How Do You Get Rude People to Pay Attention During Meetings?
Laptops and Smart Phones are brilliant innovations. However, when they get into the hands of rude people they can also be extremely aggravating to a project manager. This occurred to me as I looked around the room at multiple meetings I’ve attended and see that many people bring their laptops to check e-mail. Or, they are compulsively looking at their Smart Phones for text messages or just browsing the web. All of this going on while a project manager is attempting to conduct a meeting that needs their input.
Rude.
How do you manage this type of partial and distracted attention at your internal meetings? How do you manage it with your Clients that may be preoccupied with their phones or laptops and not listening to what you have to say? Saving Changes...
I hold a steering committee every three weeks to present the current status of our company's project pipe to a dozen of VP-level folks. This is a 90 minutes meeting and there usually is a lot of information to cram down their throats so they have the necessary input to make the decisions I need them to make. Regardless of the importance of this meeting, there will invariably be a couple of directors who will be messing around with their iPads, or starting impromptu conversations with their neighbours about something, important no doubt, but that has nothing to do with the topic at hand...
So to get back to the OP's question, "How do you manage this type of partial and distracted attention at your internal meetings?", my answer is simply: I DON'T. This isn't a classroom and I'm not a teacher. They are all grown-ups and I'm not there to babysit them, either. After all, these guys were all smart enough to become Directors of something - if they don't think they need to listen, who am I to argue? I just do my thing, get the input of those people who are actively participating, make sure to ask if anyone has any questions at the end of the meeting (invariably met with resounding silence), then send the minutes. At the end of the day, those who don't pay attention harm only themselves.
Bear in mind that the people I deal with are all French, and as Michelle pointed out in her post, culture is a heavy factor - trying to force high-ranking French people to focus is an exercise that will leave you exhausted, and bitter :) Saving Changes...
Imran ManirSenior Project ManagerBurton On Trent, United Kingdom
Hi Jennifer,
As the chair person, set the ground rule at the outset, politely but assertively. Laptop's are a no no ( I will not start a meeting until laptops are put away and people stop fidgeting with their mobiles). I'll smile and advise everyone that we're waiting for XYZ to finish texting or emailing - then we'll start.
Focus attention on those individuals who flout the rules by directing questions to them in the meeting and if they are persistent offenders, have a chat with them on the side, explaining how their behaviour is impacting the meeting. Saving Changes...
Julien's reply makes the most sense to me, but sometimes tough to do.
As an IT manager, I would sometimes go to a senior management meeting to ask for approval for $ for something. I may have spent days building a business case, doing research and analysis, but when I got there, half were on their Blackberries. I believe this showed disrespect for my work. But, as Julien suggests, if I ended up with approval, why should I care?
I was at a local PMI chapter meeting recently, sitting at the front table for an interesting speaker brought in from a great distance. Another person at the table reached for, pulled his Blackberry out of its case, scrolled the screen, and put it back, on average once per minute during the entire presentation. I let it bother me, I thought it disrespectful of the speaker, and if he wanted to do that, sit in the back row next time.
Same the following week at a CIPS presentation, a lady at the next table, front row, in plain view of the speaker.
I guess professional speakers are used to it, they ignored it, and I need to get over it.
Saving Changes...
Elizabeth HarrinDirector| RebelsGuideToPM.comLondon, England, United Kingdom
I used to think that using gadgets during presentations was disrespectful to the speaker, but now, with Twitter... well, it's a different story. When I speak in front of groups it would be great to think they were all giving me their full attention, but there is always a number of people on their phones or iPads. They might be working, but they may also be Tweeting the presentation to their co-workers. This is especially common at conferences, and PMI's Global Congress last year in Dallas had huge numbers of tweets from people attending sessions. I think this actually adds value to the presentation, but in meetings I know it is a completely different story.
"A statesman is an easy man, he tells his lies by rote. A journalist invents his lies and rams them down your throat. So stay at home and drink your beer and let the neighbors vote!"
