November 26, 2003	Volume 3, Issue 48
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When Power Attends the Meeting

by Rick Brenner

When the boss or supervisor of the chair of a regular meeting "sits in," disruption almost inevitably results, and it's usually invisible to the visitor. Here are some of the risks of sitting in on the meetings of your subordinates.

eff couldn't believe what he wasn't hearing. "One more time," he said, "does anyone know how Michelle's doing on the variance report?" She'd circulated a draft yesterday, but Jeff hadn't looked at it yet. The silence puzzled him — surely someone had read the report by now.

Aha, he thought. Maybe Michelle was reporting bad news, and nobody wanted to speak up, because Nan, Jeff's boss, was sitting in on the meeting. "OK, let's move on. Maybe Michelle will show up later," he said, knowing that she probably wouldn't.

Most meetings have an owner who chairs the meeting, devises the agenda, invites attendees and so on. When the owner's boss "sits in," everything changes, especially if visits are rare. The meeting can become awkward, tense, and ineffective. Permanent harm can result.

Rarely is visiting a
subordinate's meeting
a good idea.
The risk of
disruption is high.Rarely is visiting a subordinate's meeting a good idea. The risk of disruption is high, due to a form of the Hawthorne effect. And if attendees misinterpret the meaning of the visit, it can even disrupt relationships among them.

Here are just some of the risks when power attends the meeting:

The chair freezes

In fear of being overruled or corrected, the chair can become tentative, avoiding issues that would normally be pursued or resolved. This is what happened to Jeff.

Everyone else freezes

If the visitor rarely attends, attendees might assume the worst — that the chair is in some kind of trouble. Unsure about their own status, they restrict their comments to safe topics. Truth goes underground.

The visitor hijacks the meeting

Almost anything the visitor says can give everyone pause, but some visitors actually try to manipulate decisions, or worse, they seize control of the meeting.

The visitor takes notes

Since no one in the room can make out what the visitor is writing down, people tend to imagine the worst.

The visitor leaves the meeting early

In the absence of real evidence, when the visitor leaves early, many wonder whether someone said something that caused anger or disgust.

Ambition takes over

Some ambitious attendees might try to impress the visitor, possibly at the expense of the chair or of other attendees.

Trouble for all to see

Attendees imagine, or believe they see, evidence of tension between the visitor and the chair, which afterwards complicates their own relationships with the chair.

Unless your purpose is to shower the chair with honor, find a different approach to accomplish your goal. If it's information you seek, ask for a briefing. If the meeting owner's performance is at issue, have a consultant observe the meeting and work with the meeting owner on any issues that surface.

If you doubt these risks, do this imaginary experiment. Imagine your boss sitting in on one of your meetings — a juicy one, perhaps, where you're investigating a troubled project. How do you think it would go?  Top    Next Issue

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More articles on Workplace Politics:

Workplace Politics Is Not a Game

We often think about "playing the game" — either with relish or repugnance. Whatever your level of skill or interest, you'll do better if you see workplace politics as it is. It is not a game.

Illegal Dumping

To solve problems, we change existing policies or processes, or we create new ones. We try to make things better and sometimes we actually succeed. More often, we create new problems — typically, for someone else.

Devious Political Tactics: The Three-Legged Race

The Three-Legged Race is a tactic that some managers use to avoid giving one person new authority. Some of the more cynical among us use it to sabotage projects or even careers. How can you survive a three-legged race?

Plopping

When we offer a contribution to a discussion, and everyone ignores it and moves on, we sometimes feel that our contribution has "plopped." We feel devalued. Rarely is this interpretation correct. What is going on?

When Leaders Fight

Organizations often pretend that feuds between leaders do not exist. But when the two most powerful people in your organization go head-to-head, everyone in the organization suffers. How can you survive a feud between people above you in the org chart?

See also Workplace Politics, Effective Meetings and Managing Your Boss for more related articles.

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When we talk, listen, send or read emails, read or write memos, or when we leave or listen to voice mail messages, we're communicating person-to-person. And whenever we communicate person-to-person, we risk being misunderstood, offending others, feeling hurt, and being confused. There are so many ways for things to go wrong that we could never learn how to fix all the problems. A more effective approach avoids problems altogether, or at least minimizes their occurrence. In this very interactive program you'll learn a model of inter-personal communications that can help you stay out of the ditch. In those moments of intense involvement, when we're most likely to slip, you'll have a new tool to use to keep things constructive. Read more about this program. Here are some upcoming dates for this program:

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On 14 December 1911, four men led by Roald Amundsen reached the South Pole. Thirty-five days later, Robert F. Scott and four others followed. Amundsen had won the race to the pole. Amundsen's party returned to base on 26 January 1912. Scott's party perished. As historical drama, why this happened is interesting enough. Lessons abound. Among the more important lessons are those that demonstrate the power of the agile approach to project management and product development. Read more about this program. Here's an upcoming date for this program:

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Most of us can assess technological risks, but risks related to human behavior tend to resist our best efforts. This session provides a framework for evaluating risks related to the behavior of individuals, teams, organizations and people generally. Human-centered risk differs from technological or market risk, because objective evaluation requires acknowledging personal and organizational limitations and failures. Since some of those limitations and failures might apply to the people assessing the risks, or to their superiors, there's a tendency to deny them or to explain them away. Our approach examines capability, organization, context, risk mitigation, and workplace politics. It has tools for guiding the assessment and management of human-centered risk, and we show how to extend these tools to suit your situation. You'll learn how to identify sources of risk in human behavior; recognize systemic and individual barriers to acknowledging risk; assess the effects of organizational turbulence; determine the risk associated with inappropriate internal risk transfer; estimate the effects of team dysfunction, toxic conflict and turnover; and measure the impact of workplace politics. Read more about this program. Here's an upcoming date for this program:

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The Race to the South Pole: Ten Lessons for Project Managers

On 14 December 1911, four men led by Roald Amundsen reached the South Pole. Thirty-five days later, Robert F. Scott and four others followed. Amundsen had won the race to the pole. Amundsen's party returned to base on 26 January 1912. Scott's party perished. As historical drama, why this happened is interesting enough, but to project managers, the story is fascinating. Lessons abound. Read more about this program. Here's an upcoming date for this program:

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There's a lot more to running an effective meeting than having the right room, the right equipment, and the right people. With meetings, the whole really is more than the sum of its parts. How the parts interact with each other and with external elements is as important as the parts themselves. And those interactions are the essence of politics for meetings. This program explores techniques for leading meetings that are based on understanding political interactions, and using that knowledge effectively to meet organizational goals. Read more about this program. Here's an upcoming date for this program:

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