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In-Flight Entertainment: Criteria

If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.

—HENRY FORD

Now that we have the crew’s roles and the safety demo of how to run a meeting, it’s time to examine some of the processes we will use in our process box. Since one of the primary goals at meetings is to make sure that everyone can see everyone else’s point of view, it is very important that people communicate clearly. This requires attendees to have an understanding of intent and criteria.

Intent is purpose. Each agenda item will already have a specified purpose on the agenda. Knowing the purpose of an item is one of the lenses that focus people properly at a meeting. Another lens is criteria—that is, the relevant factors to satisfy. Anytime ideas are being discussed, assume you don’t understand them fully if you don’t yet know their intent and criteria.

I still remember the first time I became aware of criteria in communication. I was in my office with a couple. It was the end of the visit, and she suddenly turned to him and said, “Honey, let’s go to the Rose Gardens.”

His response was, “Nah.”

She looked very disappointed, so I asked, “What’s the intent behind going to the Rose Gardens? Why did you suggest that?”

She said, “We have an hour before we have to pick up the kids. We are feeling closer than we have in a long time. So I thought it would be nice to spend some quiet time together.”

He then said, “That’s a great idea, but it’s too hot and buggy. How about the café we’ve been meaning to try?”

She delightedly said, “Sure!”

Now I ask you, do you think she really cared about going to the Rose Gardens? No. What she cared about was spending time together. That’s the intent. The Rose Gardens were just a way to fulfill that intent. But why did she choose that? Why not dinner for two or a movie or a cruise? The answer was the criteria. They had only an hour before they had to pick up the kids, so there was a time criterion. Perhaps the Rose Gardens were on the way home, so the geographic criterion may have supported the time criterion. There might have been a budgetary criterion: the gardens wouldn’t cost anything. Atmospheric criterion: it was a nice quiet place. Perhaps it was a place of meaning for them, or the opposite, a place completely new so they could experience it together. All those factors were criteria.

Criteria are the reasons people like or dislike ideas. The criteria can be positive or negative. People may reject an idea because it violates a criterion they think is important or it doesn’t fulfill a criterion they value.

In studying communication for over 30 years, I have noticed that people usually do not communicate their intent or criteria. They blurt out an idea. Assume you know nothing until you know people’s intent and criteria. And when you are presenting an idea, you have told people nothing until you tell them your intent and criteria.

Criteria explain why people think what they think. This helps others understand their point of view. The Flight Recorder will want to listen carefully for criteria and make sure they are written down for everyone to see, perhaps on a separate list from the ideas themselves. You may not know the relevant criteria before the discussion starts, but as it progresses, those criteria will be revealed. Listen for them and create a list. People’s ideas may not be feasible, but the criteria behind them can be important.

The proper order of communication is the following:

1.  Intent

2.  Criteria

3.  Idea

Let’s say a team is discussing having a leadership training. The group is in the phase during which they are trying to decide where to hold this seminar. The subintent at this point is to “find the right facility that will allow people to get the most value out of the training.” Different venues are suggested as possible locations. It is at this point that criteria become critical.

One person at the meeting says it should be in our own facility, another says we should go to a hotel, and a third insists that going away to the resort is the only way to go. We can go round and round in this meeting with people taking sides for our own conference room, the hotel, or the resort. We can even get into conflict over it if the issue is significant to everyone in the room.

But what are we really talking about? We need to ask people why they think what they think to reveal criteria. Asking the first person about doing it in our own conference room might reveal, “Well, if we do it in our own facility, then it won’t cost us anything.” That person is looking at a budgetary criterion.

The person pushing the hotel might respond to the same question with, “I am concerned that if we do it in our own facility, people will run and get their messages and be distracted. If we are going to invest the time and money, we really should focus.” This person’s highly valued criterion is focus.

The third person, who supports the idea of the resort, might respond by saying, “I think if we are going to do it, we should get away together for a few days. Then we are going to bond together as a team.” The highly valued criteria for this person are bonding and teamwork.

We are really not all talking about the same thing here. One person is talking about the budget, the next focus, and the third teamwork. But until we expose the criteria consciously, we could be under the illusion that we are talking about the same thing and even get into conflict over it.

STATE YOUR CRITERIA AND DETERMINE THE CRITERIA OF OTHERS

At meetings, it is imperative that everyone understand the importance of criteria so that they can communicate clearly why they think what they think and also so they can clarify others’ unexpressed criteria. People’s ideas are usually nothing more than a means to an end. And that end is the fulfillment of an overall intent and a list of criteria. Ask people to specify the criteria they are attempting to satisfy when they communicate their thoughts. Encourage them to ask for the criteria of others if these are not volunteered.

HIGHER-POWER LENS FOCUS: START WITH INTENT AND CRITERIA

Before starting a discussion, the first thing that should be done is to state the group’s intent, which is what it is trying accomplish with the discussion, and then list the relevant criteria that need to be satisfied. This can save quite a bit of time.

The list of criteria should be prioritized. Some criteria may be negotiable whereas others are not. For example, a federal agency is having a leadership retreat, but they cannot use taxpayer dollars to cater it. The attendees will need to go out for lunch and pay for it themselves. Since they want to make the most out of their retreat time, their criteria for lunch might include the following:

•   Time (within an hour)

•   A variety of food that would satisfy all attendees

•   A certain budget range

In investigating the options, they might find that having a caterer bring in lunch would definitely satisfy the time criterion. But then the caterer limits the choices to only three items and charges an additional 20 percent, which violates the criteria of variety and budget. Once they realize that catering is not an option, a couple of subcriteria are added to the list:

•   Time (within an hour)

   Geographically close

   Quick service

•   A variety of food that will satisfy all attendees

•   A certain budget range

When people say what they like or don’t like about an idea, it is based on their criteria. Going back to the example of the team deciding where to hold the leadership training, some of the positive criteria for holding it in their own facility might include these:

•   People will have no trouble finding it.

•   It will save money since we don’t have to pay for the venue.

•   If a person attending the meeting is needed for an emergency, he or she can be easily found.

When we hear from the attendees who don’t like that idea, we find the following criteria:

•   There’s the risk of unnecessary distractions. Others might poke their heads in the room to see what is going on.

•   People will run out and check their messages on breaks and come back late.

•   So-called urgencies will come up, and people will be pulled out of the room even though the problems could have easily been handled by others and probably would have been handled if the meeting participants weren’t so readily available.

RECOGNIZE THAT PEOPLE PLAY A CRITERIA ROLE

Over time you may learn that some participants at your meetings tend to focus on particular criteria. For example, one person may always be paying attention to the budget, whereas someone else is always tuned into morale implications.

Once you know this, those people become resources for the team. You can depend on them to pay attention in a certain way to make sure those criteria are considered.

HOW TO EXTRACT CRITERIA

The magic questions to ask to extract criteria are these: “Why do you say that?” and “What will that accomplish?” The more quickly we extract everyone’s criteria, the more quickly the group will come up with the best solutions.

Here is an example. A company’s executives had to break some bad news to their employees. Because of the economic downturn, employees would have to begin to contribute to their health insurance benefits. There was a concern among all managers that this would demoralize their employees. The managers all agreed on the intent: they wanted to minimize upset. However, there was some disagreement on what was the best way to do this. Some managers thought it would be best tackled in a companywide meeting, whereas others thought it should be done in many small group meetings. It started to get contentious, and management polarized into two camps.

I was presenting a full-day program at their leadership retreat, and they asked me to help them with this issue. They carved out two hours on the agenda to address this subject. I knew it wouldn’t take that long, and I was right. I simply went in circular order, asking each faction what they were trying to accomplish and what they were trying to avoid, to extract their important positive and negative criteria. Here’s what they said:

Supporters of the Large Group Format: Positive Criteria

•   “Everyone will hear the same communication at the same time in exactly the same way.”

Supporters of the Large Group Format: Negative Criteria

•   “If it is done in small groups, it will take days to do it. The rumor mill will go wild, and people will be hearing it second- and third-hand, with exaggeration and misinformation.”

•   “If the presentation is given by management 16 times to cover all the groups, it will no longer be the same presentation. People will not be hearing the same thing.”

Supporters of the Small Group Format: Positive Criteria

•   “People will immediately have questions about their benefits and how it will affect them financially. In a small group, managers can share specific information with each employee immediately.”

Supporters of the Small Group Format: Negative Criteria

•   “You will drop this news on people, but then it will take a number of days to inform individuals how it will affect each of them financially, so they will be worrying for days.”

Putting it all together, the positive criteria for both large and small group supporters were as follows:

•   “We want people to hear the same communication at the same time in exactly the same way.”

•   “We want to answer their questions immediately about their benefits and how this change will affect them personally.”

Putting it all together, the negative criteria of what they wanted to avoid for both large and small group supporters were as follows:

•   Taking days to do it and having people spend those days worrying

•   Having employees hear the message through the rumor mill and be misinformed

•   Having the formal presentation evolve and change by doing it multiple times

Once all the positive and negative criteria were made visual by the Flight Recorder, the group arrived at Holographic Thinking, and the answer became obvious to everyone in the room. They would inform people in one large group so that everyone would hear the same thing at the same time in the same way from the senior leadership. Then they would immediately divide up into smaller groups with people assigned to facilitators who would have their personal information and could answer all their financial questions.

It took only 20 minutes to arrive at this unanimous decision by the group. By using the Meeting Jet process and exposing all the positive and negative criteria, the managers were able to have the blinding flash of the obvious that gave them all the positives while minimizing the negatives.

But had they begun their initial discussions by first listing the positive criteria they wanted to satisfy and the negative criteria they wanted to avoid, they would have arrived at a solution much more efficiently.

The Mutual Aid Agreement

In the early 1990s, I was the facilitator of a meeting organized by the Marin County Fire Chiefs Association. We were meeting to update the mutual aid agreement between the 22 different fire departments in the county. Prior to that, the agreement was informal and not in writing. There were also varying interpretations of that agreement.

We chose a place that was comfortable, allowing for a work environment that was informal, with whiteboards and plenty of wall space to post flip charts. It was neutral and had the appropriate conveniences. We wanted to create a spirit of collaboration and appreciation, that we were getting together to help each other out, for the greater good of the fire safety of the county.

As a facilitator, I’ve found that concepts unite and details divide. The trick is to make sure people feel comfortable enough to express their differences openly. The issues must be depersonalized.

So whenever we arrived at a point of disagreement, I made sure everyone had a chance to speak, and I summarized on the flip chart what that person said. One of the ground rules was that people had to be honest about what they thought. With each issue, we would list first all the pros and then all the cons.

By having everyone see the chart and look at all the factors, it depersonalized the discussion. In addition, it got people to see a bigger picture than the one they had before the meeting.

That led to a simple philosophical agreement on mutual aid, which is in effect to this day, is evolving as times change, and is getting better every year.

—Fire chief, Volunteer facilitator

SUMMARY

As a Group

1.  Begin discussions by stating the intent and making a list of relevant criteria.

2.  As discussions progress and other criteria surface, add them to the criteria list, which you keep visible to everyone.

3.  If you don’t know the criteria before a discussion starts, create the criteria list on the basis of what people say during the discussion.

As an Individual

1.  Begin by stating your intent.

2.  When presenting an idea, outline your thinking and the significant criteria (reasons) for your recommendations.

3.  Always offer the group a number of options. Specify the positive criteria and negative criteria of each option and then give your recommendation. In your presentation you may want to state the reasons you have rejected certain options so people understand your thinking.

4.  When people are sharing their ideas and opinions, assume you don’t fully understand until you know their intent and criteria. Take responsibility to clarify those by asking questions.