I spend a lot of my time facilitating small group discussions around a wide range of topics. Over the past 15 years, I’ve easily interacted with over 400,000 different types of people. Each person has their own style of communication. One particularly challenging communication style is the looper. By looper, I mean that they say what they want, but then continue for several more minutes looping around the same point. Or they take a while to explain something that could’ve easily been said in a third of the time.
The three big dangers with loopers are:
1) Their main point gets lost as people forget what they said in the first place.
2) They kill the meeting momentum.
3) They cause meetings to run way longer than needed.
If you are in a meeting with a looper or multiple loopers, here’s a super simple low-tech solution to keep things moving along.
It’s called the “Got It” card.
Before the meeting starts, distribute a “Got It” card to everyone in the group. Explain that at any moment, while someone else is talking, if you feel like the person talking has made their point and that you “got it”, you should lift your “Got It” card from the table so the person talking sees it.
The person talking can see the card on the table and is reminded not to loop. If they see enough people have their “Got It” card raised, they can stop talking because everyone understands their point.
On the other hand, if only one person raises their card, then it’s a sign that the person talking isn’t being clear enough on the message.
Either way, well-run meetings are the engine of a team. If you struggle with loopers in your team meetings, try out the “Got It” card and get your meeting momentum back.
