Your questions answered, Inside Track, May 2010
I am in a meeting where people avoid talking about the elephant in the room. How can I put the real issue on the table whilst preventing being marginalised?
First of all, you need to be prepared to take the heat because you are about to increase the temperature in the room. But the good news is that your instinct is most likely to be right and this presents an opportunity for you to practice real leadership. Here are several techniques you might try out:
- Make an observation: it’s the least threatening intervention, because you simply make a snapshot of the current conversation, which causes people to pause for some instant reflection, and either fill the void or let it rest
- Pose a question: going a step further, a question along the lines of “What’s really going on here?” will urge the group to address the issue but it keeps you out of the line of fire
- Offer an interpretation: a bolder move, where you inherently provoke people to react to your assessment; the tone of the response however, will usually reveal a richer set of data on the real issue
- Take an action: here, you put yourself directly on the line, because your action sends a message, e.g. walking out of the meeting communicates “You are not addressing the key issue and are wasting my time”
Whatever intervention you take, make sure you don’t sound judgemental, and don’t take the response personally – hold steady and think of the price you might pay in the moment as a service to the group and its way forward.
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