Is your team speaking up in meetings?

It was always very frustrating for me to be in a meeting where people do not speak up especially when they usually do on one-on-one. And in a recent conversation with an ex-colleague, i realized i am not alone. but what is the root cause of that?

In a classic 1968 social psychology Bibb Latane and John Darley brought Columbia University students into the lab in what the students thought was a discussion on problems of urban life. The real experiment took place in the waiting as the students filled out some preliminary questionnaires. After few minutes, strange smoke began to pour into the room through a vent. would students Would students get up and go tell someone, or would they just sit there passively and keep filling our the questionnaires?

In the control condition, students were alone in the waiting room. In that condition, 75% took action, with half of the subjects leaving the room to find the experimenter within two minutes of noticing the smoke's appearance.

In another condition, three students were brought into the waiting room one at a time and seated at separate desks. The experimenters wanted to know: Would having multiple people witnessing the smoke increase or decrease the likelihood that anyone would take action? The answer: It decreased it. Only three of the 24 students who were in that condition got up to report the smoke, and only one did so within the first four minutes, even though the smoke began to obstruct everyone's vision by then.

It is fascinating! Especially when there is ambiguity (in this case it was the smoke screen), people look to each other to see what everyone else is doing. If everyone else is just sitting there, then each individual comes to the conclusion that no, it seems like it is not an emergency, i will not take action. I will not speak up.

Leaders have an important role to break this cycle and encourage people to speak up by offering asking questions, change their meeting styles or even creating smaller breakout groups in large meetings.

Is there other tools you or someone else used?

#leadership #meetings