The Definitive Book of Body Language

Seating Arrangements - Where to Sit, and Why

the highest recall about what was being discussed. Those who

participated the least sat in the back or to the sides, tended to

be more negative or confrontational and had the lowest recall.

The rear positions also allow a delegate a greater opportunity

to doodle, sleep or escape.

An Experiment in Learning

We know that people who are most enthusiastic to learn
choose to sit closest to the front and those who are least enthu-
siastic sit in the back or to the sides. We conducted a further
experiment to determine whether the Funnel Effect was a
result of where people chose to sit, based on their interest in
the topic, or whether the seat a person sat in affected their par-
ticipation and retention. We did this by placing name cards on
delegates' seats so they could not take their usual positions.
We intentionally sat enthusiastic people to the sides and back
of the room and well-known back-row hermits in the front.
We found that this strategy not only increased the participa-
tion and recall of the normally negative delegates who sat up
front, it decreased the participation and recall of the usually
positive delegates who had been relegated to the back. This
highlights a clear teaching strategy - if you want someone
really to get the message, put them in the front row. Some pre-
senters and trainers have abandoned the 'classroom style'
meeting concept for training smaller groups and replaced it
with the 'horseshoe' or 'open-square' arrangement because
evidence suggests that this produces more participation and
better recall as a result of the increased eye contact between all
attendees and the speaker.

Getting a Decision Over Dinner

Bearing in mind what has already been said about human ter-
ritories and the use of square, rectangular and round tables,