Page 19 - Leadership Basics 10

10. Ideas
Ideas are the lifeblood of many meetings. Such gatherings may indeed be arranged for the express
purpose of finding creative solutions to problems. Your experiences at some meetings however
may have told you that people are not always receptive to ideas, especially if they are thought up
by other members. You may be familiar with some of the tricks chairs use in order to avoid change
and the work which sometimes necessarily accompanies good ideas. If you want to suffocate ideas
before they get a chance to breathe, you can:

 Quickly divert attention to another subject.
 Mention resource constraints and the present economic difficulties.

 State it is dangerous to try out ideas which are untested.
 End the agenda item.
 Suggest it is not really serious or practicable.

 Hint that something similar has been tried before and did not work.
 Identify the similarity to another idea.

 State what a good idea it is and still ignore it.
 Ridicule the individual who suggested it.

 Suggest changes so that it is modified out of recognition.
 Mention that the leader will not like it for some reason.

 Indicate that the originator is not fully conversant with the situation.
 Defer its discussion to another meeting and then omit it from the agenda.
 Give the originator so much work that she forgets about advancing ideas.

Of course, we are not suggesting for one moment that you adopt the above behaviours, but such
tactics are often used. We have to recognise that meetings are unlikely to be effective if new ideas
are not promoted and seriously discussed. If you chair a meeting try to ensure that participation is
meaningful and supported. This means encouraging people to contribute and valuing their ideas
and suggestions. You may still reject and discard ideas, but members must feel they have been
treated seriously.

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