Interacting In The Meeting

By admin

Once the meeting starts, we get a chance to discover the dynamics of the meeting. It’s always good not to be the first person to speak, because the dynamics need to be analyzed for us to be effective for the duration. In the course of the first couple of discussions, we will discover many things about the meeting’s dynamics, such as the following:

1. How strong a chairperson we have, whether or not he or she will be able to maintain control over the crowd or will allow interruptions from participants or outside influences such as telephone calls

2. Who the dominators or active participants will be—those who wish to be heard and seen and will strive to assert their positions strongly

3. Who the passivists or inactive participants will be—those who will just sit there with little or no desire to interact

4. Who the participators, or genuinely interested parties are—those who will participate, ask questions, and actually care about the answers (probably a minority)

Armed with an understanding of these dynamics and these participants, and the knowledge that we probably have many variations of these personalities as well as diverse motivations for being there (as discussed in Part II for presentation attendees), we are ready for the dynamics. Once we determine the strength of the chairperson, and pick out the dominators, passivists, and participators, we are ready to play this crowd like a banjo to get the tune we want to hear.

We then do a little preliminary bridge building, as the first few discussions are going on. By bridge building, I mean getting some liaisons going with other participants. At this point, we participate just a little bit, to gain these liaisons. For example, when a dominator is speaking, we will agree with a few of his or her points. Dominators are sometimes insecure at heart, and use their domineering styles to compensate. They also like to build empires, even in meetings, by finding kindred participants. By agreeing with a dominator, we can establish an ally for later use. Another example is when a participant or passivist is being hammered by a dominator, and we come to their rescue and support their points. This gains us another ally. We might build only a few or several of these bridges, as the situation permits, but we must always do this.

Then, when we are presenting our views, we use the bridges we built to escape from problems or to guide the direction of the meeting. Now this is gamesmanship and manipulation, and in general I prefer not to do it; rather, I prefer simply to be legitimate and straightforward. We can present our ideas and interact primarily with those who want to gain better understanding or who require our information for their own needs. In other words, we can deal mostly with legitimate participators. However, if we want a quick acknowledgment, we may fire a question like, “Don’t you agree?” to a passivist, especially one with whom we have a bridge. We will typically get a positive acknowledgment. If we are being harassed by a dominator, he or she usually will not be the one with whom we have a bridge, so that cuts down on the possibilities. We can always deal with this person directly, especially if our points are indeed correct. However, if we want a rest or wish to see some good sport, we can turn to a dominator with whom we have a bridge, and say something like, “Do you see my point?” Most dominators dearly love to engage other dominators in a battle of words, so once our dominator agrees with us and opposes the one who is bugging us, we just let them have at it for a while and take a break. Generally, they will tire one another out, and we can easily slip back in and continue, much to the relief of the crowd at large.

There are lots of other ways to build bridges and use them later, and we cannot possibly cover all of them. The point here is to observe people in action, decide what category they fall into, build some bridges, and use them to our advantage as the meeting continues. Once we start doing this, we rapidly become skilled at it, and it comes almost naturally. It’s not at all a difficult thing to do, as most of us are already doing it, but probably have not realized it fully. It makes the dynamics of a meeting a lot of fun, as we note the categories and test our bridge-building and using skills. We just have a good time with it.