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Managing Emotional Hot Buttons in Meetings

Guest post by: Jacque Small

Article Overview: Preparation and planning for facilitation of an effective meeting is the first step. You can find resources to guide this process in Masterful Meetings a series of articles written in 2005 on my website under Newsletters.

Managing Emotional Hot Buttons in Meetings

Preparation and planning for facilitation of an effective meeting is the first step. You can find resources to guide this process in Masterful Meetings a series of articles written in 2005 on my website under Newsletters. There are many challenges to face when leading a meeting and how you respond to these challenges will determine whether meetings are highly engaging and productive, or if they are tedious, spiral out of control and become very tense.

Who you are "BEING" as the meeting leader has a huge impact on the energy in the room and the quality of the meeting. Whoever leads the meeting holds the position of power in the room. The more resourceful you are in your role the easier it is for you to lead a meeting, and the more productive the meeting.

This new series of articles focuses on the various external challenges arising in meetings and an assortment of internal challenges that can get in the way of managing meetings resourcefully.

Bad Behaviour in Meetings

Sometimes people exhibit bad behaviour, such as showing up late, taking calls in meetings or missing meetings. This contravenes the Code of Conduct in the Team Charter (Vol. 1 Issue 9 November 24, 2004 on mywebsite under Newsletters). How do you respond in this situation?

The first thing to notice is how this affects you emotionally. Does this frustrate you or are you feeling something even more intense, like outrage? Often when we have these kinds of feelings our Ego manufactures an interpretation about the situation and we over-react to the situation. If this happens, it is unlikely you will respond in a resourceful way.

The best thing to do in the moment is take a deep breath and ask to speak privately with the person afterward. Your conversation can include some of the following questions:

What is causing you to be late for meetings?

What is your understanding of the team code of conduct?

What would it take for you to be in alignment with the team code?

By having this type of conversation you are letting the person know that their behaviour is not working for the team and at the same time you are showing concern for them and are curious about what is going on in their life that is affecting their behaviour.

Domineering Speakers

Another dynamic that shuts down meeting effectiveness is if a couple of people do all the talking and others are quiet. Your role as the meeting leader is to bring out the thinking of everyone in the room.

Engaging people who don't normally contribute requires you to be really present to the conversation in the room and noticing who is, and who isn't talking. Then simply request the following from people who have not spoken:

John, what could you add to this conversation?

Sylvia, we would like to hear your thoughts.

After asking these questions, be quiet and don't let anyone else interrupt these people. John and Sylvia have been sitting on the sidelines listening, formulating their ideas, editing them and re-editing them. The quiet person tends to limit their self-expression due to concerns that their opinion is not important or it will not receive approval. For the patient listener these people usually have pearls of wisdom to share.

Managing people who dominate the room is a different challenge. Often, these are quick thinkers, expressive and have a tendency to exclude other's perspectives. There is a tendency to come from the place of "knowing the right answer" and then wanting to express it to receive approval from other participants.

As meeting leader you will likely have to be more direct to manage this and ask the person who is speaking to hold their thoughts so that others in the room can express theirs.

Once again, notice what is happening with your own emotions. If you are feeling apprehension or worry about managing the situation, then you may be over-reacting to the circumstances or making up a story about how someone will react when you ask them to create space for other's to speak.

Meetings create all sorts of opportunities for people's emotional reactions, including the leader's. Your challenge is to stay as centered as possible in the present moment and manage the flow of the conversation in the room. Breathing is a good strategy in the heat of the moment.

If your emotional buttons get pushed in meetings you may want to remove then, to make your role as leader much easier.

May your meetings flow with ease,

Jacque

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Article Tags: behaviour, effective meeting, facilitation, leading, speaking



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