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Now Behave Yourself

Written by: Clive Hook

Article Overview: One of the keys to facilitating any meeting is managing behaviour: your own behaviour, as well as that of the meeting’s participants.

Now Behave Yourself

One of the keys to facilitating any meeting is managing behaviour: your own behaviour, as well as that of the meeting’s participants. Managing behaviour is about raising awareness, so that you notice your own and others’ behaviour, and make conscious decisions about it.

Behaviour is what you say or do. It’s not about what you think or feel.

I rate understanding behaviours as one of the most important things for anyone to learn in business. If you become more conscious of your behaviour, then you can make better decisions and informed choices about what to do next.

I use a model developed from Neil Rackham’s Behavioural Analysis work for improving negotiators’ performance. There are four classes of behaviour, and you need to learn to spot these in yourself and others:

• Initiating – Getting things moving, or keeping things moving
• Clarifying – Increasing your own or others’ understanding
• Reacting – Evaluating others’ contributions and responding
• Controlling – Managing the flow of information

Each of these classes has its purpose, and each breaks down into four or fewer behaviours.

Initiating

• Making Proposals - Putting forward a suggestion or course of action
for consideration by others
• Seeking Proposals - Encouraging others to put forward suggestions
• Building - Extending or developing another's proposal
• Directing - Issuing an instruction to one or more members of the group

Clarifying

• Giving Information - Providing facts, data or opinions to others
• Seeking Information - Seeking facts, data, opinions from others
• Summarising – Restating in brief, the content of previous discussions
• Testing Understanding - Establishing whether or not a contribution has been understood

Reacting

• Disclosing - Describing your own feelings in relation to another's
proposal or the situation
• Supporting - Making a conscious and direct declaration of agreement or
support for another's concepts, proposals or opinions
• Disagreeing - Stating a direct disagreement or objection to another's
concepts, proposals or opinions
• Attacking/Defending - Directing attack at another person, or defensively
strengthening your own position. Usually involving explicit or implicit
value judgements about another person

Controlling

• Bringing In - Inviting views or opinions from others, who are not actively
participating
• Shutting Out - Excluding others, or reducing their opportunity to contribute

Modelling Excellent Behaviour

The one person in a meeting whose behaviour a facilitator should be able to guarantee as constructive and contributing to the outcomes is their own.

What to do

Behaviour Labelling

Clearly announce the behaviour you are about to do, before you do it. Most people already do this to some extent, but when facilitating, you need to do it five times more than normal. So say things like:

“Can I make a proposal?”
“Can I check I’ve understood?”
“Can I ask what the group thinks we should do?”
“Let me ask a question before we continue.”

All of these tell people what you are about to do, and also help you to do the
next thing…

One Behaviour at a Time

The most skilled facilitators do just one behaviour, and then they stop talking. They don’t ask a question, and then suggest a range of answers; they don’t make proposals, and then suggest which is the right one; they don’t summarise, and then go on to add their own ideas.

This habit takes a surprising amount of practice. Behaviour labelling works in tandem, because it forces you to think which behaviour you are about to do and then you tend to label and do just one, rather than rambling through a cluster of them.

What NOT to do

Immediate Counter Proposals

The best ‘behavers’ never follow another’s proposal with a proposal of their own. Doing this sends a clear signal of disagreement, and/or a suggestion that you weren’t even listening. Of course, you may indeed not agree, and want to put forward your proposal – so the best behaviour is to use Clarifying behaviour first. You’re doing this to check you’ve really understood what they are proposing, but you are also showing you’re listening. If you’re sure you want make a proposal after that, then you start by using Behaviour Labelling:
“Can I suggest an alternative for you to consider?”

Attacking/Defending

It’s not about scoring points or feeling you’ve won, so this is one to avoid at all costs. There’s always another behaviour you can do. Think of the list as a menu to choose from. If in doubt, call on your Clarifying behaviour, followed by Initiating behaviour: “So can I check I’ve understood? What you’re saying, Dave, is “This is a waste of time until we know all the information”. What would you see as a useful next step for the group?”

If you follow those tips and guidelines, you’ll keep your behaviour as a model to others, and be able to “lead by example”.

Taken from Clive Hook’s forthcoming book, Making Meetings Matter.

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Article Tags: behavioural analysis, behaviours, choices, conscious decisions, feelings, forward suggestions, important things, negotiators, neil rackham, participants, proposal, proposals, suggestion
Referred by: http://www.doyourownpr.com



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