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Dealing with People Who Take Your Meeting Off Track

3 May 2016

Allison read 5 Ways Meetings Get Off Track, and How to Prevent Each One and appreciated Roger Schwarz’s specific suggestions for how to handle meeting participants who derail the group.

Tags: allison read, communication, conflict, meetings

I often facilitate meetings for my clients and also teach them how to run effective meetings on their own. In my post, Meetings Shouldn't be Miserable, I explain why I think the HBR Guide to Making Every Meeting Matter is a tool every leader should have on her bookshelf. Additionally, I encourage meeting leaders to read what Roger Schwarz writes for HBR.org as it is often both wise and practical.

In his HBR.org post this morning, Schwarz explains five ways meetings get derailed and how to prevent them. All of the suggestions are useful, but I’ll be recommending this post specifically because of his advice on how to handle a participant who takes the meeting off track. I find this is one of the most frustrating moments for both meeting leaders and other participants and yet people are often stumped about what to do.

Schwarz explains how to address derailment in a “transparent, curious, and compassionate” way and shares a script that I think would work in many of the stickiest situations. He even has suggestions for what to do when the person improves for a while, but then takes the group off track again. Read this post, and you’ll have a great script in your toolbox the next time you’re running a meeting.



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