Exasperation is annoyance that brings with it hopelessness and depletion — a sense that you can't tolerate any more of whatever that was, and you can't do anything to prevent the inevitable future repetitions. An exasperation generator is a behavior, concept, or situation that fairly reliably causes exasperation in many of the members of a group. Examples include condescension, bragging, initiatives announced by top management, software user guides, new policies adopted enterprise-wide, and procedures for appealing performance reviews.
Sometimes we can do something about exasperation generators that effectively inhibits them. If you can do something, do it. But if you truly are powerless to prevent recurrences, what then? Let's restrict ourselves to an exasperation generator common in meetings — opaque metaphors.
Metaphors often clarify. When asked why it will take two weeks to complete a task, someone might respond, "Well, it'll take us a week to bring the new consultant up to speed." Here, "up to speed" is a metaphor — we won't actually be accelerating the consultant. We mean only to brief or orient the consultant.
But metaphors can be opaque if they're poorly chosen or if they're expressed in arcane terms. In response to the same question about schedule, someone might say, "Well, it'll take us a week to find a hound that can follow the scent of a fox." Umm, OK, a hound and a fox. Oh, the speaker is saying that finding a capable consultant will take a week. The metaphor is opaque. It obstructs the explanation.
When a regular attendee of a meeting (I'll call him Oscar) frequently uses opaque metaphors, some listeners experience exasperation. If we can't ban Oscar from future meetings, what can we do?
- Educate everyone about opaque metaphors
- Not everyone Not everyone knows what
a metaphor is. Make
sure they do.knows what a metaphor is. Make sure they do. Then explain that an opaque metaphor is one that raises new questions about its relation to the concept it supposedly clarifies. - Understand that opacity is often deliberate
- Opacity could be intended to cause confusion. Ambiguity can provide a shield by postponing specificity. And it can compel others to ask for clarification, which can make Oscar seem superior, giving him a chance to condescend.
- Verify that an opaque metaphor incident has occurred
- We must verify the opacity of the metaphor. Poll the attendees, possibly privately, asking, "Were you also confused by the hounds-and-foxes metaphor?"
- Log the incidents
- Don't rely on memory. If more than a third of the attendees agree that the metaphor incident was exasperating, log it.
When you have enough entries in your log to qualify this issue as a performance issue, have a private conversation with Oscar. If that doesn't work, ask his supervisor for assistance. If that doesn't work, ask your own supervisor to deal with Oscar's supervisor. If that doesn't work, improvement depends on the behavior of the rest of the group. Top Next Issue
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Related articles
More articles on Effective Meetings:
- Let Me Finish, Please
- We use meetings to exchange information and to explore complex issues. In open discussion, we tend to
interrupt each other. Interruptions can be disruptive, distracting, funny, essential, and frustratingly
common. What can we do to limit interruptions without depriving ourselves of their benefits?
- When the Chair Is a Bully: I
- Most meetings have chairs or "leads." Although the expression that the chair "owns"
the meeting is usually innocent shorthand, some chairs actually believe that they own the meeting. This
view is almost entirely destructive. What are the consequences of this attitude, and what can we do about it?
- How to Hijack Meetings
- Recognizing the tactics meeting hijackers use is the first step to reducing the incidence of this abuse.
Here are some of those tactics.
- The Opposite of Influence
- The question of why some people are so influential has a partner question: why are others largely ignored,
or opposed, even when their contributions are valuable?
- Interrupting Others in Meetings Safely: III
- When we need to interrupt someone who's speaking in a meeting, we risk giving offense. Still, there
are times when interrupting is in everyone's best interest. Here are some more techniques for interrupting
in situations not addressed by the meeting's formal process.
See also Effective Meetings and Effective Communication at Work for more related articles.
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