Toxic Disrupters: Responses

In a recent post, I explored the techniques of toxic disrupters — people who repeatedly disrupt meetings for reasons of their own. Whether by violating norms, demanding attention, messing with the agenda, or sowing distrust, or any other tactic, they manage to halt forward progress, or worse, to generate negative progress.

The temptation to eject them from the meeting can be difficult to resist. A preferable outcome would be to bring them into the fold — to guide them back to a productive role within the group. That's the basis of the approach I sketch in this post, which includes suggestions for a set of tactics that can bring about that result for a specific set of cases.

The cases The temptation to eject disrupters from the meeting
or the group can be difficult to resist. A preferable
outcome would be to bring them into the fold — to
guide them back to a productive role within the group.that respond to this approach include those I regard as well meaning. This class excludes those that might be said to involve saboteurs and coup plotters. The former are people whose objective is purely subversion of the group conducting the meetings. The latter are those who want to seize control of the group, or failing that, to subvert it. Because these cases are complex and rare, I'll address them in future posts.

For the present, my focus is the individual group member who intends to prevent the group from proceeding in the manner it has chosen, making progress towards the objective it has chosen. In what follows, I'll refer to the Disrupter as David (he/him) or Diane (she/her).

Demotivational techniques

The core concept of the approach is to apply techniques that cause David/Diane to experience intense discouragement and frustration, because his/her tactics are utterly unproductive.

Strengthen alliances

As noted in that previous post, Diane might try to sow distrust among group members. Strengthening alliances can render this tactic of hers quite useless. Meetings of members of the alliances might be required.

Revisit your group norms

A set of norms for respectful discussion is a useful tool for controlling David. If your group hasn't established norms, you'll find it helpful. Examples that are especially useful are bans on interrupting others, deviating from the agenda, raising one's voice, and disparaging the character of others.

Deploy a Norm Check protocol

A "norm check" occurs when any member of the group feels that the discussion has led to a violation of one or more norms. That member can then call out "Norm Check" or another agreed-upon signal. At that point the discussion halts and the Chair interviews the person who called the check. After taking appropriate remedial action, the Chair restarts the discussion. This tactic can be an effective means of obtaining compliance with established norms.

Delegate responsibility

In meetings of size greater than five or six, it's beneficial to delegate to participants some of the work of running the meeting. Delegation can then also serve as a means of integrating Diane into the group. For example, appointing Diane to the office of Timekeeper can help to change her focus from disruption to process maintenance. Other roles that can also serve in this way are Facilitator, Designated Digression Detector, Scribe, and Parking Lot Valet.

Last words

Using these tactics is one approach to ending the disruptions David/Diane is creating. More important, this approach preserves the possibility of saving the relationship between the disrupter and the group. If at any point either the group or the disrupter determines that achieving that goal is so unlikely as to make investing in further efforts difficult to justify, terminating the effort is the best option. Until then, it's certainly worth a try.  Top    Next Issue

Do you spend your days scurrying from meeting to meeting? Do you ever wonder if all these meetings are really necessary? (They aren't) Or whether there isn't some better way to get this work done? (There is) Read 101 Tips for Effective Meetings to learn how to make meetings much more productive and less stressful — and a lot more rare. Order Now!

Your comments are welcome

About Point Lookout

Thank you for reading this article. I hope you enjoyed it and found it useful, and that you'll consider recommending it to a friend.

This article in its entirety was written by a human being. No machine intelligence was involved in any way.

Point Lookout is a free weekly email newsletter. Browse the archive of past issues. Subscribe for free.

Support Point Lookout by joining the Friends of Point Lookout, as an individual or as an organization.

Do you face a complex interpersonal situation? Send it in, anonymously if you like, and I'll give you my two cents.

Related articles

More articles on Effective Meetings:

Figuring Out What to Do First

Whether we belong to a small project team or to an executive team, we have limited resources and seemingly unlimited problems to deal with. How do we decide which problems are important? How do we decide where to focus our attention first?

Toward More Engaging Virtual Meetings: I

Keeping attendees engaged in virtual meetings is a widely sought but rarely achieved objective. Here is Part I of a set of simple techniques to help facilitators enhance attendee engagement.

Dealing with Meeting Hijackings

When you haven't prevented a meeting hijacking, and you believe a hijacking is underway, what can you do? How can you regain control?

Overt Belligerence in Meetings

Some meetings lose their way in vain attempts to mollify a belligerent participant who simply will not be mollified. Here's one scenario that fits this pattern.

Brainstorming and Speedstorming: II

Recent research into the effectiveness of brainstorming has raised some questions. Motivated to examine alternatives, I ran into speedstorming. Here's Part II of an exploration of the properties of speedstorming.

See also Effective Meetings and Effective Meetings for more related articles.

Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout

Coming January 22: Storming: Obstacle or Pathway?

The Storming stage of Tuckman's model of small group development is widely misunderstood. Fighting the storms, denying they exist, or bypassing them doesn't work. Letting them blow themselves out in a somewhat-controlled manner is the path to Norming and Performing. Available here and by RSS on January 22.

And on January 29: A Framework for Safe Storming

The Storming stage of Tuckman's development sequence for small groups is when the group explores its frustrations and degrees of disagreement about both structure and task. Only by understanding these misalignments is reaching alignment possible. Here is a framework for this exploration. Available here and by RSS on January 29.

Coaching services

I offer email and telephone coaching at both corporate and individual rates. Contact Rick for details at rbrenjTnUayrCbSnnEcYfner@ChacdcYpBKAaMJgMalFXoCanyon.com or (650) 787-6475, or toll-free in the continental US at (866) 378-5470.

Get the ebook!

Past issues of Point Lookout are available in six ebooks:

• Get 2001-2 in Geese Don't Land on Twigs (PDF, )
• Get 2003-4 in Why Dogs Wag (PDF, )
• Get 2005-6 in Loopy Things We Do (PDF, )
• Get 2007-8 in Things We Believe That Maybe Aren't So True (PDF, )
• Get 2009-10 in The Questions Not Asked (PDF, )
• Get all of the first twelve years (2001-2012) in The Collected Issues of Point Lookout (PDF, )

Are you a writer, editor or publisher on deadline? Are you looking for an article that will get people talking and get compliments flying your way? You can have 500-1000 words in your inbox in one hour. License any article from this Web site. More info