Better Individual Communication In Meetings

“Group thinking” can stop individuals from voicing their true opinions, and peer pressure sometimes means that someone will agree and conform with the group consensus and stay quiet, even if they have something valuable to say. Here are some tips on how to prevent the group dynamic having negative effects in your business meeting communication.

This may surprise you, but the very dynamic of a group meeting may cause its downfall. "Group thinking" can stop individuals from voicing their true opinions, and peer pressure sometimes means that someone will agree and conform with the group consensus and stay quiet, even if they have something valuable to say. They just daren't disagree. The psychology of groups in a meeting needn't ruin yours. Here are some tips on how to prevent the group dynamic having negative effects in your business meeting communication.

1. Respect the individual contribution

Your business meeting should be a 'safe' environment to talk. If someone is unhappy with a proposal, they ought to feel like they can voice their opinion without being shot down in flames or reprimanded by the other members of the group. If you know that you have one or two particularly prickly or argumentative group members, don't be afraid to lay down the rules of respectful communication and ask them to stick by them. Do not tolerate disruptive behaviour - it will only drag everyone else down.

2. Don't deviate from your set purpose

All well organised meetings will have an agenda in place before the meeting starts. Stick to it, and try not to let the group (or an individual) go off on a tangent. Sometimes in business, people have their 'pet' issue that they will try to bring up again and again once they have a captive audience, such as a meeting. Gently steer the meeting back on course if you feel that the deviation is becoming destructive or watering down the aims and purposes of why you met in the first place.

3. Listening is sometimes better than speaking

We've all been in a meeting where people talk over each other, and only the loudest and most persistent person gets heard, because the other contributors simply 'put up and shut up'. Prevent your attendees from being silenced or held back by using a couple of tools: either ask everyone for their opinion round the table, or allocate a button or stick that the current 'speaker' uses to indicate that the others should listen and not interrupt.

4. Use listening time effectively

Some people will open their mouth and literally say what they are thinking at that moment, rather than thinking it through. Hand out pens and paper during the meeting, so that while someone is not being 'the speaker', they can write down the points and queries they think of, before they are asked to speak. This will focus the contributions and make them more succinct and useful to the group.

5. Keep on moving

Once a conclusion or good idea has come about, note it, praise it - but don't forget to move on. There can be a tendency in a group to 'over-agree' and keep on making the same (good) point over and over again. Prevent this by moving on once the group are in agreement.

6. Remember to write as well as speak

If you make notes (on a chart or board) while the meeting is going on, this helps unify what has taken place and what has been agreed. It also keeps the group on track when discussing the current topic. Everyone should be making their own notes, but yours should be a summary of what's going on so far - so that everyone can keep up. Publish the meeting minutes as soon as you can after the meeting ends, so that it's fresh in everyone's minds and comments and alterations will be more forthcoming as a result.

7. Lead by example

If your meetings get known to be effective, concise and enjoyable, where everyone has their say, that reputation will stick. People will stop thinking "Aaargh, another meeting!" and start to look forward to their chance to be heard and put their own ideas and thoughts forward in a focused way. You never know, your boss might be one of them.

Overall, groups can damage individual contributions if these are not nurtured and drawn out during a business meeting. Being valued and listened to makes for the best motivated team members in any business.