A recent conversation reminded me about some consistent concerns that I’ve heard expressed at different companies over the years. The concerns relate to the fact that that not all attendees are participating during meetings. They’re often expressed as comments like “if everyone doesn’t participate, the best idea may not come out” or “people being quiet means the biggest risks won’t be uncovered”. While that’s absolutely possible, there are actually a lot of interesting reasons why all attendees might not participate in any given meeting. The usual suspects include:
- Lack of domain knowledge
- Cultural differences
- Intimidation from people in the room
- Insecurity about speaking up
- Poor meeting mechanics
- Mandated meeting attendance
- Unresolved conflicts
What I’ve noticed is that when I facilitate a meeting and ask the attendees after the meeting if everyone participated, there usually are some surprising differences in answers. The most surprising one to me has always been that some people believe everyone participated, when in reality they didn’t. Why would they perceive that? One answer that often rings true is that it’s because that person feels the meeting was a success. Hey, if I got what I wanted out of it what does it matter. In my experience, when a person thinks everyone participated, but not everyone actually did it’s usually because that person didn’t pay attention. Granted, not everybody needs to pay attention to that degree in every meeting, but if you’re facilitating a meeting it’s worth paying attention to. If we’re supposed to be on self-organizing teams that have been trained on how to make decisions by consent, lack of participation shouldn’t be happening.
How can we check? How about playing a game? It’s called String Speak. It’s allows a team to visualize the actual path a conversation in a group as it’s going on. It reveals “where the conversation started”, “who participated”, “if the conversation was hogged”, and “where the conversation ended”. It’s like having a vapor trail for a conversation. It’s especially helpful for Scrum Masters as it can allow them to see the impact that facilitation has on conversations.
Here’s a video of a session I ran when I developed the game back on 2012.
The game is a lot of fun and creates some interesting ah-ha moments for people. All you need is a team, a ball of string, and a conversation.
Thanks for reading.
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