Ever been in a meeting that seems to make a turn for the worst? What about when you are presenting an idea or facilitating a group discussion that it is dominated by the person with seemingly all the feedback for the entire group?
You are standing at the front of the room with a smile that is fighting to not become a grimace.
Chances are that you aren’t reading this article because there is someone on the team that dominates the conversation by heaping praise on what a great job everyone is doing and management is brilliant. I’m accustomed to being surprised now, so if you are that rare specimen that has it all together, read on to hear what the rest of us plebes have to struggle with.
The Reality Check
In order to keep up with a fast-paced business environment and global changes, companies need to adapt. The balance is meeting this change without hindering the employee’s ability to work within the new business model or process that increases productivity.
The bottom line is that change is hard for a team. They have formulated their day based on a predictable series of tasks. Monday may look different than a Wednesday, but it is comfortable.
Sometimes it is easy to forget as a manager that people just want to do their job, typically appear busy doing it, and go home.
Although there is a growing group of workers that want to feel personally fulfilled by their work/tasks/project/days, others are just happy gathering a paycheck. Changes attack this level of comfort, they may need to learn a new task, take on additional workload, or change processes.
My worst fear as a manager is when a new computer application has to be implemented or upgrade changes. The old one may be outdated and clunky, but I found out that a sleek new one can be the wrong answer too if button placement and reports change.
What will happen to their typical Monday? It is under threat and someone needs to tell management all of the ways that their big ideal will fail. This creates frustration for you, the manager, because now you need to become a salesman and sell the improvements to the team and design a rigorous training program.
Hence, the loudmouth enters the conversation. Sometimes they are the unofficial leader of the team, other times they are self-appointed.
How do we tell the difference between self-appointed and bringing forward issues others may have been too shy to bring to a larger forum?
Collectivism as a Concept
Despite the constant change that will occur within a non-stagnant company, the group or individual perception will determine the uptake of this change.
Collectivism can be divided in to two categories: institutional collectivism and in-group collectivism. Institutional collectivism is the amount to which an organization rewards and encourages collective distribution of resources and action. In-group collectivism is the behavior and communication (verbal and non-verbal) of the team in terms of pride, dependability, and cohesiveness.
Individualism on the other hand, is when bonds between team members are loose and individuals are only expected to look after themselves and their immediate group of friends or family.
How does Collectivism and Individualism apply to the example provided above?
Getting back to our loudmouth conundrum, there are a few ways to think about this.
In Western society, individualism is at the forefront of both personal and organizational behaviors. Cooperation is not the default method to achieve change in North American organizations. Is that a good thing? Maybe, but that will be a discussion for another article.
What’s important is that when organizations follow the individualistic mindset, there will be some staff that find it difficult to accept this change. For staff members that are only responsible towards themselves, they are motivated to only change for themselves and not the organization.
This causes a lot of work for management because we cannot focus on motivating one employee at a time to change. So, we need to harness the power of the loudmouth in the room.
The Self Appointed
Imagine presenting your change or concept that would result in organization change to a room of direct reports. Someone’s hand shoots up. It is not a timid raise and you brace for what is coming. This person is likely known to you and there are several possible outcomes:
- The conversation is going to turn their opinion in to an equivalent of a PhD dissertation. You won’t be able to get all of your idea out to the group and adequately explain the rationale or process.
“We can take that offline” Keep in mind, I hate this phrase. It is not made for clueless people and may lack tact. I have found, “I want to hear more, but I want to keep this meeting focused. Let’s arrange to speak about that in the future.” It validates to the individual and the group, and doesn’t make the staff member look foolish in front of their peers. Because let’s not pretend that this isn’t a professional way of saying, “stop talking” and everyone knows it. It’s similar to saying, ‘regards’ in an email rather than ‘kind regards’.
Why we need to address it in the moment.
Although the freewheeling of ideas is absolutely beneficial, there are some setbacks that can occur.
Using it to our advantage. Reprogram your meetings so that it is more feedback driven. If you provide the structure to do it, you can let the individual speak when it is appropriate to do so, although you may need to point that time out to them if they start to go long or it becomes too negative. A word of caution, saying “I was going to mention that or address that” when responding to ideas or concerns too many times can make your ideas seem premature or disorganized.
- It’s all negative feedback, but there is substance and merit to what they are concerned with
Congratulations on learning all that you can on how it can fail! Don’t get me wrong, this is absolutely valuable information because the end user is able to give feedback. It must remain constructive, stay on topic, and be relevant. Tangents that are critical to management should be redirected.
I like to take notes when constructive feedback has been given. It demonstrates that you are taking it seriously and optics wise, you appear to want to follow up and take a look at what they are saying.
The conversation could still require steering, but should be more constructive than the previous alternative.
A solution that I have found to keeping meetings relevant is to have staff meetings where unrelated grievances can be heard. I post a blank agenda sheet in a community area and staff members are encouraged to write the items down they would like to discuss as a group. When this was first introduced, there would be bi-weekly 30 minute meetings. Now it will typically occur once a month, or when the agenda sheet is full enough to warrant a team meeting. As a bonus, I keep an eye on the agenda throughout the month so that I can determine if there is an issue that should be dealt with immediately and can keep a general pulse of what is happening in the team.
- It’s all negative, and the complaints are toxic to the team environment
Staff members are going to complain about their boss sometimes. It will either be behind your back, or in-front of you and in a worst case scenario, with an audience.
My worry with the toxicity of complaints that are snarky ‘management is doing this to save money or lay someone off’ is that it sets a bad tone for the office, especially junior staff that are learning workplace culture and professionalism.
I would take the loudmouth(s) aside after the meeting and discuss professionalism and expectations for providing their feedback without being rude or disrespectful to their managers. These staff members can be intimidating to have behind closed doors discussing their behavior, but it’s important to not avoid this because it will continue and can rub off on others.
Photo by Jason Rosewell on Unsplash