As the exchange between Michel and Wilson grew more heated, Nicole began to feel more and more threatened. Sitting as she was, right between them, she was directly in the line of fire. Finally, she could keep silent no more. In a tone she regretted even as she spoke, she said, "Will you two please settle down? If you can't, take it outside!"
In meetings, choose
your seat with
strategic goals
in mindMichel and Wilson halted immediately, and although everyone in the meeting — including Nicole — was relieved, Nicole's regret deepened. 'Why couldn't I have kept still?' she thought. 'I wasn't involved and it wasn't my problem.'
Nicole might not have been involved at the content level of the discussion, but the placement of her chair meant that she was involved in the conflict. Her discomfort led her to demand an end to the exchange, and although nothing bad happened this time, such interventions can be risky.
In meetings, where you sit does influence your participation. Since your seat can even affect your status within the meeting, choose your seat with these 12 strategic goals in mind.
- As chair, choose carefully
- If the room is set in classroom or auditorium style, as chair you have little choice — the front is for you. But if the room has a long table, typically, the chair sits in the "power position" — at one end — even though the power position isn't always so powerful. The effective radius of control of any position is only about 10-15 feet (3-5 meters). If the table is longer than that, or if attendees will be discussing issues, the chair should sit in the middle of one side of the long table, for better control.
- If you plan to participate, sit in a central location
- Sitting near the center of action of the meeting gives you an advantage if you want to contribute or influence the flow of the meeting. If you aren't a key contributor, and if you want to stay out of the action, choose a corner.
- Sit next to your trouble
- If you expect hostile or tense exchanges with someone, choose a nearby seat, preferably to the person's right. Sitting in easy line of sight can invite confrontation, especially if both of you are male. Sitting side-by-side is less threatening and can even be friendly.
- Stay out of the line of fire
- If you anticipate that two other attendees might engage in a heated exchange, put some space between you and them. Avoid sitting in the line of fire, and avoid sitting near either one, unless you want to express your feelings of allegiance to one party.
Meeting dynamics are complicated — we all affect each other in ways we might not realize. In meetings, where you stand depends in part on where you sit. Top Next Issue
Do you spend your days scurrying from meeting to meeting? Do you ever wonder if all these meetings are really necessary? (They aren't) Or whether there isn't some better way to get this work done? (There is) Read 101 Tips for Effective Meetings to learn how to make meetings much more productive and less stressful — and a lot more rare. Order Now!
This is Part I of a two-part article. See "Take Any Seat: II," Point Lookout for June 2, 2004, for more.
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Related articles
More articles on Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness:
- Appreciate Differences
- In group problem solving, diversity of opinion and healthy, reasoned debate ensure that our conclusions
take into account all the difficulties we can anticipate. Lock-step thinking — and limited debate
— expose us to the risk of unanticipated risk.
- How We Avoid Making Decisions
- When an important item remains on our To-Do list for a long time, it's possible that we've found ways
to avoid facing it. Some of the ways we do this are so clever that we may be unaware of them. Here's
a collection of techniques we use to avoid engaging difficult problems.
- Holey Grails
- How much of the time and energy you spend in meetings goes to finding the best way? or a better way?
It's of questionable value unless you first agree on what you mean by "better" or "best."
- Let Me Finish, Please
- We use meetings to exchange information and to explore complex issues. In open discussion, we tend to
interrupt each other. Interruptions can be disruptive, distracting, funny, essential, and frustratingly
common. What can we do to limit interruptions without depriving ourselves of their benefits?
- The McNamara Fallacy
- The McNamara Fallacy is the idea that measuring properly chosen attributes of inputs and outputs provides
all we need for decisions about organizational and human performance. And we can safely ignore anything
that can't be measured. It doesn't work.
See also Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness and Effective Meetings for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
- Coming April 3: Recapping Factioned Meetings
- A factioned meeting is one in which participants identify more closely with their factions, rather than with the meeting as a whole. Agreements reached in such meetings are at risk of instability as participants maneuver for advantage after the meeting. Available here and by RSS on April 3.
- And on April 10: Managing Dunning-Kruger Risk
- A cognitive bias called the Dunning-Kruger Effect can create risk for organizational missions that require expertise beyond the range of knowledge and experience of decision-makers. They might misjudge the organization's capacity to execute the mission successfully. They might even be unaware of the risk of so misjudging. Available here and by RSS on April 10.
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