How to prevent circular conversations in meetings
You know those meetings where the conversations go ‘round and ‘round, but nothing gets decided and then time runs out so another meeting is set to do what the current meeting didn’t accomplish? Ugh, they are painful.
The worst part is that the group grows frustrated with the people who are perceived as the person who derails the progress. Maybe it’s the person who asks a million questions or the one who plays “devils advocate”. The group leaves with relational tension that can erode trust.
Next time you sense the meeting unraveling and losing focus, try THE SAILBOAT exercise. It’s often used as a retrospective tool, but it can be applied in so many other ways. In fact, this exercise is an excellent way to start off a meeting to co-create the agenda.
Here’s how to do it:
Materials:
- whiteboard or large drawing surface
- writing utensils
- a stack of sticky notes for each person, in two colors
Step 1:
Draw the sailboat.
Ask the group what they think is moving the team toward a stated goal. Make sure that stated goal is as clear as possible. Instead of verbally listing their answers, the group writes their answers on a sticky note. One answer per sticky. They can write as many answer as they can think of. Have the group read their sticky note aloud and add it to the top of the sailboat drawing. [5 minutes]
Step 2:
Now ask the group what they think is moving them away from the same stated goal as step one. The group will write one answer per sticky. Make sure the sticky note is a different color for easy recognition. This time, the group will add their sticky notes to the drawing without reading them aloud. [8 minutes]
Step 3:
Give the group a few minutes to silently read through the answers from step two. Now they will vote on what they think are the most important challenges to solve in order to successfully meet the goal. They can use small sticker dots or simply draw a dot on the sticky note with a marker. They can vote up to 5 times. [4 minutes]
Step 4:
Re-order the top voted stickies to get a quick view of what the group thinks are the most important challenges to address. If you are doing this exercise to co-create the meeting agenda, you now have that agenda. If you are using this exercise to prevent a circular discussion, think of all that time you saved!
It’s important to note that all those other stickies that weren’t voted on are valid. But this is a quick way to get a pulse on the most pressing concerns of your team.
The more you do this exercise, the more it will shift your team culture for the better.
