Professional facilitators try to ensure that participants have opportunities to contribute. But many meetings are run by team leads, managers, and project managers, whose focus is often the content of the conversation, rather than the form it takes. Some meetings, especially smaller meetings, aren't facilitated at all. When groups make no attempt — or try but fail — to ensure that all those who want to contribute can actually contribute, two results occur with some frequency. First, these groups miss out on the contributions and perspectives that are suppressed. And second, the participants who can't participate can become frustrated and withdrawn.
The consequences can be severe for small groups, because of the significance of the loss of access to the thinking and energy of even a single member. If you're a member of a small group or team, or if you attend small meetings that aren't professionally facilitated, what techniques can you use to break into the conversation? Here are some possibilities.
- Know thyself
- Knowing your own feelings is a first step. Given your status, your areas of responsibility, and the topics and issues at hand, do you feel that you're getting a fair share of time in the conversation? Suppressing or denying your feelings elevates the probability of anger and outburst. Acknowledge what you feel. See "Ethical Influence: I," Point Lookout for July 4, 2007, for more.
- Check for rules
- Some of us carry Because everyone has unique
responsibilities, and because
meeting topics do vary, equal
time isn't an appropriate
standard of fairness
in most meetingsaround over-generalized rules that we adopted unquestioningly as children. For example, one such rule is, "I must never interrupt others." It's usually a good rule to live by, except when others don't feel obliged to return the courtesy. Either find a way to propagate courtesy, or transform your rule to something like, "I must treat others as courteously as I can reasonably expect them to treat me." See "Heavy Burdens: Should, Always, Must, and Never," Point Lookout for February 27, 2002, for more. - Know the situation
- Because everyone has unique responsibilities, and because meeting topics do vary, equal time isn't an appropriate standard of fairness in most meetings. The time allocated to each individual depends on the situation. Objectively determining what is an appropriate share is difficult. Deciding that there is a problem requires careful consideration.
- Know the competition
- When some people have difficulty getting into the conversation, competition for time is often a contributing cause. If some participants insist on time out of proportion to their ability to contribute, wait for a particularly egregious incident. Then raise the issue. You're more likely to be successful if you raise the issue in the team's interest, by demonstrating that someone other than yourself has been unable to contribute.
- Ask questions
- In a competitive atmosphere, questions are more likely to be welcome than are assertions, because they're less threatening. And the social credit earned by asking a brilliant question can be just as significant as making the equivalent assertion. See "Asking Brilliant Questions," Point Lookout for November 22, 2006, for more.
Many other tactics also work. Send me your favorites and I'll spread them around. Top Next Issue
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Related articles
More articles on Effective Communication at Work:
- Email Ethics
- Ethics is the system of right and wrong that forms the foundation of civil society. Yet, when a new
technology arrives, explicitly extending the ethical code seems necessary — no matter how civil
the society. And so it is with email.
- Email Antics: IV
- Nearly everyone I know complains that email is a real time waster. Yet much of the problem results from
our own actions. Here's Part IV of a little catalog of things we do that help waste our time.
- Why Dogs Make the Best Teammates
- Dogs make great teammates. It's in their constitutions. We can learn a lot from dogs about being good
teammates.
- Critical Communications
- From time to time, we're responsible for sending critical communications — essential messages
that the intended recipients must have. It's a heavy responsibility that can bear some risk. A strategy
for managing those risks involves three messages.
- Formulaic Utterances: I
- With all due respect is an example of a category of linguistic forms known as formulaic
utterances. They differ across languages and cultures, but I speculate that their functions are
near universal. In the workplace, using them can be constructive — or not.
See also Effective Communication at Work and Workplace Politics 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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