My principle for handling meetings where you expect resistance

What to do when trust is shaky and there's an elephant in the (meeting) room

 

I don’t know about you, but here’s what I see.

When there is something that people are unhappy about but which there is no easy fix, meeting leaders move into persuasion mode.

When there is an underlying problem, they focus the conversation on the benefits.

When a decision creates losers as well as winners, the presentation is focused on the wins.

 

They can't hear you

I remember creating helping a tech company communicate the decision that they were centralising all their local offices to London. They were keen to talk about the amazing new head office they were creating and tell people how great it was going to be to all work under one roof. 

I knew for those working in offices 80 miles away in Milton Keynes and Bournemouth, they wouldn’t care how super-cool the new office would be. They would need to process the fact that they now had a 2 hour commute - or would need to find another job. Massive stuff.

I get it. The decision is made so let’s focus on what good and try and get everyone on board.

But skimming over or spinning reality rarely helps. No one buys it and it tell people:

- they don’t care

- they don’t get it

Neither of which were true. But their comms plan wasn't going to help them show this.

Instead, I persuaded the tech company to do this first:

Don’t persuade. Voice reality. 

 

The DNA of high integrity trust building

The more you try and sell an idea or act as if ‘everything is awesome’, the wider the gap between you and your audience becomes.

The more you can show you understand reality, the faster you close that gap. 

In the tech company, people needed to know the leaders shared the same reality, before they could hear anything else they had to say about the new set up.

In your meetings, the ‘bad thing’ may be more smaller and more mundane.

- Something frustrating people that you can’t do anything about in this session

- The belief that something has been done wrong

- Powerful feelings that a course of action has created

- The negative impact that something will have or is having

- The perception that something that is complex is being portrayed as black and white

For each of these I have

- an approach for you to try

- the words to say

Let’s go.

 

Four examples of what to say:

Something frustrating people that you can’t do anything about in this session?

An approach to try: Define what discussions and decisions are on (and off) the table today. 

The words to say: “The decision to X has already been made. That’s out of our hands. What’s on the table today is Y”

Bonus option: address it with the 15% Liberating Structure.

 

Is there an underlying belief that something has been done wrong?

An approach to try: Acknowledge the disagreement around this decision or task

The words to say: “Let’s acknowledge that there are different views about how X should be handled. This group of people have decided Y and this other group of people think that’s the wrong thing to do for this reason.”

 

Has a course of action created powerful feelings?

An approach to try: Validate the feelings

The words to say: “I’m conscious that decision X has created Y feelings which is completely understandable.”

 

Is a decision having a negative impact (or will do in the future)?

An approach to try: Point out the elephant in the room

The words to say: “All decisions create wins and losses. In service of [X goal], this decision will inevitably create [Y negative outcome]”

 

Is something complex being portrayed as black and white?

An approach to try: Show your working (or the LT’s working - you might have to find out) and acknowledge grey areas.

The words to say: “Here’s the goal. Here’s what we considered. These are the assumptions we made. Here’s what we know. Here’s what we don’t know.”

 

There’s a lot of nice language to play around with here.

📗 I’m conscious that…

📗 Let’s acknowledge that…

📗 It’s inevitable that…

📗 What’s on the table today is…

 

TL:DR

Don't persuade, give voice to reality.