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Tools, Tips and Lists
Meetings: Working with Difficult People - 1
The 'latecomer', the 'headshaker' and the 'loudmouth'. We all
experience them at some point in our career. Perhaps when chairing
a meeting or facilitating a workshop. But what can you do about them? Here
are some suggestions:
The Latecomer
Impact:
- Always comes late, makes a commotion and makes the facilitator feel
they should recap the story so far.
- Disruption, delay.
- Do not confront the chronic ‘latecomer’ in front of the group. After
the meeting ask them why they are always so late. They may not think the
session is very important, don’t believe it will start on time, or simply
try to schedule too much.
- The only way to start on time is to start on time. If not, soon everyone
will time their arrival to their personal estimate of when the meeting
will begin.
- Focus the seating arrangements away from the door. When people come
late, do not stop to recap. If they are a key person then stop briefly
and review progress but waste as little of everyone’s time as possible.
The Doubting Thomas
Impact:
- Constantly puts everything down. “It will never work”, “It won’t really
happen”, It can’t be scientifically proven”, etc.
- Creates doubt.
- While it is healthy to have a sceptic in any group, aggressive
negativity is a damper on creative effort.
- Get the whole group to agree to a process of not evaluating ideas for
a set period of time then use this rule to correct anyone who violates it.
- Acknowledge, don’t ignore.
The Early Leaver
Impact:
- Drains the energy of the group by leaving before the end of the session.
- Not part of consensus.
- Disruption, subsequent disagreement, trend setter, will miss feedback.
- Do not confront in public. Find out later why this behaviour is
happening. Maybe your meetings are too long or too loose. Perhaps there
is something you can learn from the ‘early leaver’.
- At the beginning of the session check to make sure everyone can stay
until the scheduled finish time. If the commitment is there, a potential
‘early leaver’ is less likely to sneak out.
- It is always important to have a published start and finish time for
every meeting. It is the facilitators responsibility to make sure this
‘time contract’ is met.
The Broken Record
Impact:
- Keeps bringing up the same point over and over again.
- Closed mind, not creative, difficult to include, delays.
- Demonstrate that the point has been heard and noted several times – write
it on a flip chart or have the ‘scribe’ read out the note they have taken.
Try asking if there is anything else they want to add. If the person is still
persistant then impose the ‘3 minute’ rule to allow the person to have their
say and them move on to other topics on the agenda.
The Headshaker
Impact:
- Disagrees in a dramatic and disruptive manner. They shake heads, roll eyes, slam books shut. It is very disruptive in a meeting.
- Creates doubt.
- Your first strategy should be to ignore them and to focus your
attention on the person talking. You may then want to recognise that
they are doing it (often they do it habitually and are unaware they do it)
by saying, "I see you are shaking your head, perhaps you disagree, would
you like to tell us why?"
- The second approach could be to wait until a break in the meeting
and let the person know that they are being disruptive and that their
actions are just like shouting out loud.
- Eventually you may have to confront them in the meeting and ask them
to stop the behaviour as it is unfair on the others.
The Drop-out
Impact:
- Sits at the back, reads a book or doodles. You are trying to engage
everyone and they are sitting yawning.
- Reduces buy-in, lose benefit of input
- Some people think better while doodling so be cautious. They may
even be structuring their thoughts for a useful contribution. There may
no good reason for them to be at the workshop and they are irritated by
being ‘sent’.
- Often just walking near this person is enough to get them engaged. Or
wait until you have eye contact and ask them a question.
- During a break ask why they are not participating. It may be because
they meeting is not effective, that the topic is irrelevant to them or that
they are preoccupied with something else.
Do you have any comments to make about this list? We would really like
to hear them. Please send them to resource@mentoric.com.
More difficult people and ways to handle them at:
Working with Difficult People - part 2
and
Working with Difficult People - part 3
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