Toxic Disrupters: Responses

In a recent post, I explored the techniques of toxic disrupters — people who repeatedly disrupt meetings for reasons of their own. Whether by violating norms, demanding attention, messing with the agenda, or sowing distrust, or any other tactic, they manage to halt forward progress, or worse, to generate negative progress.

The temptation to eject them from the meeting can be difficult to resist. A preferable outcome would be to bring them into the fold — to guide them back to a productive role within the group. That's the basis of the approach I sketch in this post, which includes suggestions for a set of tactics that can bring about that result for a specific set of cases.

The cases The temptation to eject disrupters from the meeting
or the group can be difficult to resist. A preferable
outcome would be to bring them into the fold — to
guide them back to a productive role within the group.that respond to this approach include those I regard as well meaning. This class excludes those that might be said to involve saboteurs and coup plotters. The former are people whose objective is purely subversion of the group conducting the meetings. The latter are those who want to seize control of the group, or failing that, to subvert it. Because these cases are complex and rare, I'll address them in future posts.

For the present, my focus is the individual group member who intends to prevent the group from proceeding in the manner it has chosen, making progress towards the objective it has chosen. In what follows, I'll refer to the Disrupter as David (he/him) or Diane (she/her).

Demotivational techniques

The core concept of the approach is to apply techniques that cause David/Diane to experience intense discouragement and frustration, because his/her tactics are utterly unproductive.

Strengthen alliances

As noted in that previous post, Diane might try to sow distrust among group members. Strengthening alliances can render this tactic of hers quite useless. Meetings of members of the alliances might be required.

Revisit your group norms

A set of norms for respectful discussion is a useful tool for controlling David. If your group hasn't established norms, you'll find it helpful. Examples that are especially useful are bans on interrupting others, deviating from the agenda, raising one's voice, and disparaging the character of others.

Deploy a Norm Check protocol

A "norm check" occurs when any member of the group feels that the discussion has led to a violation of one or more norms. That member can then call out "Norm Check" or another agreed-upon signal. At that point the discussion halts and the Chair interviews the person who called the check. After taking appropriate remedial action, the Chair restarts the discussion. This tactic can be an effective means of obtaining compliance with established norms.

Delegate responsibility

In meetings of size greater than five or six, it's beneficial to delegate to participants some of the work of running the meeting. Delegation can then also serve as a means of integrating Diane into the group. For example, appointing Diane to the office of Timekeeper can help to change her focus from disruption to process maintenance. Other roles that can also serve in this way are Facilitator, Designated Digression Detector, Scribe, and Parking Lot Valet.

Last words

Using these tactics is one approach to ending the disruptions David/Diane is creating. More important, this approach preserves the possibility of saving the relationship between the disrupter and the group. If at any point either the group or the disrupter determines that achieving that goal is so unlikely as to make investing in further efforts difficult to justify, terminating the effort is the best option. Until then, it's certainly worth a try.  Top    Next Issue

Do 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!

Your comments are welcome

About Point Lookout

Thank you for reading this article. I hope you enjoyed it and found it useful, and that you'll consider recommending it to a friend.

This article in its entirety was written by a human being. No machine intelligence was involved in any way.

Point Lookout is a free weekly email newsletter. Browse the archive of past issues. Subscribe for free.

Support Point Lookout by joining the Friends of Point Lookout, as an individual or as an organization.

Do you face a complex interpersonal situation? Send it in, anonymously if you like, and I'll give you my two cents.

Related articles

More articles on Effective Meetings:

Using the Parking Lot

In meetings, keeping a list we call the "parking lot" is a fairly standard practice. As the discussion unfolds, we "park" there any items that arise that aren't on the agenda, but which we believe could be important someday soon. Here are some tips for making your parking lot process more effective.

Is the Question "How?" or "Whether?"

In group decision making, tension sometimes develops between those who favor commitment to the opportunity at hand, and those who repeatedly ask, "If we do that, how will we do it?" Why does this happen?

Exasperation Generators: Opaque Metaphors

Most people don't mind going to meetings. They don't even mind coming back from them. It's being in meetings that can be so exasperating. What can we do about this?

Ending Sidebars

We say that a sidebar is underway in a meeting when two or more meeting participants converse without having been recognized by the chair. Sidebars can be helpful, but they can also be disruptive. How can we end sidebars quickly and politely?

Contribution Misattribution

In teams, acknowledging people for their contributions is essential for encouraging high performance. Failing to do so can be expensive. Three patterns of contribution misattribution are especially costly: theft, rejection/transmigration, and eliding.

See also Effective Meetings and Effective Meetings for more related articles.

Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout

Coming December 11: White Water Rafting as a Metaphor for Group Development

Tuckman's model of small group development, best known as "Forming-Storming-Norming-Performing," applies better to development of some groups than to others. We can use a metaphor to explore how the model applies to Storming in task-oriented work groups. Available here and by RSS on December 11.

And on December 18: Subgrouping and Conway's Law

When task-oriented work groups address complex tasks, they might form subgroups to address subtasks. The structure of the subgroups and the order in which they form depend on the structure of the group's task and the sequencing of the subtasks. Available here and by RSS on December 18.

Coaching services

I offer email and telephone coaching at both corporate and individual rates. Contact Rick for details at rbrenyrWpTxHuyCrjZbUpner@ChacnoFNuSyWlVzCaGfooCanyon.com or (650) 787-6475, or toll-free in the continental US at (866) 378-5470.

Get the ebook!

Past issues of Point Lookout are available in six ebooks:

• Get 2001-2 in Geese Don't Land on Twigs (PDF, )
• Get 2003-4 in Why Dogs Wag (PDF, )
• Get 2005-6 in Loopy Things We Do (PDF, )
• Get 2007-8 in Things We Believe That Maybe Aren't So True (PDF, )
• Get 2009-10 in The Questions Not Asked (PDF, )
• Get all of the first twelve years (2001-2012) in The Collected Issues of Point Lookout (PDF, )

Are you a writer, editor or publisher on deadline? Are you looking for an article that will get people talking and get compliments flying your way? You can have 500-1000 words in your inbox in one hour. License any article from this Web site. More info