Yesterday I indulged in my secret passion during an Unconference – people watching (too many years as a facilitator – part of me always observes process). Unconferences are held using the open spaces format, where the attendees set the agenda, work out which conversations they want to be part of and if they are not getting their needs met, they vote with two feet and move on to other groups.
I love simply observing people as they interact and play with each other. You can see the people who connect with each other – their bodies sway towards each other, their voices take on the same rhythmic cadences, they smile and move together, eye contact increases and they talk more with each other. There was a heck of a lot of connection happening between like minded people during many of the sessions.
It was also interesting to observe some middle aged guys who seemed totally oblivious to the effect they had on the people around them. If one or more of them were in a group, as soon as they would start to speak you could almost put a timer on it, within a few moments people would quietly start to drift away to explore other groups. I watched one group form with 25 people, and at the end of the alloted time period, only 6 remained – three of which were the guys in question.
I listened in to snippets of conversation during the breaks and listened to feedback from a number of my clients who attended with me. All were enjoying the day, and yet all made some comment about at least one of these three guys. Many people chose the conversations they wanted to be part of not by the topic that interested them, but whether or not one of these guys were already in the group. They deliberately opted out of participating in things they were interested in because of someone in a group.
So what made them stand out? What were they doing to create the negative impact? Well based on the feedback of my clients and my personal experience of them, they had some communication approaches that stood out.
They rarely asked questions of other participants and when they did they were not interested in the answers, or cut across the answers to highlight how the response confirmed what they were already thinking.
For example I saw one person, who had taken leadership of one of the groups, ask people to define the topic in their own words. He started to go around the group, literally sitting on his hands and physically jiggling to stop himself from speaking. He only went through half the people before leaping in and saying “I run a program that teaches this … it it really great and (heavy plug)”. The other half of the people who had not had their turn to speak, tried to get in their definitions, and he cut each person off to continue the plug. At the end, he tried to gather business cards to send people in the group more information about the program. Needless to say the interest in the program was lukewarm at best – people hate being sold to.
I also observed in another group two of the guys asking nominal at best questions of a participant to scope out an issue, with no questions to explore understanding or gain depth. The questions were of the closed, leading type, not allowing the person the scope to expand their thoughts or explain what they meant. The person on the receiving end just ended up giving up and giving monosyllabic answers.
They valued their abrasive approach
Two of these people labelled themselves as “challenging” and when they first came into a new group were overheard to say “so who are we going to harangue now”. Perturbation is a valid facilitation technique if used with the right intent. With wrong intent it is just being argumentative.
They leapt to solutions – theirs
The favourite saying of all three was “what you need to do is …”. They gave advice based on their own personal values, beliefs and models, without clarifying the values of the person on the receiving end. When the person did not accept their sage wisdom, they then blamed the person and did not question if their process was a valid one.
To be honest, observing my own emotions while in groups with them I caught myself thinking the word “wanker” a few too many times, and discounting whatever they said. And while the temptation was to vote with my feet, I was genuinely interested in the topics so chose to stay in each group.
And these things got me thinking. We are all guilty at times of leaping in with advice without looking through the other person’s eyes. We are also guilty of not being aware of the impact our communication has on others. We all at times believe that our experience gives us the right to tell other people what to do, without checking in with the other person to see if they have any opinions or views in the matter. And we are guilty of moving into sell without forming any relationship with people, or having proven our expertise.
In a workplace, when Managers regularly adopt these approaches, staff mentally “check out” or leave. In business these sort of approaches will sell a small percentage of clients (just like luminous green logos will sell some things to some people), yet the same approach will also quietly turn off many other people who will vote with their two feet and take their business elsewhere.
There’s a saying that communication is what the other person receives and not what you intended. Even if you have positive intent, if people are quietly voting with their feet around you, then perhaps, just perhaps, it is time to take stock of your communication approach.
Ingrid Cliff
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Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter
