When was the last time you were in a meeting and asked yourself after two hours of back and fourth discussions that if you boil everything down the value added in the meeting accounts to less than 10 minutes. For me it was a long time ago, which is not the same case for a lot of my friends and acquaintances whom still face it day in day out.
Why do meetings tend to take longer
Two main characteristics are the main culprit for this phenomenon that is slowing down decision making:
- Lack of trust
- criticism, judgement and blame (CJB)
Lack of trust
The current legacy industrial model (LIM) we are operating from enabled the merger of our identity with our title and materialistic worth. When we come to meetings the most common thought we have is survival. We want to defend our titles and or materialistic worth and when things go sour we feel disappointed and start considering ourselves a failure… With such thoughts, we always look at each member within the meeting as an adversary that will be trying to prove they are better than us. Therefore, our subconscious kicks in and this is where the trust level decreases and instead of having a productive meeting, we will have one that will be very confrontational and it can become in some cases uncivilized.
Criticism, judgement and blame
The goto approach adopted when we do not trust the other, are criticizing, judging and blaming. Next time you are in a meeting use the below table to measure how many times an individual has used criticism, judgement and or blame:
| Names |
John
|
Madeleine
|
Edgar
|
CJB Total
|
|
Criticism
|
5
|
2
|
3
|
10
|
|
Judgement
|
2
|
4
|
5
|
11
|
|
Blame
|
4
|
2
|
2
|
8
|
|
Individual Total
|
11
|
8
|
10
|
29
|
Once the tally is made, I can assure you will be chocked at how many times you and your colleagues resort to either criticism, judgement or blame to prove our worth at the expense of others.
Where do we go from here
We suggest here for you to consider taking the following two actions:
-
Minimize the use of CJB
-
See people as humans, not as cogs in a wheel
For you to minimize using CJB, every time you need to say something in a meeting, try to think of what you want to say and play it in your head while placing the CJB lens. If the alarm sounds off then you should adjust the message before you say anything. The more you practice this new habit the faster you would become at it and the more it gets ingrained in your subconscious making it your default and or go-to reaction.
In order to see people as humans, you need to consider the overall context. When you are faced with a behavior that you are not comfortable with, try to question the reasons behind this behavior. In addition, uncover the need that was not met and which led to this particular behavior. If someone is shouting, it means that he/she/them/they are faced with pressure from someone further up the hierarchy and fearing consequences the behavior was as such. Once we start looking at people as humans, we will develop the capability to view them as whole and not as just a title and or a certain label. A statement we always use following Bob Chapman, look at the others as if they are somebody else’s son or daughter.
Conclusion
Next time you are in a meeting try not to use CJB, instead try to understand the full context behind somebody’s behavior. In addition, look at them as humans and not as cogs in a wheel. These two actions alone will have an impact of the length of the meetings. For more on how to solve small and grand problems for effectively:
- Read about human-centric leading which is the antidote, mindset and toolkit (AMT) https://humancentricleading.net/about/our-approach/
- Check our YouTube Channel where we will post relevant videos.