I recently read that Sam Liang, CEO of transcription-software company Otter.ai, is using a bot to attend meetings in his place. “Sam-bot” has been trained on thousands of meeting transcripts and internal documents to sound like Liang.
“It has my knowledge, so it knows how I think,” Liang told Bloomberg. “It can infer how I would respond to a new question based on all the past interactions.” He noted that many of his employees are skeptical and wonder why Sam-bot is needed.
If calls to the National Conflict Resolution Center are any indicator, meetings today are more contentious and less productive. As leaders look for ways to change this dynamic, bots could be part of the solution – although the early experience at Otter.ai suggests that employees may not be quite ready to forego human interaction.
Or maybe, meetings will go away altogether, a vestige – like civil discourse – of times past.Some would cheer: According to MeetingScience, a cloud-based application for meeting optimization, 55 million meetings happen in the U.S. daily. They cost $1.4 trillion in human capital and leave 89% of those humans unhappy.
But government agencies are stuck – subject to sunshine or open meeting laws, which aim to ensure transparency and public access to their decision-making processes. For now, at least, there are humans fielding questions and comments from the public.
Last week, I was ed by San Diego Union-Tribune reporter Jeff McDonald for his story about uncivil speech at public meetings. He covered a convening of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors earlier this month where some of the remarks were laced with vulgarity and threats.
It’s just one example of a trend toward more hateful public speech. As I told McDonald, NCRC is hearing from organizations, companies and agencies all over the country seeking tools and strategies to de-escalate these very situations.
Here is a sampling of the other calls I’ve taken recently:
- A solar developer in Colorado is frustrated at being shouted down in public meetings by people who don’t know (or seem to care about) the facts. The company is hoping to bring money-saving solar power to rural communities in Colorado and beyond.
- A California professional association is unable to conduct meetings with its constituents, thwarted by political pronouncements at the start that derail their agendas.
- A major university is finding it hard to anticipate and respond to the disagreements that pepper many important discussions. While they recognize the value of healthy conflict, some exchanges have been disrespectful, heightening emotions.
Meetings have long been saddled with difficult participants: “monopolizers” (who like to hear themselves talk), scrollers (or doodlers, who don’t pay attention), and naysayers (who proclaim, “We’ve tried this before and it doesn’t work”). Today – no thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic – there is an overhang of anger.
But meetings don’t have to be miserable. With proper planning and effective management, they can be productive and even satisfying. NCRC is helping organizations shift their meeting dynamics to meet the moment with a new, two-hour training program.
We think about this challenge in two parts, having specific strategies for success: pre-meeting planning and meeting facilitation.
Meeting preparation is most important – specifically, creation of an agenda. While determining the meeting purpose and agenda items are obvious considerations, the order in which items are discussed also matters. Starting with a tough topic can be deflating or set a combative tone. Burying it is also risky: The “elephant in the room” is always noticed. It can be distracting.
In addition, successful meeting organizers give careful thought to who should participate and what they can be expected to contribute. Having the right people in the room (or on the screen) can increase satisfaction and the likelihood that meeting objectives will be met. (Government agencies, of course, don’t have this luxury.)
When it comes to effective facilitation, communication skills are key – regardless of sector. Our training builds these skills under an umbrella we refer to as ART: Active Awareness, Respond Respectfully, and Troubleshoot Together.
There are many components to a respectful response. As I told Jeff McDonald, people on the receiving end of crude or heated criticism should neither dismiss nor push back, but instead be mindful of how their response might affect the behavior and make it harder to move a meeting forward.
Our tendency is to fight in the face of a perceived threat. But it’s most effective to step aside and not take the bait, which puts the other person off balance. It’s an empowering skill for those challenging moments.
Dinkin is president of the National Conflict Resolution Center, a San Diego-based group working to create solutions to challenging issues, including intolerance and incivility. To learn about NCRC’s programming, visit ncrconline.com
