in the same story — and that variety is the point of steps 2 and 3; above eight the naming becomes a string of separate remarks and the alternatives round lasts longer than it stays sharp. The player allows three to twelve so that a group just under or over the mark can still run, but the method is made for four to eight. Split a larger team into two circles, each with its own case.

Listen and take notes, and not respond — not even when a naming seems unfair to them. The moment they explain why a belief is justified in their case, they are defending, and the group stops naming and starts asking questions. In step 3 they may ask clarifying questions about the list, and in step 4 they say which ideas they recognise as their own, which surprise them and which they reject — without explanation. The trap, the player says, is that they start judging every idea for truth; ask instead which idea steers them most. Recognition is enough; agreement is not needed.

Three things carry the round. One: the explanation beforehand. Before step 2, say in one sentence what a dominant idea is, with an example that is not the presenter's, and that the group says what it hears and not whether it is true. Two: the line in step 2. At every "he should really…" you ask which belief sits underneath; at every description of behaviour ("he is strict") you ask what he believes then. And let the silence stand: the second round of naming only comes after half a minute of nothing, and is sharper than the first. Three: the list. Write the namings on the board, pick two or three together in step 3, and use step 6 for the question that makes the method yield most in a team: which idea does the group recognise in itself? The player does the rest — and as the facilitator, do the structure once as the presenter yourself.

That is the standard mistake of step 2, and it has one remedy: the question "which belief do you hear underneath?". A piece of advice always contains an idea — whoever says "he should ask for help" hears "a good teacher solves this alone" — and after converting twice the group does it themselves. If that does not help, give the first example in the right sentence form yourself: "I hear: if I explain it well, they will come along." And say beforehand that the advice has its place in step 5, in the form of a different idea: whoever waits in step 2 gets their turn in step 5.

In both the presenter listens for a step to what the group says about their situation, but the group says something different. In the Gossip Method the group talks freely about the case — what stands out, what we would do — and the yield is an honest mirror of the situation. In Dominant Ideas the group names only beliefs, in one sentence form, and the yield is a mirror of the thinking behind it. Rule of thumb: Gossip Method for one situation that chafes; Dominant Ideas for a pattern that returns in different situations.

The Incident Method examines one moment with a choice in it: the incident is told without its ending, the group analyses and writes alternatives, and it ends with what the presenter did or will do. Dominant Ideas examines not a moment but a pattern, and ends not with action but with a different way of seeing. Choose the Incident Method when the team wants to know what you do in such a moment; Dominant Ideas when the presenter has already tried everything and it still keeps coming back.

In upper secondary it can, in a tutor group that knows each other, with three conditions: the presenter volunteers, the case is about a situation outside the classroom, and you sit in the circle to guard step 2 — with an explanation beforehand of what a dominant idea is, in their own world. From vocational education onwards and in higher education it is one of the strongest peer-consultation structures for placements, because every training programme has its own dominant ideas and students absorb them unnoticed. Younger than upper secondary it does not fit: hearing the beliefs under a story requires an abstraction that is not there yet. For the class, Four Corners with statements about such beliefs does the same work without putting anyone on the chair.

Yes, and the list of step 3 is even easier online: have everyone type their namings in step 2 into the chat in the form "I hear: …", then the list is already there when step 3 starts, and the presenter sees all the readings side by side. The presenter mutes their microphone in step 2 — listening without responding is easier online than in a circle — and unmutes in step 3. Share the player's screen or give everyone the live link, so every participant has the step, the timer and the case text in front of them.

The method comes from Dutch peer-consultation practice (intervisie) and is described in the Praktijkboek Intervisie by Monique Bellersen and Inez Kohlmann, alongside the Gossip Method and the Incident Method. The idea behind it — that people act from beliefs they no longer hear themselves, and that a group can hear those beliefs in the way someone tells their story — has two sources outside intervision: Peter Senge's mental models, the taken-for-granted assumptions that determine how an organisation sees and acts, and the work of Michael White and David Epston on dominant stories, the way one reading of your own situation makes all the others invisible. The form of the method — naming, not judging; alternative ideas, not an action plan — translates those two into a conversation of three quarters of an hour.