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Monsters at Work: Is Everyday Like Halloween

Guest post by: Sylvia Lafair

Article Overview: There is a crazy cast of characters that lie beneath the crisp slacks, power suits, bright white shirts and attractive coordinated attire that make up the outer appearance of the executives, high potentials, seasoned veterans, and budding stars sitting around the meeting table.

Monsters at Work: Is Everyday Like Halloween

We all wear masks at times. Some are smiley masks, others are snarly masks.

There is a crazy cast of characters that lie beneath the crisp slacks, power suits, bright white shirts and attractive coordinated attire that make up the outer appearance of the executives, high potentials, seasoned veterans, and budding stars sitting around the meeting table.

Here are a few of the masks to look for, the behaviors that subvert meetings and cause an avalanche of behind closed door frustrated whispered meetings after the official meeting is over:

• Super achievers: they believe everyone is there to hear their pearls of wisdom, they are the ones with most, if not all of the answers, they are often rude by ignoring anyone else’s ideas, and if other ideas are brought forward, they will counter with letting everyone know they already had the answer way before this meeting.
• Procrastinators: they will always have to wait till after the meeting to find the resources, never thinking they would be expected to have their part of the project ready to discuss in a timely fashion. They often move to unrelated topics to divert attention to the fact they have not completed their part and they have fabulous excuses like “the dog ate my computer”!
• Pleasers: They are amazingly flexible, able to bend over backwards to ingratiate themselves to the facilitator, the power broker, their boss. There are rarely true feelings and thoughts and they only know the word, “yes” and their mantra is “I agree with you”. They are very predictable and waste time rather than add content that will forward the agenda.
• Persecutors: You can expect lots of negativity in their sentences. They judge and blame and when that isn’t enough to shame other people to silence they become more energetic, pound their hand on the table and attack. They would rather be right than come to consensus. They are always on the lookout for the weak victim personalities that are the easiest to discount and discard so they can be in charge.

If you are facilitating a meeting it is crucial for you to learn the patterned responses that are at the core of these masked behaviors. You, as a facilitator or emerging facilitator can decipher the verbiage and counter to help people change the habit patterns to their healthy opposites.

You then become a leader of repute and better yet, you can then lead meetings where the masks are off and the people in the room can be open, have real fun while creating and solving, and there can be the aspect we all yearn for, team collaboration.

So, use this Halloween season to become an expert at pattern awareness, how to handle conflict resolution, and develop your team to its highest potential. I believe when masks are dropped everyone can be seen as beautiful or handsome. Real is better. So, masks off!

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Article Tags: halloween, high potentials, meeting table, monsters, outer appearance, slacks



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