Managing Monsters in Meetings - Part 7, Personal Attacks
Personal attacks hurt people, mar communication, and end
creativity. If they become part of a meeting's culture, they
drive the participants into making safe and perhaps useless
contributions.
Approach 1: Speak to the group
Set the stage for the group to enforce its culture by making a
general comment. Look at the middle of the group and say:
"Just a moment. Let's pause here to calm down. I can tell we're
upset about this. And we want to find a fair solution for
everyone." (Take slow deep breaths and relax to model calming
down.)
After saying this, pause a moment to let the group respond.
Often, someone else will support your request. Then continue as
if everything were normal.
Avoid looking at the attacker when speaking to the group. Making
eye contact acknowledges and returns power to the attacker.
Approach 2: Explore for the cause
Sometimes people throw insults from behind a fence of presumed
safety. You can disrupt this illusion by saying:
"Chris, you seem upset with that."
"Pat, you seem to disagree."
"You seem to have reservations about this."
I realize these statements may sound like naive responses to an
insult. However, such understated responses improve the
situation because they sound less threatening, feel easier to
deliver, and preserve the other person's self-esteem. Realize
the attacker may have viewed the attack less seriously than it
sounded.
These statements also transfer the focus from the target to the
attacker's feelings. And this is what you need to talk about in
order to resolve the dispute.
After you speak, continue to look at the attacker and wait for
the person to talk about what caused the attack.
If the attack continues, interrupt with:
"Excuse me, we need to respect each other. And I wonder what
makes you feel upset over this."
"Excuse me, we heard that. Now, what makes you feel that way?"
"Excuse me, I'm interested in hearing what your concerns are."
Approach 3: Call a break
If verbal approaches fail to end the attacks, then call a break
or end the meeting. This will give you a chance to meet
privately with the attacker, rewrite the agenda, rebuild
communication, and (if appropriate) schedule another meeting
without the attacker.
You could say,
"We seem to be at an impasse. I want to take a break so we can
all calm down."
"This hostility makes it impossible to get any work done. So,
I'm adjourning the meetings. We'll work on this later and then
reconvene at another time."
Note that some people use anger to force others to cooperate
with them. If you adjourn the meeting, you will have to meet
with the attacker to resolve the conflict.
"We need to work on this outside of the meeting. So let's
adjourn."
Use these techniques to restore a safe environment to your
meeting.
Meetings are a forum for finding solutions, making decisions,
and reaching agreements. When you apply these approaches to
disruptions, you will maintain the productive environment
necessary to accomplish your goals.
This is the seventh of a seven part article on Managing Monsters
in Meetings.