Point Lookout: a free weekly publication of Chaco Canyon Consulting
Volume 16, Issue 49;   December 7, 2016: Preventing Meeting Hijacking

Preventing Meeting Hijacking

by

Meeting leads, meeting chairs, and facilitators must be prepared to deal with meeting hijackers. Hesitation, or any ineffectual action, enhances the hijacker's chances of success. Here are suggestions for preventing hijacking.
A computer mouse, the tool we use so often to hijack our own minds

A computer mouse, the tool we use so often to hijack our own minds. How often have you turned to the World Wide Web to do some serious research, only to emerge 20 minutes later, without having found what you sought, and having been distracted by stories like, "How Many of These Things Did You Google Immediately After Watching 'The Social Network'?"? Such pieces are so common that they have earned a new word to describe their category: clickbait. Masters of the art of devising clickbait headlines are valuable employees for Web sites that survive on advertising revenue, and which need stories to partially fill the pages that carry those ads. Clickbait has become so common and so outrageous that it is now a target of satirical sites like ClickHole.com.

Meeting hijackers can exploit the same skills used by clickbait headline designers. They can word their proposed agenda items so as to induce curiosity, fear, or even panic. By stirring these emotions, they can make rejecting their proposed agenda items difficult.

Before investigating techniques for preventing meeting hijacking, let's distinguish hijacking from another serious but unrelated issue that's often confused with hijacking. That behavior pattern is known as "meeting bullying." Bullying is any behavior undertaken with the primary purpose of inflicting physical or psychological harm on another. Although bullying can happen in meetings, most bullies prefer other settings, unless they're chairing the meeting, or unless they've already gained the acquiescence of the chair somehow, possibly by bullying or intimidation. Unless one of these conditions is met, the meeting chair is free to challenge the bully, which most bullies would experience as public humiliation. For this reason, much of what is commonly called meeting bullying is actually something else — outrageously bad behavior, or uncontrolled anger, to cite two examples.

Bullying, wherever it occurs, should be addressed by the bully's supervisor or by Human Resources officials. Meeting chairs typically can't do much about it. If bullying does occur in a meeting, the only safe course for the meeting chair is to immediately adjourn the meeting and consult with officials empowered to deal with such problems. Address the problem officially and privately.

Let's now explore how to prevent meeting hijackings. These approaches are founded on two principles. First, identify potential meeting hijackers in advance, and second, deprive them of opportunities for success. This prevention-based approach is yet another example of the idea that it's a lot easier to stay out of trouble than to get out of trouble.

Continuing our customary practice, we'll refer to our meeting hijackers as Horace or Harriet.

Identify potential meeting hijackers
Attributes of potential hijackers include a track record of past hijackings; energetic pre-meeting lobbying for an item to be included in the agenda; a sudden break in a pattern of skipping meetings; being a close friend of a known hijacker; a pattern of arriving late and asking for a "quick summary;" and so on.
If Horace exhibits one or more of these indicators, consider having a conversation with him in advance of the meeting. If he is intent on disruption, try to find an accommodation that doesn't involve deviating from the agenda you've set. If you can't gain an agreement not to disrupt the meeting, or if the agreement you do secure is violated, then Horace is exhibiting a performance issue. Only his supervisor can deal with that.
Limit the hijacker's access to tools
The First, identify potential meeting
hijackers in advance, and
second, deprive them of
opportunities for success
overall goal of this limited-access strategy is to close the hijacker's access to the normal means of adjusting the agenda. For example, in advance of the meeting, the chair can solicit agenda items from attendees during a limited period.
After rejecting with justification Harriet's proposed agenda item, the chair can close the agenda item solicitation and advise everyone that at the meeting the agenda will be open for addition of any items not previously deemed unsuitable for this meeting.

Techniques like these are eminently fair. They don't directly target any potential hijackers. Next time, we'll examine tactics for use in the meeting itself. First in this series  Next in this series Go to top Top  Next issue: Dealing with Meeting Hijackings  Next Issue

101 Tips for Effective MeetingsDo you spend your days scurrying from meeting to meeting? Do you ever wonder if all these meetings are really necessary? (They aren't) Or whether there isn't some better way to get this work done? (There is) Read 101 Tips for Effective Meetings to learn how to make meetings much more productive and less stressful — and a lot more rare. Order Now!

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More articles on Effective Meetings:

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We spend a lot of time and emotional energy in meetings, much of it engaged in any of dozens of ritualized games. Here's Part III of a little catalog of some of our favorites, and what we could do about them.
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We spend a lot of time and emotional energy in meetings, much of it engaged in any of dozens of ritualized games. Here's Part IV of a little catalog of some of our favorites, and what we could do about them.
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Perhaps the most significant difference between face-to-face teams and virtual or distributed teams is their potential to develop from workgroups into true teams — an area in which virtual or distributed teams are at a decided disadvantage. Often, virtual and distributed teams are teams in name only.
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In energetic discussions, topics and subtopics get intertwined. The tangles can be frustrating. Here's a collection of techniques for minimizing tangles in complex discussions.
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When we can't begin a meeting because some people haven't arrived, we sometimes cancel the meeting and hold a different one, with the people who are in attendance. It might seem like a good way to avoid wasting time, but there are risks.

See also Effective Meetings and Devious Political Tactics for more related articles.

Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout

A meeting in a typical conference roomComing April 3: Recapping Factioned Meetings
A factioned meeting is one in which participants identify more closely with their factions, rather than with the meeting as a whole. Agreements reached in such meetings are at risk of instability as participants maneuver for advantage after the meeting. Available here and by RSS on April 3.
Franz Halder, German general and the chief of staff of the Army High Command (OKH) in Nazi Germany from 1938 until September 1942And on April 10: Managing Dunning-Kruger Risk
A cognitive bias called the Dunning-Kruger Effect can create risk for organizational missions that require expertise beyond the range of knowledge and experience of decision-makers. They might misjudge the organization's capacity to execute the mission successfully. They might even be unaware of the risk of so misjudging. Available here and by RSS on April 10.

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