Meeting Jackass

By far the easiest of the meeting animals to spot.

The Jackass can be loud and obnoxious, or maybe they have a comment for every idea brought up at your meeting. Let’s take a minute to reign this meeting animal in and continue keeping our meetings productive.

Setting The Foundation For Meeting Effectiveness

It is always a best practice to lay out the pre-frame. If you know you have this type of animal running amuck in your meeting, be sure to lay out rules for the meeting. Even asking for permission from your attendees to keep everybody on track. This will get everybody in the mindset from the get-go that we are here to create valuable content from our meetings and any derailing will be corrected and you the meeting leader will do what it takes to keep the meeting on track.

Establish Expectation

The pre-frame establishes the expectation that attendees stay on target and that the meeting leader will take the responsibility for keeping the meeting on track. This is best performed during the initiation phase of the meeting or in advance of the meeting if you are managing a meeting that is at high risk of going off course.

Keep These Following Ideas In Mind

The Jackass can be overly critical of ideas and other attendees in the meeting, here are a couple things to keep in mind to ensure a more effective meeting.

Don’t Take It Personal

It’s key not to get emotionally involved. Be sure to keep a clear head. Chances are this meeting animal doesn’t have anything against anyone in the meeting. Retaliating will just cause more problems in your meeting.

Understand the underlying message

The Jackass may have a valid point but doesn’t know how to bring their point across with out being, well, a jackass. Focus more on “what” the point is rather than “how” the point is being said.

Address the issue

It’s always best to take control of an issue as soon as you see it arise rather than

hope it goes away on its own. Talk to the Meeting Jackass one-on-one and voice your concerns.

Meeting Effectiveness – Keep Attendees On Course

During the course of the meeting, if this meeting animal starts to derail the meeting, you can always use the redirects to keep everybody on track.

 

Here are a couple different redirects you might try:

Hard Redirect

A hard redirect is the most simple and efficient way to get your meeting attendees back on track. However, because it is so direct, it might not be appropriate in every organizational culture.

 

Meeting Leader: OK, we’re getting off course, as this discussion is not directly related to our meeting objectives. In the interest of everyone’s time, we need to move forward.

 

The approach here is simple and direct:

 

(a) Interrupt the wayward discussion.

(b) Explain why it’s important to get on track (that is, for the sake of time).

(c) Tell attendees where to go next.

The hard redirect is short but not so sweet, which is why sometimes a softer redirect is in order.

Soft Redirect

The soft redirect follows a similar syntax to the hard redirect but is done in a more sensitive manner. The soft redirect is more appropriate for organization cultures and meeting environments where ruffling feathers is not welcomed.

 

Meeting Leader: OK I appreciate where you’re going with this discussion, and I also know that we’re getting away from the meeting objectives we established. So in respect of our time together I suggest we move forward.

 

The approach here is similar to the hard redirect but is done in a slightly more elegant way.

 

Did these tactics help tame your Meeting Jackass? Do you have stories of a Meeting Jackass in your meetings? If so, how was it handled at the time and was it effective?