As facilitators we often talk about the energy in the room, and we ask questions like:
- How might we change the energy?
- How to increase the energy?
- In what ways might we use the energy in the room?
- What might be all the ways to keep the energy positive?
We were working with a Pension Fund advisor recently, with its institutional real estate investment team: a group responsible for buying real estate property for pension funds. We were debriefing the first day of their annual strategy meeting using POINt, a debriefing and feedback technique the team had just learned.
During the debrief, someone mentioned that we had to finish by 5:00, because they had a committee meeting that evening. One of the regional acquisition vice-presidents would be presenting a property acquisition to the company’s senior management team for approval. Since everyone was in town, the acquisition team decided to all go to the committee meeting. A couple of people made jokes about how rough committee meetings could be. The jokes turned to complaints, and as they were packing up their bags to leave, the facilitator asked a question.
“Would you raise your hand if you’ve ever left a committee meeting feeling good?”
Only the senior VP, the acquisition team leader, raised his hand. He looked around at his team, a little bit stupefied that no one, even when their deal was approved, which happened about 80% of the time, had ever left an acquisition committee meeting feeling good.
“Really?” he said.
“Really,” they replied
Then the senior VP of acquisitions said, “I have an idea.”
(We like it when this happens.)
He continued, “At the start of the meeting we'll go around to each committee member and ask them to say two things they like about the deal. Then we'll go around again and ask for their concerns. Then we'll let the acquisition VP go ahead with our normal meeting process.”
The next day the facilitator asked them if they did it? They had.
Then the facilitator asked “Has anyone ever left a committee meeting feeling good?”
Everyone in the room raised their hand.
The senior VP elaborated. “It was clear that committee members came to the meeting chomping at the bit to air their concerns, and naturally so. It’s their role to make sure we are not making a mistake. By starting with the positives, the pluses, we created a positive, productive energy in the room, and the acquisition VP who is presenting is able to understand what the committee likes about the transaction. The result of this is he or she doesn’t waste time trying to convince people of something they already agree on. But even more important, committee members got to air their concerns at the start. Once those concerns were out, the committee members were much more willing to relax and let the acquisitions VP take them through the meeting. The acquisitions VP knew which points in the presentation he needed to elaborate on to answer those concerns. The whole energy of the meeting completely changed from combative and tense to productive and relaxed.”
The PI in POINt is now imbedded in their meeting process.
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