How to stop interruptions in meetings

Do you have this problem with someone who keeps interrupting you in meetings?

Here’s what to do and an example of how it worked.

I was asked to run a meeting for a colleague who was having real trouble with one of the committee members (we’ll call her Beryl) who constantly interrupted everyone in the meetings. I’d seen the woman in action, so knew what he was up against.

I told him to follow my lead and not to worry about what I was doing if it seemed a bit strange.

Frame the meeting

At the beginning of the meeting I made it clear that everyone would get a chance to voice his or her opinion at each stage of the process.

We went through the first step. Beryl interrupted. I told her she would get her turn as soon as those ahead of her had been asked. I asked the others, then her. She voiced her concerns, which I summarised and noted to make it clear I had listened to them.

Proactive approach

After the next point, before she could interrupt (I could see her drawing breath) I told Beryl she would be asked as soon as it was her turn. Every time I saw her about to speak, I repeated the same process, and always made sure I asked her for her views.

After about half an hour she ran out of things to say. I persisted and kept asking her for her views. By the end of the meeting she was simply waving her hand to say she had nothing more to add.

My fellow school governors were astonished. She had been transformed in a matter of hours.

The secret of the transformation

Beryl just wanted to be heard. When she thought no one would listen, that just made her more determined to be heard. So she tried harder. Of course the more she tried, the more they resisted. The system was self-perpetuating.

Instead of falling in line with this system myself, I set up a new system, which meant that Beryl felt confident that she would have a chance to speak and be listened to. So all the effort was removed and she became, once again, a useful member of the team instead of a pain in the neck.

For more help with all kinds of difficult behaviour check our products to help you with difficult people and bullies.

Are we really all responsible for bullying?

President Obama has recently launched a new campaign against bullying. He suggests that we are all responsible for stopping it.

Many years ago I remember the head teacher of my daughter’s school telling a parent that there was no bullying in his school.

I was completely astonished to hear this. I knew there was bullying in the school. So was it that he was simply unaware of the bullying that was going on? Or was it that he was lying?

School Bully

I personally saw him being bullied by the mother of a girl I knew at the school. The girl herself often bullied others at the school. It wasn’t hard to see why the girl behaved as she did.

So perhaps he didn’t really understand what bullying was. The trouble is that his lack of understanding meant he took no action to tackle bullying in the school.

We are all responsible for bullying.

What bullying is

Bullying is simply a behaviour – a way of treating others. But it’s a way that most of us don’t like when we are on the receiving end. Unfortunately many people stand by and do nothing when they see others being bullied.
When you are in a position of responsibility and you see this happening, I believe it is your responsibility to do something about it. Doing nothing is the same as condoning the bullying.

If you are a teacher you have an even greater responsibility because children and young people need to learn how to deal with these situations. If you allow the students in your care to bully each other and don’t set the right standards of behaviour, you are saying that bullying is acceptable.

You need to be demonstrating what is and what is not acceptable behaviour, and you should be showing children how they ought to behave. More than most other roles you are setting the standard.

Parents bullying

My hairdresser is Chinese. She believes in very strict standards for her daughters. But she was horrified that her husband thought that hitting his children was an acceptable form of discipline (she has corrected this misunderstanding now).

If you hit a child because they do something you don’t like, what lesson does that child learn? The child learns that you hit people to get your own way.

Sweden

Many years ago, Sweden made hitting children illegal. I saw a parent interviewed about his views on this. He said that he thought the law was completely wrong and he had to get some help to stop hitting his own children. Then he discovered that he only hit his children when he didn’t know how to talk to them.

Perhaps this is the root of a lot of bullying and to stop it we need to know how to talk to people.

In Sweden, they made it illegal but helped people to meet the new standard.
We all need to know how to help both people like the Swedish father and also those on the receiving end of bullying. And we need to have the courage to step in and help.

This is because anyone can encounter bullying. The only reason it survives as a behaviour and is so common is because we allow it.

For more help dealing with bullying get my downloadable ebook “How to Deal With Bullying”

Why is there still so much bullying?

Bullying happens when people aren’t getting what they want and try to get it in a way that ignores the needs of others.
There are two key issues:

• The behaviour of the person doing the bullying
• The way the recipient responds

If you change either you can stop the bullying.

To change the first, people have to:

• Know how their behaviour is coming across
• Be able to negotiate with others effectively

To change the second, anyone on the receiving end needs to:

• Recognise bullying behaviour
• Know how to respond in a way that stops the bullying and enables the other party to negotiate

What’s really good to know is that, as the recipient you can stop the bullying. What’s more worrying to know is that we have all bullied others at times and that we are often completely unaware of the fact that we are doing it.

Many years ago, I fell and cut my head open. I went to the Queen’s Medical Centre – a hospital that is a quarter of a mile square, so quite big.

I waited in casualty for hours. There was no queue. There had been no multiple pile up, there was no ‘flu epidemic. I was almost the only person there. But, for some reason it took something like five hours before I saw a member of the medical staff.

The gash on my forehead was still wide open and I had broken two teeth. I had not eaten for hours.

When I finally did see a nurse I asked her politely when I might get to see a doctor.

As soon as she had gone, my husband said he thought I had been ‘a bit short’ with the nurse. I thought I had been very polite. I remember being very polite. However, with the benefit of what I know now, I suspect I might have come over as a little aggressive. But it didn’t feel like that to me at the time. It rarely does.

I think there is still so much bullying because so many people are not taught how to deal with it, or to recognise when they are bullying others.

Only yesterday I worked with a client who asked me how she could deal with her “difficult” manager. After a minute or two it was clear to me that he was bullying her. Yet he is a director of quite a large company.

To stop bullying we all need to be able to deal with it effectively and to take action whenever we encounter it so that no one thinks it’s OK to bully others. Everyone needs to know how to negotiate properly. And we have to stop promoting people who bully others, especially not into senior positions.

As a result of working with some clients recently who had been on the receiving end of some particularly nasty bullying, I have updated my downloadable book “How to Deal With Bullies”. It now includes over 10 pages on how to deal with malicious bullying. I’ve put it on special offer just for this week.

To find out what's in it, use this link.