Rhetorical Precision and Clear Communications — Stress Substance Over Style

Rhetorical Precision and Clear Communications — Stress Substance Over Style

by | May 3, 2012 | Communication Skills

Rhetorical precision suggests that words reflect meaning, much like illustrations, symbols, and numbers. Challenging the fixed meaning of words, our languages reflect dynamic qualities and change constantly. For example, today there are more than one million words in the English language. Additionally, each word represents multiple meanings. Therefore, clear communications can be seen as an oxymoron.

Rhetorical Precision — What is an Occurrence?

Was the situation on 9/11 involving New York’s World Trade Center destruction one “occurrence” or two “occurrences”? Reportedly, the World Trade Center was insured $3.5 billion per “occurrence”. A solid example of rhetorical precision, what is an “occurrence”?  Be reminded that $3.5 billion was at risk since the property was insured per occurrence.

By 2005, insurance settlements totaled $4.6 billion, a far cry from what the owners originally wanted ($7 billion). However, clearly much more than what many pundits thought they would recover ($3.55 billion).

Prior to September 11, 2001

Rhetorical Precision and Clear Communications — What is an “occurrence”?

“‘Occurrence’ shall mean all losses or damages that are attributable directly or indirectly to one cause or to one series of similar causes. All such losses will be added together and the total amount of such losses will be treated as one occurrence irrespective of the period of time or area over which such losses occur.”

Many of use would argue that for most people insurance policies do not represent clear communications. Another compelling discussion on this topic and rhetorical precision may be found in “The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature” by Steven Pinker.

Clear Communications Rely on Language Both as an Instrument and an Environment:

Therefore, do not forget in your project, meetings, and workshops to provide a cultural glossary. Similarly, enforce rhetorical precision and ensure consensual definitions and clear communication among your meeting participants. Yet always keep in mind the dynamic nature of language:

  • Some words do not survive
  • Others mutate into existence (e.g., Google, when used as a verb)

Unlike French or Italian, English is not a fixed or static language. The meanings of English words “are not established, approved, and firmly set by some official committee charged with preserving its dignity and integrity.” The “capacity for foxy and relentlessly slippery flexibility” best characterizes the English language.

Clear communications ???

 “Enron’s document-management policy simply meant shredding. France’s proposed solidarity contribution on airline tickets is a tax. The IMF’s relational capitalism is corruption. The British solicitor-general’s evidentiary deficiency was no evidence, and George Bush’s reputational problem just means he was mistrusted.”
— Economist,  (Blog, July 7, 2010)

Hence, the English language in particular represents a mashing of words from most major languages, for example:

National Origin Term Original Meaning
Greek Criterion Means of judgment
Latin Fact An act or feat
Italian Ditto Already said
Malaysian Amok Rushing in a frenzy
Persian Caravan Traveling company
Turkish Kiosk Pavilion
Dutch Cruise To cross
Hindi Guru Weighty grave
Cantonese Ketchup Tomato juice
Arabic Sofa Seat
Japanese Shogun General
Gaelic Trousers Pattern of drawers
North America Herstory Female perspective
Mayan Hurricane Mayan god, Huracan

 

A Rich Heritage Challenges Clear Communications

The English language is particularly rich because it has been provided with a heritage of diversity—a basis in many languages. Most noteworthy, three languages in particular contribute numerous synonyms, or words that mean something similar. Unfortunately, a synonym does not imply pure equivocation. Hence, group consensus may be challenged by the similar, yet different meanings of terms borrowed from Anglo-Saxon, French, and Latin/ Greek origins as shown in the following chart.

Anglo-Saxon French Latin/ Greek
Ask Question Interrogate
Dead Deceased Defunct
End Finish Conclude
Fair Beautiful  Attractive
Fast Firm Secure
Fear Terror Trepidation
Help Aid Assist
Time Age Epoch

 

Dictionaries Alone Do Not Ensure Clear Communications

Dictionaries alone are insufficient because they provide a description of what something has meant and not a prescription of what it should mean. There are eight parts of speech in the English language (not true for all languages). The parts of speech explain the position of a word, but not how it is being used. Consequently, the only way to distinguish among the various meanings of words is by looking at the usage, or context. In language, the context is provided by grammar.

Single terms, without comprehensive context, challenge people. Since the buildings were insured per “occurrence”, the word “occurrence” added nearly $5.0 billion of risk for the insurance companies of the World Trade Center Towers. Similarly, even the term “country” is a surprisingly difficult term to get everyone’s agreement.

US Homeland Security offers 251 choices for the “country where you live”, a number not agreed to by other countries. The Sovereign Military Order of Malta, for example, has only two buildings in Rome but has diplomatic relations with over 100 countries. The Vatican is only four hectares in the middle of Italy’s capital and is but is only an observer at the United Nations. Israel joined the world body in 1949, but 19 of the 192 United Nations members did not accept the Jewish state’s existence. In like manner, your organization may have similar cultural differences when defining common terms like “customer.”

Grammar Does Not Ensure Clear Communications

Oddly enough, context alone does not ensure consensual meaning.  Because, the English language includes contronyms, or words that mean the opposite of themselves, in context. For example, “to bolt” can mean to fix securely or to run away; or, “to clip” can mean to fasten or to detach, etc.

Context and standards help dictate common usage and enable us to arrive at a framework where all the participants share a common meaning. Therefore, a prepared facilitator will determine many of the common usage definitions, before the meeting begins.

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Don’t ruin your career by hosting bad meetings. Sign up for a workshop or send this to someone who should. MGRUSH workshops focus on meeting design and practice. Each person practices tools, methods, and activities every day during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.

Related articles

How to Facilitate Requirements Gathering and Prevent Omissions

How to Facilitate Requirements Gathering and Prevent Omissions

by | Apr 19, 2012 | Analysis Methods, Decision Making

When products or projects are accused of poor requirements gathering, the accusation is normally false. The requirements gathered are usually solid, but risk increases with additional costs because some of the requirements are missing.

To facilitate any type of descriptive or prescriptive build-out of a process or series of activities, and to prevent omissions, use a structured approach to understanding the complete Use Story. Groups have a tendency to forget activities or events that occur less frequently, particularly activities that support planning and control. Therefore, this approach to requirements gathering provides structured support that squeezes out potential omissions. Structure solidifies requirements gathering when relying on a proven method—life-cycle analysis.

NOTE: Requirements can be gathered to understand an internal process or they can be gathered externally to help build new products and services.

Method

Structured Requirements Gathering or How to Facilitate Requirements Gathering (Primer)

Structured Requirements Gathering

Therefore, the developmental support steps for requirements gathering include:

  • Determine the business purpose of the process or functional area. Strongly suggest using the “Purpose is to . . . “ tool.
  • Next is the first activity of the brainstorming method—List. Label the top of the flip chart with “VERB NOUN” and ask the group to identify all the activities that do or would support the business purpose created in the prior step. Enforce the listing and capture them only as Verb-Noun pairings.

Plan➠Acquire➠Operate➠Control

  • Use the Plan➠Acquire➠Operate➠Control life-cycle to help stimulate thinking about what activities may be missing.
  • You should find one to two planning, one to two acquiring, bunches of operating, and at least one to two controlling activities for each business process or scope of work.
  • After identifying the various activities (sometimes called “sub-processes” by others), convert the verb-noun pairings into “use cases” or some form of input-process-output. Build one use case for each pairing.
  • Consider assigning the SIPOC tables (a form of use case) to sub-teams. Demonstrate one in its entirety with the whole group and then break them out into two or three groups.
  • For each activity, build a narrative statement that captures the purpose of the activity, why it is being performed, then:
  1. Continue to identify the specific outputs or what changes as a result of having completed the activity.
  2. Link the outputs with the customer or client of each; i.e., who is using each output.
  3. Next, identify the inputs required to perform the activity.
  4. Finally, identify the sources of the inputs.

An illustrative SIPOC chart is shown below. SIPOC stands for the Source of the input, Input(s) required to complete the activity, Process (i.e., our activity), Output resulting from the activity, and Customer or client of the output.

How to Facilitate Requirements Gathering (Primer)

Mountain Climbing Illustration of a SIPOC Chart

Summary of steps to be included in this sequence 

  1. Identify the activity (i.e., process). Agree on its purpose and how the activity performed supports the purpose.
  2. Detail HOW it is or should be performed.
  3. List the outputs from the completed activity.
  4. Link the outputs to the respective clients or customers.
  5. List the inputs needed to complete the activity.
  6. Identify the source(s) for each of the inputs.

Success Keys

Consequently, use a visual illustration or template to build clear definitions of “requirements”. Additionally,

  • Have the group pre-build all the potential sources and customers of the process and code them so that when you build the SIPOC tables; the group can refer to the code letter/ number instead of the full name (thus substantially speeding up the method). As you discover new sources or customers, simply add them.
  • Then, keep quiet (i.e., ‘shut up’) after asking questions (seek to understand rather than be understood).
  • Write down participant responses immediately and fully.
  • Provide visual feedback, preferably through modeling.
  • Advance from activity identification to the inputs and outputs required to support the activity; then associate each with its sources and clients (SIPOC).
  • Separate the WHAT from the HOW.

Simple Agenda

You may consider using the method described above with a simple agenda that could look like:

  • Introduction
  • Purpose of __________
  • Activities (NOTE: Take each “Thing” and ask—“What do you do with this thing ?”—forcing “Verb-Noun” pairings. Test for omissions using the Plan ➺ Acquire ➺ Operate ➺ Control prompting)
  • Value-Add (i.e., SIPOC)
  • Walkthrough
  • Wrap

Activity Flows (aka Functional Decomposition)

This approach supports building an Activity Flow diagram also known as a process flow diagram. This workshop delivers up the “verbs” or activities that should be adding value (if not, consider eliminating them).

Activity Flows can benchmark or help optimize during business process improvement efforts. Use this approach whenever you need a detailed understanding of WHAT is required to support a process. Leverage the deliverable from this workshop to build “Use Cases” or SIPOCs or process-flow diagrams (swim lanes), helping to ensure that nothing substantial or critical gets missed.

This approach applies structures around complex situations that may look overwhelming. As background material, it can help a team keep focus on the life-cycle of a product or project.

Deliverable

An Activity Flow diagram (traditionally known as Functional Decomposition) with detailed charts of the activities being performed. Consider using ProChart, Visio, or some graphical tool to help build your process flow diagram.

Participants

People performing the work. Should include management and supervisory people within a business area. Use breakout teams to expedite the SIPOC charts when finalizing the detailed requirements.

Visual Aids Used

  1. Definitions for terms
  2. Work life cycle prompt (Plan, Acquire, Operate, Control)
  3. Illustration of your analogy down to the SIPOC (or use case)
  4. If using an easel or whiteboard also consider:
  • Large Post-it notes (for the gerunds or groups [aka processes])
  • Smaller Post-it notes (verb/ noun pairings or activities)
  • For online sessions, consider getting some documentation help. While we know you are stellar, it can get really tough plotting and listening at the same time.

Comments: HOT TIP on WHAT vs HOW—If you are uncertain whether an activity is “WHAT” they do or “HOW” they do it, ask whether it is concrete or abstract. For example, you might “conserve energy” that is abstract and scribes “WHAT” you are doing. HOW you do it is to “switch off the lights” or “dial down the thermostat”—more concrete and visual. Or, WHAT you are doing with your vehicle is “starting” but “turn the key” is HOW you are doing it. Or, you cannot see “acceleration” but you can visualize a “foot on the pedal”.

The figure below illustrates part of the deliverable and documentation. Comprehensive process identification may take a few days unless you are beginning with a narrow scope and small group of activities.

Activity Flows for the Navigating Process Required in Mountaineering

Activity Flows for the Navigating Process Required in Mountaineering

When possible, work with a meeting designer or methodologist ahead of time to understand the questions and grammatical constructs of the model that match well with the tool being used to record the model.

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Don’t ruin your career by hosting bad meetings. Sign up for a workshop or send this to someone who should. MGRUSH workshops focus on meeting design and practice. Each person practices tools, methods, and activities every day during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.

Mastering Active Listening: 4 Essential Steps and 10 Tips for Interactive Communication

Mastering Active Listening: 4 Essential Steps and 10 Tips for Interactive Communication

by | Apr 12, 2012 | Communication Skills, Managing Conflict

Active listening is a crucial skill for effective facilitation, coaching, and servant leadership. Highly skilled active listeners not only reflect and restate what the participant has shared, but more importantly, they also highlight why the participant said it. By addressing both the content and the underlying motivation, active listeners foster deeper understanding and create a stronger foundation for meaningful engagement.

Be sure to reflect not only the speaker’s main point but also the underlying rationale—the ‘because’ behind their message. When done naturally and effectively, active listening serves multiple purposes:

  • Often, the participant is formulating thoughts on the spot and your playback helps them to further develop the thought process. The act of communication affects the content being communicated and shared.
  • Participants experience being heard by others—listened to, since they will listen to you, the leader.
  • Separates the arguments and opinions from the people or contributing participants so that everyone joins in.
  • To reflect effectively, everyone needs to understand the underlying reason(s) supporting each participant’s contribution.
  • You express an attitude of servant leadership—openness and listening.

“Talking is what I do, but listening is my job.”
— Ryan Seacrest

Four Steps Comprise Active Listening

People don’t care what you know until they know that you care. By definition, active listening requires four discrete activities.

  1. CONTACT—Connect with the participant who is contributing. You frequently establish contact with eye contact, open posture, and nonverbal responses that signify acceptance (not necessarily agreement).
  2. ABSORB—strive to take in all aspects behind the spoken message, implicit and explicit and nonverbal “intonations”. Do not judge or evaluate, the positive or the negative.
  3. REFLECT & FEED BACK—mirror, reflect, or give feedback on what has been heard and WHY the contributor claims to be pertinent and valid.
  4. CONFIRM—Obtain confirmation from the speaker that you represent the participant’s message accurately. If not, have the contributor repeat their message from the beginning by restating their viewpoint and the evidence to support it (facts, examples, observations, experience, statistics, etc.).

Feed Back

“To listen with understanding means seeing the expressed idea and attitude from the other person’s point of view, sensing how it feels to the person . . . This may sound absurdly simple, but it is not.”
—Dr Carl R Rogers
The Four Steps to Active Listening - Strive to Reflect Rationale

Without Reflection, there is no Active Listening

 

Providing feedback and reflection is a critical element that sets active listening apart from passive listening. Reflection, which can be both verbal and non-verbal, ensures that listeners not only hear but also understand the speaker’s message as intended. In contrast, passive listening often involves moving from one statement to the next without offering any confirmation or clarification.

To practice active listening effectively, aim to capture participants’ input verbatim and provide feedback using one of these three techniques to confirm understanding.

Three Reflection Techniques

  1. Synthesize—shape the numerous fragments of multiple participants into a whole, working through their stream of consciousness, many times with participants speaking over one another.
  2. Summarize—communication frequently occurs without foresight. Often more words are used than necessary. When you summarize, boil it down to its essence, core message, or causal link. Optimally isolate the key verb and noun components first. Participants rarely argue about verbs and nouns. They frequently argue about adjectives and adverbs (ie., modifiers).
  3. Paraphrase—stating, repeating what the participant(s) said in fewer words. Do not substitute your own words without carefully securing confirmation from the participant. Always preserve the original meaning and intent.

When providing reflective feedback, depersonalize the content with your choice of words or rhetoric. Do NOT say ‘You said . . . ‘  Rather, feedback on their statements with integrative rhetoric such as, “We heard . . .”

Strive for completeness when providing reflection. Next, avoid the general ‘Does everyone agree with THAT?’ by replacing content for the impersonal pronoun “that”. For example, ‘Will you support the claim that torture can be consciously objectionable?’ works better because participants are clearer about the precise content being reflected.

Why Active Listening Works

Active listening is powerful because it fosters relationships and builds stronger connections between participants. By modeling active listening, you set an example for everyone in the room. It forms the foundation for clarity and significantly increases the likelihood of mutual understanding.

When we confirm our understanding of participants’ input, we gain a clearer and often deeper appreciation of the assumptions that shape their perspectives and decision-making. In other words, active listening allows participants to better see the world through each other’s eyes.

Most people understand that listening is a critical skill, but few recognize the subtle difference between standard active listening and truly superb active listening. The key to mastering it lies in focusing not just on what is being said, but on why it is being said.

Active Listening Tip: Challenge the Why

Most listeners focus on what the speaker says. However, our most important active listening tip is to go deeper: listen and reflect on why the speaker is saying what they are saying. Often, participants talk about symptoms (e.g., ‘This hurts’) instead of addressing underlying causes (e.g., ‘I’ve been working 70 hours a week’). To foster deeper discussions, challenge them to uncover the root causes behind their statements.

Active Listening Tip - Listening for WHY

Active Listening Tip – Challenge for WHY

WHY is the Cause (or, the “Because”) of the WHAT

The WHY becomes apparent during personal conversations. You might ask yourself (while someone is speaking to you) why they are telling you about a particular fact or story. Determining the motivation for the speaking is as important, if not more so, than what is said.

Many of us already know this about our children. Consequently, when a teenager says “I hate you,” they don’t really hate you. 

Rather they say it because . . .

  • “*&# frustrated”
  • I didn’t get my way
  • I don’t have the power to influence you or change your opinion
  • “*&# embarrassed”
  • I’m going to hurt you because your words hurt me
  • I feel hurt, don’t you understand?
  • You never let me get my way

The Active Listening Difference

Without trying to become a psychologist, keenly listen for the why, especially when:

  • A workshop participant is angry and/or confrontational
  • A participant waxes on about something seeming irrelevant or just waxes on, and on
  • A participant becomes abnormally active or withdrawn

Our curriculum advises you to confirm what the speaker says, but as the facilitator, it’s equally important to uncover why the speaker made their contribution. Understanding both the what and the why ensures deeper insight into their perspective.

The why holds the key to the most critical message, as consensus and actionable next steps are built around addressing the root cause, not just the symptom.

For meeting participants to own the solution, they must also own the problem. Therefore, effective facilitators drop the first-person singular terms “I” and “me.” They stop offering solutions and quit judging participants’ contributions. Instead, they challenge participants to make their thinking clearer.

1. Hence, with interactive listening, ask open questions to start the information flow:

Interactive Listening

Interactive Listening

    • “And then what?”
    • “Tell us more about . . .”

2. Body language interactive listening remains sensitive to:

    • Direct eye contact
    • Involved posture: Lean forward and don’t fold your arms
    • Use pleasant, encouraging facial expressions.
    • Smile

3. Instead use neutral encouragement:

    • “Hmm”
    • “Interesting”
    • “No kidding?”
    • “Really?”
    • “Wow”

4. Interactive listening permits challenges with add-on comments, comparisons, and analogies:

    • “What makes that different than the (XYZ deal)?”
    • “Sounds like trying to hold off the flood by putting your finger in the dike . . .”

5. Stress clarification questions:

    • “Because?”
    • “How will that impact . . . ?”
    • “Huh?”

6. Conclude comments and conversation with a summary:

    • At the end of the conversation, summarize the important points and ask for confirmation that you understood the other party, not that you necessarily agreed with everything said.
    • “Your position on the matter . . .”

7. Therefore, don’t debate the issue:

    • Focus on understanding the other person’s point of view so that you can provide thorough reflection.
    • Listen intently while the other person talks.

8. Rather, restate and ask for confirmation:

    • “Let’s see if we understand that correctly. We heard that…”

9. Hence, silence or minimal speaking during interactive listening:

    • Silence lasting three to five seconds will encourage the participant to say more.

10. Most importantly, take notes:

    • Note-taking usually honors the speaker and encourages information flow.
    • Take notes, not dictation; stay in the conversation; maintain eye contact.
    • Use their words (verbatim) not yours
    • Remember, if it’s not written down, it didn’t happen.

How Well Are You Listening? The Best Listeners Make the Best Managers

Listening skills

Listening Skills (Photo by rawpixel.com on Unsplash)

Digital technology is great for giving people a voice, through social media, cloud-based communication systems, blogs, and numerous other tools. Yet what value is a voice unless there is an ear that is really willing to hear it? Let’s take a look at how we can all become better listeners and in the process, better managers.

Improving your listening skills

The first step to becoming a better listener is to stop multitasking. We all lead busy lives, but no conversation is truly effective if you’re distracted by your laptop or phone. Close the computer, silence your phone, and offer the speaker your full, undivided attention. This simple act of respect sets the foundation for meaningful communication.

The second step is to practice active listening. Remember that most communication is non-verbal—how something is said often carries more weight than the words themselves. This is why humor or tone can be easily misinterpreted over email or text. Whenever possible, opt for face-to-face conversations, where body language can be observed and understood. Even a basic awareness of non-verbal cues can significantly improve the quality of your interactions.

Lastly, be patient. Some people take time to articulate their thoughts, and it can be tempting to rush them, interrupt, or finish their sentences. Resist this urge. Allowing others to express themselves fully not only builds trust but also deepens the conversation, leading to better outcomes.

Adding value to your business

Employees who feel genuinely heard by their managers tend to be happier and more motivated, resulting in higher performance and engagement. They are also far more likely to share valuable ideas, innovations, and concerns, fostering a culture of openness and continuous improvement.

In today’s increasingly competitive business environment, a happy and motivated workforce provides a significant competitive advantage. When your organization invests in its most valuable asset—its people—it can unlock untapped potential and drive success.

 

In a world where everyone can engage in decisions that affect them

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Lead the Change—One Meeting at a Time

Are you ready to transform how decisions are made, problems are solved, and alignment is built in your organization?

True meeting leadership goes beyond setting an agenda. It requires a facilitator who can navigate complexity, balance voices, and drive toward outcomes with clarity and consensus. Our Professional Meeting Leadership Workshop and facilitation training equips you to do just that—blending human-centric methods with structured analytical tools to foster rigor, inclusivity, and results that stick.

  • Practice live.
  • Get expert feedback.
  • Build confidence that lasts.

Whether your meetings suffer from unclear objectives, disengaged participants, or decision fatigue, this workshop will help you identify the root causes, apply proven facilitation techniques, and emerge as the leader every team needs.

Take the first step today—transform your meetings and magnify your impact.

👉 Click here to reserve your seat now.

#facilitationtraining #meetingdesign

Because every meeting should be a catalyst for change—not just another calendar event.

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Both Facilitator and Meeting Designer: Role of Session Leader

Both Facilitator and Meeting Designer: Role of Session Leader

by | Apr 5, 2012 | Facilitation Skills

The Role of Session Leader

You have a multitude of tasks to perform during the workshop. The success of the facilitator’s effort is dependent upon your skill, knowledge, and abilities as a session leader. The role of session leader includes both the traditional role of “Facilitator” discussed below and the role of “Meeting Designer” discussed below.

You can complete a project without facilitation, but you could also cut your own hair.
—Various

Responsibilities in the Role of Session Leader

Both Facilitator and Methodologist: Role of Session Leader

Role of Session Leader

Context represents the primary responsibility of the session leader, frequently called a facilitator—Responsibilities include:

  • Actively listening to the discussion and challenging assumptions.
  • Creating synergy by focusing on the group and using your facilitation skills to enhance communications.
  • Ensuring that all participants have an opportunity to participate.
  • Explaining and enforcing the roles.
  • Keeping the group on track.
  • Managing the documenters and the documentation process.
  • Observing the group interactions and adjusting when necessary.
  • Questioning to achieve clarity—aiding communication between participants and yourself.
  • Recognizing disruptive behavior and creating positive corrections.
  • Working to resolve conflicts that arise.

Key Success Element in the Role of Session Leader

Your role creates an environment where every participant has the opportunity to collaborate, innovate, and excel.  Observing the team’s progress helps you understand the dynamics of the group and how your approach enhances or detracts from the final output.

The Group Dynamics

  • Ask yourself the following questions while observing the group:
    • How do they communicate? Eye-to-eye contact? Soft-spoken? Yelling? Gestures?  etc.
    • In what order do they speak? Primary, secondary, who backs who up?  Who always gets interrupted?
    • Which participant(s) appears to influence group direction the most?
    • Who are these people talking to? Are they looking for supporters? Do they attack certain people or groups?

Meeting Designer in the Role of Session Leader

The meeting designer details the approach used by the meeting or workshop. Consequently, the meeting designer’s role typically changes throughout the project or product development. For example, in the planning phase, the meeting designer may be a strategic planner—someone who understands how to develop a consensual plan. In the analysis phase, the meeting designer may be a process expert, a business architect, or both. In the design phase, the meeting designer may be a workflow or design specialist.

Meeting or workshop responsibilities include:

  • Helping the facilitator, business partner, and technical partner codify the deliverable and define the appropriate agenda steps to follow.  Provides succinct questions to ask and the optimal order or sequence for the questions to be answered.
  • Perhaps participating in workshops to ensure that the products produced satisfy the expected standards of quality and consistency—namely that others can act upon the deliverable effectively, such as the project team.

The meeting designer’s role is functional and not necessarily the role of an individual. The executive sponsor is sometimes the meeting designer with strategic planning. The session leader is frequently the meeting designer because they have MG RUSH structured facilitation training or experience. The facilitator can also fulfill this role because methods and approaches are generally neutral. Business or technical partners (i.e., project management) are sometimes methodologists. Therefore, look for the person or persons who is expert with the deliverable—who clearly understands the product to build and the approach to follow in building that product.

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Don’t ruin your career by hosting bad meetings. Sign up for a workshop or send this to someone who should. MGRUSH workshops focus on meeting design and practice. Each person practices tools, methods, and activities every day during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.

Related articles

Promising Meetings Will Fail: Four Causes of Meeting Failures

Promising Meetings Will Fail: Four Causes of Meeting Failures

by | Mar 29, 2012 | Leadership Skills, Meeting Support

Sometimes meetings that look promising before they begin, fail unexpectedly. Four primary causes of meeting failures deserve your attention. They sneak up on groups, ill-prepared to anticipate or mitigate them. Participants need your awareness about these meeting failures as their meeting leader and facilitator.

First Cause of Meeting Failures: The Problem with Solving

First, what is a “promising meeting”? When the session leader has confirmed a solid and necessary deliverable from the meeting participants but fails to develop an appropriate method or agenda, most meetings will flounder or fail. North Americans, in particular, are subject to an “over-confidence” bias. They show up expecting to develop the right method, ask the right questions, or conduct the appropriate analysis “on the fly”. Some have called this meeting syndrome, “solving”. “Solving” dominates the causes of meeting failures.

Second Cause of Meeting Failures: Over-confidence bias

meeting failure

Meeting Failure Causes

The same over-confidence bias causes many to skip the analysis and jump immediately from the problem to the solution. As a result, they frequently ask pertinent but impossible questions akin to “How do you solve global hunger?” or “How do you boil the ocean?”. While the participants may have a vested interest in solving the hunger issue or resolving a technical issue, the session leader has not made it easy for them to arrive at a consensual solution because the method has failed to break it down into manageable pieces.

Third Cause of Meeting Failures: Question Precision

One of the surest ways to get a group of vested participants to go silent is to ask a meaningful question that is so broad as to be unanswerable.

Participants become numb about how to respond. Note the “hunger” problem as an example. Hunger remains a function of food development, food distribution, food storage, nutrition absorption, etc. By narrowing the scope a bit and providing a focused question, a facilitator can make it a lot easier for a group to respond, such as “How could we improve food storage capacity in Somalia?” With a precise question, and narrower scope (i.e., Somalia versus the entire world), it becomes much easier to provide answers such as “converts those old rail cars” or “use the abandoned mine shafts”.

Fourth Cause of Meeting Failures: Question Sequencing

Not only should the overriding question be broken into discrete questions, but the questions need to be sequenced as well. For example, the big question “So, what is the marketing plan for 20xx?” is better served with discrete discussions around segmentation, targeting, positioning, messaging, media, etc. Most marketing experts suggest identifying the target audience before going further into the analysis or plan development.

Likewise, when building a home, a residential architect needs to know “What color do you want the grout to be in the secondary bathroom?” That type of question, however, while demanding an answer, is probably best saved for the end of development, after agreeing on the purpose of the home, location, size, traffic flow, etc. These additional topical areas become natural agenda steps that increase the robustness of the method behind the meeting, also known as an agenda.

No one wants another meeting, especially a non-productive session.

To ensure that your meetings are anticipated, respected, and more productive than the meeting your participants came from or the meeting they are headed to next, embrace the following suggestions to correct why meetings fail.

Why Meetings Fail

Meetings Fail — Here’s How to Stop It

Start on Time

Do not penalize people who are on time by waiting for people who are late. Few irritants get a meeting started poorly than a wavering start time. Ask participants to notify you in advance if they might be late. If they arrive late, do NOT consume others’ time by reviewing what has transpired. Instead, pair them off with someone else and ask them to go in the hallway to provide an update.

Document

If it was not documented then it did not happen. Meetings without documentation suggest that nothing worthwhile happened. Optimally, add context and rationale for all topics and decisions made. Take any decision to a steering team or decision review board and their first challenge will be “Why?” Carefully leave a paper trail for the reasons.

Time Sensitivity

While participants should typically share a few laughs, real meeting success is judged by finishing on time, or better yet, ahead of schedule. Be careful about taking on strategic issues during a brief meeting, they should be logged and set aside for a longer forum. Do not allow participants to go into too much detail, that others find irrelevant. They can build and provide concrete details on their own. Remember too, that ‘standing’ meetings (i.e., meetings held regularly at the same time every week) were originally intended for participants to stand and not sit. By the way, ‘standing’ meetings are completed much faster than ‘sitting’ meetings.

Agenda Control

Stay vigilant about following the agenda. In other words, stay in scope. Sometimes arguments about the project, the organization, or other issues beyond control dominate a meeting. Participants talk about what they want to give rise to the concept of people “who have their own agenda.” Stick to your agenda and monitor progress carefully.

Visual Support

Stimulate participants and discussion with the proper use of easels and supplementary visuals. Do not however rely on a deck of slides. People can read and challenge slide decks on their own, they do not need a meeting for that. Build slides that share causal links and supplement them with visuals that stimulate. A visually dynamic meeting offers ‘sex appeal’ compared to others.

Secure Feedback

Get an audible agreement, beginning with ground rules. Document decision points, preferably on large-scale poster-size paper or whiteboards. As you build consensus, emphasize that consensus implies a quality decision that ALL participants can support, but NOT one that necessarily makes everyone happy. Consensus is something they can live with, and not disrupt in the hallways after the meeting.

Careful Review

Upon conclusion, carefully review and confirm that everyone understands the next steps. If the meeting changes nothing, why meet? Make the change or assignments visible and consider using a RASI chart for support. For any and all follow-up meeting(s), confirm future dates, times, and locations. Most importantly, conclude on time, or preferably, early. Before they depart, secure additional feedback on what you could have done to make the meeting even more successful. For solid and anonymous feedback, use our Post-it© note approach combined with the T-chart called Plus-Delta. They provide more meaningful input than offered openly in public. Participants do not want to “embarrass” you with their criticism.

Why do meetings fail? By following the suggestions above you can circumvent the three most common complaints about meetings, namely:

  1. Disorganized (i.e., uncertain output or outcome)
  2. Length (ie, wasted time)
  3. Predetermined decisions (meetings are a poor form of persuasion)

Convert Why Meetings Fail Into Meeting Success

The lesson to be learned? Break it down. Speak with experts and study additional reference material. Take any significant reason or question behind a meeting and determine the various questions that could be answered in support. Find the natural groupings and create a topical flow. Now you have at least a basic agenda that will help prevent you from asking such a broad question that it could lead to meeting silence or even failure.

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Don’t ruin your career by hosting bad meetings. Sign up for a workshop or send this to someone who should. MGRUSH workshops focus on meeting design and practice. Each person practices tools, methods, and activities every day during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.