Play the boardroom game
By Jim Bright | smh.com.au | 23 January
Helen from Annandale wrote saying she often feels powerless in meetings. Try these tips to get better results:
Do not be the first to sit down
Watch where others sit first. It can tell you a lot about their motivations and allegiances.
If there is insufficient room for all around the table, consider sitting in the outer ring, because from there you will be able to survey all the others in the room.
To do this, you must make a point of arriving at the very point the inner circle is filled. This gives the impression you are a busy person yet still able to meet deadlines. Arrive too soon and you can only be the office junior.
I once made a mistake when I laughed loudly at blue jokes while my manager was talking. The humorists were two sweaty and obese beer salesmen who sat either side of me. My future in beer sales lasted only until the next morning.
Years later I appreciated my error was not my attention-demanding laughter but an error of judgment. I sat down too soon.
In doing so I had fatally exposed my flanks, the vacant seats either side were quickly spotted and occupied by my aspiring and perspiring colleagues like bookend toby jugs.
I was trapped and hostage to their deliberate attempts to show me up. (I later discovered they wanted me out, mainly and not unreasonably because I was rubbish.)
Do not express opinions
If you are too junior, keep your mouth shut. If you are senior, you should try to lobby the appropriate people before the meeting.
The idea is to have others act as a spokesperson for the idea. This way, if it misjudges the mood of the meeting, you can distance yourself.
If the idea is warmed to, you can interject with something like: "Well, I must confess, when I first raised this idea with Jones I still wanted to get the detail right but I'd be happy to circulate my draft implementation plans if that would be useful."
If you must comment, do it late
Wait until you see what ammunition the others have got before you interject. I saw this happen in an assessment centre exercise once, where one candidate barely uttered a word throughout and was therefore failing abysmally.
Then in the last 10 minutes of the exercise, having listened to all the other points of view, he proposed a solution that was not only superbly insightful, it won over the rest of the group in the most commanding manner.
Ask for detail
It is always a good idea to politely request of your opponents in a meeting that they "give us a little more detail of how this would play out".
Generally, they are so excited at the prospect of once more having the floor, they fail to see it is a trap, an invitation to provide too much information, which will allow others to spot the flaw.
Decisions are made before meetings
Meetings are to announce decisions, not for real debate. To be effective in meetings requires meticulous preparation. Scrutinise the agenda for traps and take soundings from key players.
Understand the hidden agendas and decide what are the "over my dead body" issues and what you can live with.
Jim Bright is professor of career education and development at ACU and a partner at Bright and Associates, a career management consultancy. Email brightside@jimbright.com.
For more workplace advice, see mycareer.com.au/advice.
First published by Smh.com.au on January 23 2010
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