Subject: Laird's notes on minuting emotions
Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2007 09:33:13 -0500
From: Sandy Altucher
To: MC Facilitation team
Mears
Diana Carroll
Belfer-Shevett
I'm sending this to facilitation and anyone I can remember seeing take
minutes lately.
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Minuting Emotions
Having made the case for 1) minutes which include a decent summary of
the content of discussion and 2) mtgs which welcome emotional input,
this begs the question of how to report emotions fairly, informatively
and without being inflammatory.
Guidelines here are much less likely to get you into doo-doo if the
emotions were explicitly named in the mtg. (Otherwise, the
minute-taker's interpretation is open to all kinds of second-guessing
(or revisionist thinking). Thus it's important to empower notetakers to
ask about how to phrase something as soon as they're aware of potential
awkwardness. When the facilitator suggests wording it can make the
notetakers role much easier (and safer).
You can be less afraid that labeling someone's statement of agony will
not spark a delayed firestorm if the agony was identified and accepted
as such in the mtg itself. Conversely, characterizing emotions
explicitly for the first time in minutes is tricky. When unsure of your
footing, or it feels too risky to be that descriptive, it is still
important to convey a feel for the energy with which things were said
(as the context and affect convey meaning as well as the words). Put
another way, it's better late than never. You can fall back on vaguer
statements, such as:
"Dale objected strongly to the proposal because it didn't appear to
incorporate the findings of the task force—he had concern that their
hard work was not being respected."
"Pat expressed upset when Chris made a humorous comment immediately
following Dee's heartfelt story about how hard it is to find the courage
to share critical feedback. Chris was surprised by Pat's reaction and
the two agreed to talk about it later."
"After an hour of discussion it appeared that there was no consensus on
how to proceed. In light of the time spent on this matter (including
cmtee time & previous plenaries) Bob, Mary, Barbara, and Julio proposed
employing the super majority voting fallback to move this forward. This
got us into weighing the advantages of moving forward versus the
advantages of waiting until all concerns have been resolved. There
ensued a tense discussion with no resolution. We'll come back to this
question next Saturday, after members have had a chance to digest the
input and reflect on it."
*Hints*: Try to be descriptive, not interpretive. OK to report
self-assessments. OK to report contradictory assessments. Don't fake
harmony.
When reporting upset, try to make clear what it was in connection to.
When in doubt, run it by the principals before posting to everyone. Some
people have no problem with seeing news of their outburst reported in
public minutes; for others you may as well flog them at noon in Times
Square. In short, you have to know the limitations and boundaries of the
people you are writing for and about.
Remember, the object here is to illuminate; not excoriate.
