Meeting skills

[dmaze]

I should figure out how to make people stop talking in meetings I'm running. (Either "what you're saying is irrelevant" or "let someone else talk".) This occasionally is a problem in the one group I'm responsible for right now; last night could have been a disaster but worked out to be mercifully okay.

Comments

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

I have some professional expertise in this, but unfortunately it's for entirely the wrong age group ;).

But there are a lot of mechanistic things teachers have developed to streamline class discussion and spread it around a bit. Some of them are just not going to work ("you can only talk if you are holding the magic nerf toy", "you have n rocks and you can talk once per rock and then you are done"). But some things center on expectation-setting and might work. That is, you set up front some ground rules for the discussion (eg "I want to hear everyone's point of view, so we'll go around the table and give everyone x amount of time to state an opinion"). Then, if people are being irritating, you can refer back to the rules (see, it's not about you or them, it's a rule!). And it gives you a chance to state up front the reason behind the rule (eg you value everyone's participation). Agendas are an elaborate version of this rule ("see, the piece of paper says we have to discuss x y and z, so, while I value your input and would love to talk more with you at some future time, we simply have to keep moving").

[dmaze]

You can probably guess the nature of the group from the other comments. Doing things like setting a rigid agenda would require me to be more prepared than I generally am, and would ruin the meeting's flexibility. On the other hand, there's one regular attendee who's clearly not of the hive mind. Usually even if that person starts going off, we can get through everything we need to in an hour.

So the problem is typically "move the meeting along", but it's more an irritation than a necessity. It doesn't feel like it justifies Process (TM), and that would ruin the warm-fluffiness for the rest of us.