‘Being fair means giving everyone a little bit of extra room for views expressed contrary to my own. For everyone to perceive the playing field is level you have to tilt it a little bit against you,’ Bryan Paterson says
A year after Bryan Paterson became mayor of Kingston in 2014, I was chatting with councillors about how he was faring. One veteran began by saying he was the best chair of council meetings in the past few decades, and although that might not seem a significant quality for evaluating a mayor, it was vitally important. Mr. Paterson was fair and gave people time to make their case even when it might oppose his own views.
The same is true, of course, in the everyday meetings we attend at work. Everyone is in a rush, other work delayed for the meeting. But for a good decision, various viewpoints should be heard before everyone converges on a solution. There is often a desire to avoid conflict in meetings. “I think we have even been trained – those of us in leadership roles – to believe that success is gaining consensus. To some extent that is true – but not in a straight line. There has to be some zig-zagging that goes on where you watch for and even ferret out a different opinion or dissenting view,” she says. “We’re getting better. But I think for many years – decades really – our board rooms have been a lot of echo chambers.
Bruce Withrow, the Barrie-based founder of Meeting Facilitators International, points out time must be allowed in meetings with special presentations for processing what has been heard. Participants have to figure out what has been omitted, what needs to be sharpened and what needs to be challenged further.
When considering options in the convergence phase, he warns against asking everyone for pros and cons, which leads individuals to “dig themselves into their pre-conceived foxholes.” Instead, list all the options and then discuss only the pros of each option, one at a time, before going back to hear the cons. That process increases the chance people might move to a new position.
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