Confronting Problem Behaviors in Meetings

As a facilitator, there will be times when you are confronted with group members who display “problem behaviors” that can impede meeting progress and performance. Such problem behaviors can be wide and varied and some examples might include “hijacking” the meeting the agenda; creating procedural roadblocks to progress or confrontational or bullying communication. At these moments such forceful behaviors have the potential of shaking even the most skilled facilitators. It is at these times, when it is helpful to have a linear model to confront disruptive meeting behaviors.

In the field of health behavior counseling, there is has been a brief protocol developed for clinicians to assess clients for substance use like smoking or excessive drinking. The mnemonic tool is represented as the Five A’s model of counseling. Each of the Five A’s corresponds to a step in the process and includes: 1) Ask about the behavior, 2) Advise the client with a clear message, 3) Assess readiness and barriers to change, 4) Assist in the behavior change process, and 5) Arrange for follow up with the client.

I would like to suggest, that the Five A’s model has application to addressing problem behaviors of an individual in a group. This model can be skillfully used “in the moment” of the meeting, when the problem behaviors are occurring or following the meeting in a more interpersonal setting. The model provides a clear and linear pathway to resolve problem behaviors. So an example of how you might use the Five A’s in a meeting facilitation might look like this:

Ask: “For the last half an hour, I have observed that your comments have not been in support of this project and you have been argumentative in both your tone and word choices. Let me ask you to get in touch with yourself and tell us what you are feeling and what you need so that we can productively move forward.”

Advise: “Thanks for that reflection. What I hear you saying is that you need other tasks or projects to be taken off your plate before you will cooperate on this one. That discussion is not one we can have in the context of this meeting but we can schedule another time to address your personal workplan. For this meeting however, we need to move on more productively discussing the project because if we don’t stay focused on the agenda it could negatively impact our ability to apply for this grant.”

Assess: “Recognizing that we are going to address your workload concerns later, do you think you can suspend your feelings and productively join us in working through this agenda?”

Assist: “Great, I appreciate your willingness to help out during this meeting. As we move forward through this agenda, I will keep your expressed concerns in mind and so that you don’t feel like your concerns are invalidated. Also, if we get stuck again, I can help us through the process.

Arrange: “Finally, at the end of this meeting let’s compare calendars and find a time to meet to discuss your workload.

I hope you get that my point is not to try and teach behavioral counseling in a 500 word blog but is to point out the critical need for having a process manage so-called “problem behaviors” in meetings. How many times have you been in a meeting where problem behaviors are excused by saying, “there goes Bob/Betty again” and then dismissively rolling our eyes?” I have been there and at those points in time meeting productivity grinds to a halt.

As I have suggested elsewhere having the foundation of a solid meeting agenda helps keeps meetings focused and productive. However, agenda’s alone won’t help when an individual or individuals take a meeting hostage by his/her behaviors. In those times a facilitator needs to have the courage to confront disruptive and inappropriate behaviors. The Five A’s model is one framework that can help focus the facilitation and process in order to improve meeting performance.

Further Reading:

This article provides a great overview of how the Five A’s model works in Smoking Cessation. It provides good examples of each step in the model and it is not a big leap to apply the concepts to a facilitation approach using the Five A’s.

This article looks at the challenges of implementing a Five A’s model in clinical practice. It takes a bit of a conceptual leap to translate this research into the practice of facilitation but hang with it a little because there are important conceptual lessons here.