Aha! Consulting
  • Home
  • About Us
    • Services >
      • Facilitation
      • Engagement
      • Strategy & Change
  • Training and Events
    • Upcoming events
    • Organisational Training
    • Engagement Training
    • Resilience Training
  • Blog
  • Resources
    • Keypoint System Hire
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy
  • Unified Dialogue

Going around in circles while sitting in your seat

18/3/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture
Written by: Joel Levin

Have you ever walked into a meeting and felt like it was groundhog day, a discussion that has been had and was set to be had again?
The interesting thing about people in groups is that they can tend to get into ‘groupthink’ or ‘follow-the-leader mentality’. Through our schooling system we have been very well trained to sit, be quiet and listen to the person at the front of the room. We also learnt how to repeat recalled information and to assess our contribution against the rest of the class.  These traits are important for mass schooling and crowd control but can leave some people fearful of developing and expressing their own thoughts and ideas. From a process point of view there are a couple of other reasons for going around in circles:

1) The framing of the meeting has not adequately captured the intent;  2) The people in the meeting are not willing to go deeper

This article will deal with (1) and a follow-up article will look at (2).

One simple technique for facilitators or leaders of groups is to consider the typical meeting agenda. Before we do that let’s try an experiment…

What comes to mind when I say ‘rabbit’ …in a room full of people it is likely we will get some similar responses and some varied responses as well. What comes to mind when I say  ‘what will we feed the rabbit today?” ….we may get some variance but we are much closer to the key thread of the conversation.

Back to agendas … Typical agenda items have a static single word (e.g. Finance). These give people very little to focus on before the meeting and very little way to check if they have dealt with the issue during the meeting. The result is that different people have different interpretations as to what the issue is and whether it has been dealt with.  The result is increased pressure on the chair to keep it all on track. 

TIP: Put the agenda item into a question (e.g.: Are we on track to meet our quarterly target?). This approach gives the group a very specific focus before the meeting. Any pre-reading now has a purpose and is a search for information to answer the question.  Putting the agenda item into a question also tells the group when the question is answered and it is time to move on.  

NOTE: Any tool can be manipulated, so you need to be clear that the way you framed the question ensures you are not trying to get the answer you want, e.g.: ‘How quickly can we implement the new program approach?’ If you are still deciding what approach you are going for, then this is a leading question.

The interesting thing about using questions is that your brain cannot help but look for answers …  if you don’t believe me, I'm wondering ‘what was the key insight for you in this article?’

0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    April 2020
    March 2020
    December 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    September 2018
    May 2018
    May 2017
    March 2017
    June 2016
    April 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015

    View my profile on LinkedIn

    Categories

    All
    Decision Making
    Engaging Communities
    Faciliation
    Human Relationships
    IAP2
    Joel Levin
    Leadership In Engagement
    Self Care
    Vivian Garde

    RSS Feed

Picture
PO Box 2031 
Yokine South Western Australia 6060

Picture
+61 8 9443 9474 
Privacy Policy 
Payment Terms and Conditions 
ABN: 377 266 15805
STAY  CONNECTED
Submit

Events & Updates

Sign up for event updates and occasional news.
Subscribe
Picture
Contact Us
Copyright Aha! Consulting 2015
BACK TO TOP