
Braided streams in Grewingk Glacier River, Kachemak Bay, Cook Inlet, Alaska, in June 2009. Rivers emanating from retreating glaciers carry large volumes of sediment, producing braided river patterns with multiple channels. Braided channels are variable and dynamic. The Alaska ShoreZone exhibition guide states: "Although the threshold between meandering (sinuous, single-channel river pattern) and braiding is not clearly understood, three factors are probably necessary for braiding to occur: 1) an abundant bedload supply (portion of a river's sediment load supported by the channel bed), 2) erodible banks, and 3) high stream power (the potential energy for a given river channel length)."
In organizational behavior, some classes of group interactions can produce similar results through multiple interacting paths. We can expect these phenomena when 1) there are multiple relevant psychological phenomena, 2) the relevant psychological phenomena can produce behaviors that can stimulate each other, and 3) the participants care deeply about the end result. As is often the case, the forces of Nature, by example and metaphor, provide insight into human behavior.
Photo by the Alaska ShoreZone Program NOAA/NMFS/AKFSC, via NOAA Photo Library, courtesy Wikimedia.
Last time I began an exploration of the nature and effects of meandering monologues in meetings. As a reminder, a meandering monologue is a long, rambling, speech by one of the meeting attendees. It is so rambling that even the person delivering the monologue can seem to lose track of the point — if they ever had a point. As I noted, wasting time is perhaps the most obvious effect of meandering monologues. But other effects might be even more costly. For example, consider the effects of meandering monologues on the degree of engagement of other attendees.
Engagement is important because it affects the quality of the meeting's output. Even more important, it affects attendance at future meetings, and thus the output of those future meetings. As in the previous post, I use the term monospeaker to refer to the person who's engaging in a meandering monologue.
How meandering monologues can suppress engagement
These next four characteristics of meandering monologues reduce the value of the meeting by reducing attendee engagement. Repetitiousness is (ahem) making a repeat appearance.
Although some people can tolerate repetitiousness,those with a low tolerance for repetition can feel
compelled to "check out" of the meeting by muting
the audio, going down the hall for coffee, playing
tetris, or shopping for an anniversary gift
- Repetitiousness
- As I noted last time, repetitious monologues waste meeting time. But they do much more. Although some people can tolerate repetitiousness, those who have a low tolerance for repetition can feel compelled to alleviate their pain. They "check out" of the meeting by muting the audio, going for coffee, playing tetris, or shopping for an anniversary gift.
- Repetitiousness by a monospeaker thus deprives us of participation by others in attendance. But it affects future meetings as well. Those who cannot tolerate repetitiousness might decline future meeting invitations, hoping that if anything important happened they would hear about it by some other means. If they don't feel safe enough to decline future invitations, or to skip meetings altogether, they might claim schedule conflicts to make future meetings more difficult to schedule, thus reducing the frequency of meetings.
- Many different unconnected elements
- The monospeaker's words might not always lead to a clear conclusion or central idea. If there is a central idea, it can be so poorly expressed that it would be difficult to understand even if it weren't awash in irrelevance.
- Moreover, debates can erupt among those who were able to remain connected enough to the monologue to form conjectures about what its main point might be. Because these debates don't address the mission of the meeting, they are another source of motivation to disengage from the meeting.
- Breathtaking span of issues presented
- The monospeaker might digress from the main point, introducing related but not always relevant ideas. In the more complex cases, understanding the digressions can require specialized expertise or detailed recollection of past events that only a few attendees possess, and which is otherwise irrelevant to the mission of the meeting.
- This kind of digression is especially useful to monospeakers whose intention is to demonstrate to the attendees their own superiority and value. While that might be their intention, reciting a disorganized litany of arcane incidents or beliefs is unlikely to produce success.
- Clouds of irrelevant detail
- A useful metaphor for this factor — clouds of irrelevant detail — is the needle in the haystack. By providing an enormous amount of detail, much of it irrelevant, the monospeaker compels the other attendees to dig through it all before they can determine whether it contains anything of value.
- Because most people choose not to engage in excavation, the monspeaker's words largely escape scrutiny. A common response to being assigned the task of organizing the details is "No, thank you."
Last words
The behavior that I'm calling meandering monologue is essentially a performance issue. It cannot be addressed effectively on a peer-to-peer basis; addressing it is the supervisor's responsibility. Fortunately, because this particular performance issue occurs in settings in which there are many witnesses, most likely, the monospeaker's supervisor is well aware of the issue. Failure of the supervisor to take effective action is a performance issue of the supervisor. First issue in this series
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Related articles
More articles on Effective Meetings:
Meeting Bullies: Advice for Chairs
- Bullying in meetings is difficult to address, because intervention in the moment is inherently public.
When bullying happens in meetings, what can you do?
How to Waste Time in Virtual Meetings
- Nearly everyone hates meetings, and virtual meetings are at the top of most people's lists. Here's a
catalog of some of the worst practices.
Costs of the Catch-Me-Up Antipattern: II
- When we interrupt a meeting to recap the action so far for a late-arriving attendee, the cost of the
recap itself is just the beginning. There are some less-obvious costs that can be even greater.
Brainstorming and Speedstorming: II
- Recent research into the effectiveness of brainstorming has raised some questions. Motivated to examine
alternatives, I ran into speedstorming. Here's Part II of an exploration of the properties
of speedstorming.
Pre-Decision Discussions: Facts
- The purpose of some meetings is reaching decisions. Because decision making can be difficult, familiarity
with the forms of contributions that can occur in such discussions is helpful. Their connection to facts
is critical.
See also Effective Meetings for more related articles.
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