
Derailment of Northeast Illinois Regional Commuter Railroad Corporation (Metra) Train 504 in Chicago, Illinois, on September 17, 2005. Train derailments provide a useful metaphor for meeting hijackings, if we consider the train as the meeting, and the track as the agenda. Contributing causes to hijackings (derailments) can be found in the agenda (the tracks), the way the meeting is facilitated (the engineer's operation of the train), the attendee list (the passengers or freight), or sabotage by outside parties. Photo courtesy U.S. National Transportation Safety Board.
Meeting hijacking is widely defined as the result of the behavior of an individual who insists that the meeting participants discuss his or her preferred topic, instead of whatever is currently on the agenda. Although that situation could be a hijacking, the problem is both subtler and more complex.
For our purposes, we define a meeting hijacking as any attempt, in defiance of group norms, to take the meeting in a direction other than that determined by agreed-upon processes.
In the next issue, we'll catalog techniques hijackers use to hijack meetings. For now, let's explore why people try to hijack meetings.
In what follows, I'll use the names Horace or Harriet to refer to the attempted hijacker, in place of the awkward form "he or she."
- Control
- Some people hijack meetings to gain control of the group. They care less about content than they do about controlling the process. For example, they might want to undermine the chair's authority, hoping to demonstrate the chair's unsuitability for the role. Or they might be acting on behalf of powerful people, who might not even be present, if those people want the group to fail in its mission, for political reasons. Motivations abound.
- Those who seek control of the meeting are not always "control addicts." Sometimes people seek control quite rationally, if for nefarious purposes.
- Urgent sincerity
- When Horace The choice of response to hijack
attempts depends to some extent
on the motives of the hijackersurgently and sincerely believes that an issue must be addressed immediately, and when private attempts to convince the chair have failed to do so, he might attempt a hijacking. In one variety of urgent sincerity, Horace is laboring under a misapprehension of the actual issues facing the meeting. He might be either confused or misled by others. One can, after all, be sincerely mistaken. - Horace can accept that the matter won't be addressed, or alternatively, he can try to persuade the other participants during the meeting. The latter alternative fits most definitions of hijacking. Appropriate responses to such actions differ markedly from responses to the more nefarious control-motivated tactics.
- Conspiracies
- Harriet might not actually care much about the agenda she's disrupting, but she does disrupt it because of an agreement she made with someone who does care. Typically this happens when Harriet's co-conspirator, Horace, cannot hijack the meeting himself. He might have acquired a reputation that has put the meeting chair on guard, or he might not be present. He might have an obvious conflict of interest that would undermine his direct attempts to hijack the meeting, whereas Harriet's attempts might be more likely to appear to be sincere.
- Most conspiracies are easily detected, but they often escape consideration as possible explanations for hijacking behavior because the idea seems so elaborate. Some feel reluctant to share the thought of conspiracy with others for fear of seeming "paranoid," to use the term in the lay sense. Conspiracies are most effective when they target people who can't accept their existence.
Motivations for hijack attempts vary widely. Your choice of response depends on what you think is actually happening. We'll examine hijacking techniques next time, and prevention in the issue after that. Next in this series Top
Next Issue
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Related articles
More articles on Effective Meetings:
Mastering Meeting Madness
- If you lead an organization, and people are mired in meeting madness, you can end it. Here are a few
tips that can free everyone to finally get some work done.
Discussus Interruptus
- You're chairing a meeting, and to your dismay, things get out of hand. People interrupt each other so
often that nobody can complete a thought, and some people dominate the meeting. What can you do?
Remote Facilitation in Synchronous Contexts: III
- Facilitators of synchronous distributed meetings (meetings that occur in real time, via telephone or
video) can make life much easier for everyone by taking steps before the meeting starts. Here's Part
III of a little catalog of suggestions for remote facilitators.
Virtual Meetings: Dealing with Inattention
- There is much we can do to reduce the incidence of inattention in virtual meetings. Cooperation is required.
Workplace Politics and Social Exclusion: I
- In the workplace, social exclusion is the practice of systematically excluding someone from activities
in which they would otherwise be invited to participate. When used in workplace politics, it's ruinous
for the person excluded, and expensive to the organization.
See also Effective Meetings and Devious Political Tactics for more related articles.
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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