Interaction Guidelines (Part I)

Today’s workplace has gone mad and so the time you spend interacting with people must be productive.  Interaction can happen in groups, one-on-one, over the phone, planned as a meeting or completely spontaneous.  With each of these communication events, you have the opportunity to enhance one’s self-esteem and motivation, and their productivity, results and efficiency, or you can blow it and cause negative feelings and develop the opposite behavior of de-motivation and ultimately anti-efficiency.

In order to meet these needs, you have to be flexible and use an effective interaction process that helps you to thoroughly cover important information.  By following these simple guidelines in a logical step, you will gain important efficiency not only in meetings but in tasks that are created by them.  Without proper moderation, meetings can become unmanageable.  Topics get introduced, no decisions get made, and people feel like it was a waste of time.  Each topic can follow this interaction process:

• Open

• Clarify
• Develop
• Agree
• Close

 All meetings should be OPENED with a purpose or goal.  If someone else initiates a discussion with you, feel free to ask the person to explain the purpose and its importance so that everyone is on the same page.

 

When you CLARIFY, you should share what you know about the topic as background and allow others to contribute to that clarification.  In group settings, typically no one person has all the facts so clarifying is critical to setting the stage for bringing people up to speed.  Facts, figures, issues and concerns are all part of the information that may come out of this stage.  

 

Coming up with possible solutions happens in the DEVELOP phase and most likely you’ll have some ideas on what to do, so share them.  You must also try to seek ideas from others who are present so quieter people can contribute.  You should also use the DEVELOP step to come up with possible requirements for each approach and determine ways to get the support you need.

 

When all ideas have been DEVELOPED, you must agree on what will be done, who will do things and by when they will do it.  Offer support to those who are delegated these tasks but you shouldn’t remove responsibility. 

 

In the CLOSE segment, you should summarize each area where you AGREED to tasks, assignments and tasks. 

 

These steps can be followed during any interaction, formal or informal, one-on-one or large groups.  In our next segment of Common Sense Management, we’ll explore some key principles for communicating with others. 

 

Part I can be found here.

Part II can be found here.

Part III can be found here.

Part IV can be found here.

Part V can be found here.

Part VI can be found here.