2/10/25 - This Meeting Could Have Been a Fistfight
As the title says, this week, I’m thinking about meetings and constructive conflict. I’m not completely sure of the origin of the phrase, but “this meeting could have been a fistfight” frequently comes to mind (it’s also a fun riff on “this meeting could have been an email”). If you’ve worked with me, you know I can be a stickler for effective meetings, so if the meeting is long and drawn out with no resolution, time would have been better spent fistfighting.
It goes beyond the ineffective meetings, though. There’s something about how we show up in meetings that makes me want to throw hands.
I’m reminded of a story in an HBR case study about an army rowing team with strong rowers but no team cohesion. The team leader, having tried all sorts of team-building activities, finally let the team fight it out, literally. The team fought, and once they’d traded blows, they were stronger and more cohesive, and the snippiness immediately left. They then went on to win several crew trophies, and the rest is history.
In most cases, we can’t fight each other with our fists and get the physical energy out, (though this would make for an interesting case study in organizational hierarchies), but we can spar with our words. Some organizations have code words, like “Level 10,” to help break the ice of saying something that might sound mean or offputting but is intended to challenge directly.
Whatever your method, you must figure out how to get past the hesitation of being nice in order to beat up the ideas being presented. Remember, it’s not you against the individual, it’s all of you against the ideas. After all, you’re hoping to come out with the best path forward.
Kim Scott has a whole section in Radical Candor about “ruinous empathy,” a phrase that I think of regularly, in which, “you care personally about someone, but don’t challenge them.” This is where we get to, in most cases, at work. We build relationships, and we generally get along with our co-workers, but we don’t challenge them directly, especially in meetings. We let ideas drift out with no response, and we don’t punch at them until we’ve got the best version of that idea.
Which fights are you having this week? Are you trading blows or hanging out outside of the ring?
Let me know in the comments below!
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