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Strategies For Facilitating Emotionally-Charged Meetings

Chris Corrigan at Parking Lot offers ten strategies for making meetings work. His post directly addresses public meetings, but the ideas play well when you have to facilitate any gathering where passions run high and conflict is inevitable. Among the highlights are:

• Be prepared and curious. Come into the meeting room curious. Be curious about the people who are there, about how the day will go. Genuinely want to find out stuff, get interested in the discussions and ask stupid questions. Maintaining a role of respectful curiosity, grounded in good preparation will allow you to be detached enough to see the possibilities as they unfold over the day.
• Acknowledge that the heart speaks truth. People that care deeply about an issue will become quite emotional if they see that something bad is going to happen to that issue. They will speak out in emotional ways. It is a true reaction. You can’t lie when that kind of passion arises. So hear the truth, acknowledge that what they care about is real, and that it needs to be heard. It’s important that the client know that there is a real issue at the heart of the intervention.
• Be honest. There is no faster way to get people angry than to lie to them. When bullshit detectors go off, the reaction comes fast and furious. As a facilitator I have ethical standards for working in these kinds of meetings…Honesty and trust are the only things you need to move past difficult public meetings. It is surprising how many people choose to go the other way, into deceit and mistrust.

Working among conflict resolution professionals has taught me how difficult it can be at times to manage your own emotions when facilitating an emotionally-charged group. I rank as a high ‘I’ in Myers-Briggs preferences so if I’m not careful, I can get pulled in by the undertow of intense feelings. This is even more so if I have something invested in the meeting.

Chris reminds me that my own best work comes when I stay curious, unattached, and authentic. It’s beneficial to acknowledge and feel the emotional power of the room as long as I stay focused on the objectives. Again, not always easy to do…

UPDATE (12/9/05): Chris’s comment below prodded me to take a look another at my post. While I am an ‘I,’ I also have strong ‘E’ tendencies. What I meant to say is that I am a high ‘N’ or intuitive.

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