Managing Difficult Meeting

Personalities
The listening track lists 5 types of difficult personalities a facilitator may have to manage during
a meeting:

1. Link each type to its definition

1. the rambler 1= e a. They tend to have an aggressive personality. They feel

strongly about their opinions and like to share them.

2. the mute 2=d b. They are never prepared. They always find excuses for
not completing their tasks.
3. the dominator 3=a c. They come to the meeting to vent about everything.
They drain crucial meeting time and drag down team
morale.
4. the slacker 4=b d. They almost never talk during a meeting. Their reasons
for not speaking up are unclear.
5. the complainer 5=c e. They love to talk about any topic. Their input is always
the long boring version instead of the brief one. They
frequently digress from the main topic into unrelated
discussions and diatribes.

2. What is the negative impact of having one or more of these personality types?

Having an over-talker (a rambler or a dominator) will make the conversation harder as the time
will be wasted on hearing the inputs of a single person rather than exchanging ideas and
discussing them. Having a mute on the other side is not even better, as no one can be certain
about the reason behind his/her silence (is it of approval or of fear of speaking up) and so, he/she
will be passive and won’t contribute to the decision making. When having a slacker in the group,
the working process will always be slowed down. The complainer keeps dragging the team
energy down by focusing on the negative side of everything .
3. There are a number of facilitation techniques that can be used to effectively manage these
personality types. For the personality type of the “dominator”, the speaker explains how
trying to aggressively shut them down can be counterproductive. How is that?

When we push dominators down, they may feel that they have been oppressed and their opinion
is not heard. They will keep talking until they feel that everyone got their point. Shutting them
down can backfire and encourage them to impose their opinion and speak their mind up.

4. The speaker suggests two alternative techniques. Explain each of them:

The “compliment, Thanking him/her for participating, citing the merits of his/her point and
document and ask another person about their opinion on the point he/she mentioned.
pivot” approach Reiterate his idea briefly, writing it visibly in front of every one, and
asking everyone about his or her related inputs.
The Round Robin Asking people to comment one by one leaving the dominator to the end
Technique so that he/she has the time to speak his/her minds without taking other
people’s

5. Suggest other techniques for effectively managing these difficult personalities:

The dominator:

-Create a clear timeline in the agenda where everyone contributes for a short period of time
-Break their “train of thoughts” by asking short answer questions about what they’ve just said
-Validate what they have said and ask for someone else’s opinion
The mute:
-Call them by their name to encourage them to participate
-Break into smaller groups to discuss the issue before opening the general discussion.

The rambler:

-have a clear time line giving everyone a specific time period to talk
-Tell him/her when he gets off topic (you may write his points down to talk about later on)

The complainer:

-Don’t validate or even comment on their negative ideas

-Ask more positive people to contribute to the discussion
The slacker:

-When finishing the meeting, make sure that he/she noted down his next task and its importance

-Send him/her emails to remind him/her of her task and check their progress before the meeting
(you may even give him/her fake deadlines to ensure that the work is done ahead of time)