Watch the Pontificator!
Excerpted from The Truth about Getting Your Point Across...and
Nothing But the Truth www.leadingonedge.com/truth
At the offices of one of my clients there was a fellow who I'll
call "Moe." Moe was your typical pontificator. At any time we
saw Moe he was standing outside of someone's cubicle or sitting
on someone's office, coffee cup in hand, waxing poetic about the
latest dumb decision management made, the idiots that run his
division, or last night's baseball game. Moe had an opinion on
everything and was very free about letting you know every detail
of his opinion. There was no such thing as a five-minute
conversation with Moe. Unless you excused yourself for whatever
reason you were there for at least fifteen minutes listening to
his philosophy. The problem was that Moe was friends with the
person managing our contract so we had to put up with him. Moe
was particularly problematic during meetings. He diverted
agendas, disrupted meeting topics, and wasted tremendous amounts
of time. Despite all this, Moe was a long-time company employee
and understood his job well. But he was still a big pain in the
hindquarters. It's likely that that you've worked with a person
like Moe. You can do your best to avoid him, but there he is,
ready to give you an earful about something. So how do you
handle the Moes of the world during meetings? How do you keep
things on track? How do you avoid frustrating everyone else in
the meeting when the pontificator revs up his engine? The first
thing you can do about the pontificator at your meeting is to
take a good hard look at whether the pontificator absolutely
needs to be at the meeting. Will the pontificator contribute
valuable content and perspective that will add value to the
meeting? If not avoid having the pontificator at the meeting in
the first place. If the pontificator needs to be there, try to
talk with him beforehand and solicit his help in keeping the
meeting moving forward. Spend a few minutes reviewing the agenda
and get him oriented to the meeting topic. If he has opinions or
viewpoints that he wants to air, get him to do it with you
beforehand and try to incorporate some of his viewpoint into the
topic. If he sees that he has been heard and if some of his
thinking is baked into your agenda, the pontificator is more
likely to be a good soldier and not hijack your meeting. If
you've taken this step and the pontificator still feels the need
to take control of your meeting, your next mission is to
preserve the purpose of the meeting, keep things focused on the
agenda, and avoid wasting any of the other attendee's time. It
is vitally important that you monitor what your pontificator is
saying and keep them focused on the agenda item. If he continues
to drift off topic onto his own agenda item ask to have the item
taken offline. If it continues then it is completely within
bounds to cut the person off and bring things back to your
agenda. Whatever you do, don't lose control of the agenda. Your
credibility is at stake with other meeting attendees; losing
control of the agenda means a loss of credibility, which you'll
now need to work to regain. Pontificators don't have to spell
doom and gloom to your meetings. If you can ensure that they
truly need to be involved in the meeting, get them on your side,
and control them when they veer off path, you can still get
things done when they are involved.