Dodo Loves Marketing

Sooner or later you’ve got to begin someplace. Why not with Your own group? Sometimes, because of organizational constraints, the only meetings you can affect are the ones in which You participate. It makes sense to test these ideas in your own back yard. There is no better place to develop your skills and gain experience. If you’re going to spend valuable time and energy participating in meetings, why not make them more productive and enjoyable? Here are eight steps you can take as manager/chairperson to introduce the Interaction Method into your meetings.

What can you do as a manager

1. Almost every technique here can be employed by itself and should produce some improvement in your meetings. If you feel cautious and want to get your feet wet before trying to swim, continue your role as meeting leader, but gradually introduce a few ideas that seem relevant. At first, you don’t have to tell people what you are doing. Just leap in and do it. For example, you could try introducing the distinction between process and content, and get group members to agree on a subject and process before beginning a discussion. Or start sending out an agenda a day ahead of time. Or work for consensus before resorting to a vote. Or start with any of the hundreds of suggestions. Then, as you can see that they work, try a few more, until you are ready to attempt one of the more major changes, such as having a facilitator run your meeting.
2. Here’s one small but important change you could introduce: Ask your group to sit in a semicircle rather than a circle. Start recording on a flip chart some of the ideas as they come up. Then tear off the sheets and tape them on the wall. Presto —you have the beginnings of a group memory. This should produce a dramatic change in the focus of the meeting.
3. If you have modeled the role of recorder for a while, get someone else in the group to relieve you. At that time, you could explain the basic ground rules: the recorder should not contribute or edit ideas and group members should check to be sure their ideas are recorded correctly.
4. If your meetings are not working very well, there is a more direct strategy that will help to lay the groundwork for all the rest. At the end of a particularly bad meeting, reserve some time for a group discussion about why things aren’t working. Ask people to list some problems they see or fill out our meeting diagnostic sheet. Then ask for suggested changes in the ground rules. You may be surprised how similiar some of the ideas will be to the basics of the Interaction way. If there seems to be some agreement that changes should be made, this would be a good time to suggest one of the strategies that follow. If you can get your group to buy into the need for change, group members will be more receptive to the Interaction Method and will not regard it as another set of restrictions.
5. Tape-record (or even better, have someone videotape) one of your meetings. It’s an effective way to initiate a discussion about meeting problems. Play back the recording and ask people to listen and think about what’s happening. You will be amazed how much you and your group can discover about the unproductive dynamics of your meetings.

   

6. The Interaction Method does involve some major reshuffling of roles and the development of some new skills. If it is important that everything go smoothly the first time your group tries the new approach, find an experienced facilitator (and recorder) to come in and run the meeting. Just the presence of someone new can help, and it’s easier for an outsider to introduce changes into an existing system.
7. Unless you’re in a position to have all your meetings run by an externa l facilitator, sooner or later you and your group are going to have to learn to facilitate yourselves. The most efficient, effective way to learn is to get an experienced trainer to train your group as a whole, beginning by modeling the roles of facilitator and recorder, and then supporting individual group members as they are rotated into these roles. By getting someone else to do the training, you can avoid having to play teacher along with all the managerial roles you perform already.
8. If outside help is unavailable, your group can train itself. It’s really not hard. If group members read this and understand the roles, the self-correcting system will work so that people who make mistakes will be helped by the rest of the group. Once your group has agreed to experiment with a change in the way meetings are run and you are willing to give up the meeting leadership role, get everyone to read this (or explain the basics yourself) and ask for volunteers who want to become facilitators or recorders. Many groups have made great improvements in their meetings just learning by doing.

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