Since so much influencing takes place at formal or informal meetings (virtual or face-to-face) at work, at home, or in your community, following are some suggestions for designing meetings for effective two-way influencing. If the outcome of the meeting is to be a decision or set of actions that will require the commitment of participants, it's especially important that each person have an opportunity to influence the end result. Too many meetings are designed to avoid engaging people in discussion about decisions that they will have to buy into and implement. This only lengthens the overall process.
This process may be repeated several times until a consensus is reached.
All of the suggestions above are valid, whether the meeting is held face-to-face or by video, telephone, or web conference. When participants in the meeting are not co-located, special care should be taken to make sure that everyone has an opportunity to participate and influence. From time to time, the facilitator or leader in a virtual meeting should do a “round-robin” check for comments, opinions, or questions from each participant by name (always allowing for a “pass” response).
Virtual meetings that involve global teams have special issues. Time zones could shift from one meeting to another—possible because of who is hosting the meeting, but also to be fair about sharing the difficulty of meeting outside of regular working hours equitably. Seemingly simple issues like this can have an impact on where people believe power resides and can have an effect on a member's perceived ability to influence the team.
When possible, global teams should have an occasional face-to-face meeting, or at least a video meeting so that members have a more personal sense of one another. This, too, increases the likelihood of active influencing across boundaries of time and space.
Cultural differences about influence can have an important impact on global teams. For example, some cultures are more hierarchical than others, causing younger, newer, or less senior members to withhold their ideas—which can be a real loss. Any team leader or manager will do well to learn about these cultural differences that can be barriers to communication and influence so that he or she can find appropriate ways (through team norms, for example) to encourage full participation. Teams and organizations with a healthy climate for influence can be more focused, aligned, and innovative—they can trust the agreements they reach and know that good ideas will be shared.
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