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The
One Nugget Report from The Project Management Advisor™
Issue 2010-18 - Watch The Pontificator!
Excerpted from
The Truth about
Getting Your Point Across…and Nothing But the Truth
http://www.project-management-books.com/truth
At the offices of one of my clients there was
a fellow who I’ll call “Moe.” Moe was your typical
pontificator. At any time we saw Moe he was standing outside of
someone’s cubicle or sitting on someone’s office, coffee cup in
hand, waxing poetic about the latest dumb decision management
made, the idiots that run his division, or last night’s baseball
game. Moe had an opinion on everything and was very free about
letting you know every detail of his opinion. There was no such
thing as a five-minute conversation with Moe. Unless you
excused yourself for whatever reason you were there for at least
fifteen minutes listening to his philosophy. The problem was
that Moe was friends with the person managing our contract so we
had to put up with him.
Moe was particularly problematic during meetings. He diverted
agendas, disrupted meeting topics, and wasted tremendous amounts
of time. Despite all this, Moe was a long-time company employee
and understood his job well. But he was still a big pain in the
hindquarters. If the pontificator needs to be there, try to talk with him
beforehand and solicit his help in keeping the meeting moving
forward. Spend a few minutes reviewing the agenda and get him
oriented to the meeting topic. If he has opinions or viewpoints
that he wants to air, get him to do it with you beforehand and
try to incorporate some of his viewpoint into the topic. If he
sees that he has been heard and if some of his thinking is baked
into your agenda, the pontificator is more likely to be a good
soldier and not hijack your meeting.
It’s likely that that you’ve worked with a person like Moe. You
can do your best to avoid him, but there he is, ready to give
you an earful about something. So how do you handle the Moes of
the world during meetings? How do you keep things on track?
How do you avoid frustrating everyone else in the meeting when
the pontificator revs up his engine?
The first thing you can do about the pontificator at your
meeting is to take a good hard look at whether the pontificator
absolutely needs to be at the meeting. Will the pontificator
contribute valuable content and perspective that will add value
to the meeting? If not avoid having the pontificator at the
meeting in the first place.
If you’ve taken this step and the pontificator still feels the
need to take control of your meeting, your next mission is to
preserve the purpose of the meeting, keep things focused on the
agenda, and avoid wasting any of the other attendee’s time. It
is vitally important that you monitor what your pontificator is
saying and keep them focused on the agenda item. If he
continues to drift off topic onto his own agenda item ask to
have the item taken offline. If it continues then it is
completely within bounds to cut the person off and bring things
back to your agenda. Whatever you do, don’t lose control of the
agenda. Your credibility is at stake with other meeting
attendees; losing control of the agenda means a loss of
credibility, which you’ll now need to work to regain.
Pontificators don’t have to spell doom and gloom to your
meetings. If you can ensure that they truly need to be involved
in the meeting, get them on your side, and control them when
they veer off path, you can still get things done when they are
involved.
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