How to Coach Yourself and Others Coaching and Counseling in Difficult Circumstances | Page 139

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The meeting is at least partly a pressure relief valve for stakeholder outrage. Instead of allowing the pressure to
build until there’s an explosion, you want to help your stakeholders vent their outrage. That should relieve the
pressure a little, for a little while. A good meeting, however, aims at more than just temporary relief. To relieve
the pressure for more than a little while, listen to what your stakeholders are saying, learn from it, and figure out
what your company or agency needs to do differently.
So an empathic meeting doesn’t start with three hours of official PowerPoint presentations, followed by “public
input” from 10 to 11 p.m. just before adjournment. In an empathic meeting structure, you start by asking people
why they came. As they voice their questions and concerns, you write them all down on a flipchart. (Better yet,
ask somebody else to write them down, so you don’t have to turn your back or dilute your attention.) Then you
go back over the list: “This one is on the agenda already. This one we can add to Cindy’s presentation at 7:30.
This one I’ll answer right now. This one a lot of people want to respond to, so let’s add an open discussion of
that to the agenda. This one we can’t deal with tonight, but if the person who raised it will see me during the
break, we can schedule a time to talk about it….”
It’s uncomfortable to adjust your agenda in real time to what the people in the room want to talk about. And
you’re entitled to reserve some time for things you want to talk about, things you think people need to know
even if they don’t realize it yet. But if a key purpose of the meeting is to listen to people’s outrage, and if no
other purpose is likely to get accomplished until you’ve made some progress on that one, then it’s self-defeating
to make your stakeholders listen to you before you listen to them.
A strange thing happens when you go into a meeting determined to listen to outraged stakeholders. They start
wanting to listen to you. That wasn’t their goal on their way in the door, but after an hour or two of telling you
how they feel and what they think, they begin to wonder how you feel and what you think about everything
they’ve been telling you. (This is yet another risk communication seesaw. If you weren’t listening so hard, they
wouldn’t want you to talk.) “Well!” someone is likely to pronounce. “What’s your reaction to all this?”
The first time you’re asked to talk, it’s probably wise to demur: “There are people who haven’t spoken yet, and
I’m learning so much tonight.” (You can’t say this last phrase unless you really mean it; it’ll come out sounding
sarcastic and obnoxious.) But eventually there’s a consensus that it’s your turn. Now what do you say?
You echo. As I pointed out at the start of this column, “I know just how you feel!” isn’t an empathic echo. It
sounds more like a claim to omniscience than an effort to learn. And it’s intrusive, virtually guaranteeing that
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