Jeff couldn't believe what he wasn't hearing. "One more time," he said, "does anyone know how Michelle's doing on the variance report?" She'd circulated a draft yesterday, but Jeff hadn't looked at it yet. The silence puzzled him — surely someone had read the report by now.
Aha, he thought. Maybe Michelle was reporting bad news, and nobody wanted to speak up, because Nan, Jeff's boss, was sitting in on the meeting. "OK, let's move on. Maybe Michelle will show up later," he said, knowing that she probably wouldn't.
Most meetings have an owner who chairs the meeting, devises the agenda, invites attendees and so on. When the owner's boss "sits in," everything changes, especially if visits are rare. The meeting can become awkward, tense, and ineffective. Permanent harm can result.
Rarely is visiting a
subordinate's meeting
a good idea.
The risk of
disruption is high.Rarely is visiting a subordinate's meeting a good idea. The risk of disruption is high, due to a form of the Hawthorne effect. And if attendees misinterpret the meaning of the visit, it can even disrupt relationships among them.
Here are just some of the risks when power attends the meeting:
- The chair freezes
- In fear of being overruled or corrected, the chair can become tentative, avoiding issues that would normally be pursued or resolved. This is what happened to Jeff.
- Everyone else freezes
- If the visitor rarely attends, attendees might assume the worst — that the chair is in some kind of trouble. Unsure about their own status, they restrict their comments to safe topics. Truth goes underground.
- The visitor hijacks the meeting
- Almost anything the visitor says can give everyone pause, but some visitors actually try to manipulate decisions, or worse, they seize control of the meeting.
- The visitor takes notes
- Since no one in the room can make out what the visitor is writing down, people tend to imagine the worst.
- The visitor leaves the meeting early
- In the absence of real evidence, when the visitor leaves early, many wonder whether someone said something that caused anger or disgust.
- Ambition takes over
- Some ambitious attendees might try to impress the visitor, possibly at the expense of the chair or of other attendees.
- Trouble for all to see
- Attendees imagine, or believe they see, evidence of tension between the visitor and the chair, which afterwards complicates their own relationships with the chair.
Unless your purpose is to shower the chair with honor, find a different approach to accomplish your goal. If it's information you seek, ask for a briefing. If the meeting owner's performance is at issue, have a consultant observe the meeting and work with the meeting owner on any issues that surface.
If you doubt these risks, do this imaginary experiment. Imagine your boss sitting in on one of your meetings — a juicy one, perhaps, where you're investigating a troubled project. How do you think it would go? Top Next Issue
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Related articles
More articles on Workplace Politics:
- Unwelcome Workplace Hugs
- Some of us are uncomfortable about workplace hugs, and some want to be selective. Sometimes hugs are
simply inappropriate. Here are some tips for dealing with unwelcome workplace hugs.
- The Advantages of Political Attack: I
- In workplace politics, attackers sometimes prevail even when the attacks are specious, and even when
the attacker's job performance is substandard. Why are attacks so effective, and how can targets respond
effectively?
- Extrasensory Deception: I
- Negotiation skills are increasingly essential in problem-solving workplaces. When incentives are strong,
or pressure is high, deception is tempting. Here are some of the deceptions popular among negotiators.
- Narcissistic Behavior at Work: V
- When someone at work exhibits narcissistic behavior, others respond. Some respond by accommodating the
behavior, and those accommodations can include special and favorable treatment of the person behaving
narcissistically. That's one place where trouble can begin.
- Self-Importance and Conversational Narcissism at Work: II
- Self-importance is one of four major themes of conversational narcissism. Knowing how to recognize the
patterns of conversational narcissism is a fundamental skill needed for controlling it. Here are eight
examples that emphasize self-importance.
See also Workplace Politics, Effective Meetings and Managing Your Boss for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
- Coming May 8: Antipatterns for Time-Constrained Communication: 3
- Recognizing just a few patterns that can lead to miscommunication can reduce the incidence of problems. Here is Part 3 of a collection of antipatterns that arise in technical communication under time pressure, emphasizing past experiences of participants. Available here and by RSS on May 8.
- And on May 15: Should I Write or Should I Call?
- After we recognize the need to contact a colleague or colleagues to work out a way to move forward, we next must decide how to make contact. Phone? Videoconference? Text message? There are some simple criteria that can help with such decisions. Available here and by RSS on May 15.
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Beware any resource that speaks of "winning" at workplace politics or "defeating" it. You can benefit or not, but there is no score-keeping, and it isn't a game.
- Wikipedia has a nice article with a list of additional resources
- Some public libraries offer collections. Here's an example from Saskatoon.
- Check my own links collection
- LinkedIn's Office Politics discussion group