You are dreading the meeting: you know that the topic to be discussed is very controversial. You have spoken to a few people in the team and there are two or more proposals circulating that are mutually exclusive. In addition, the meeting participants are passionate about their positions. You're in for an uncomfortable few hours, during which at least half the group will be disappointed. Here are a few tips for a process that will help you arrive at a solution that is well thought out, gets as much agreement as possible and works to ensure that as few people as possible are offended at the end.

Preparation for conflict-capable meetings

As a coach, I am often asked to facilitate meetings of this kind: Board meetings, meetings between two departments, customer meetings, supplier meetings, strategy meetings and so on. For such conflictual meetings, I recommend getting a neutral moderator or a person who can act convincingly neutral or 'multi-party'.

Before you start the meeting, you should clarify its framework:

• What has been established?
• What can be changed?
• What is the scope of the meeting?
• Who needs to attend?

I recommend involving as few people as possible. In any case, representatives of those who have to implement the decision or are significantly affected by it should be present, as well as people who make decisions and people with specialist knowledge. Involving too many people leads to chaos in the working groups - everything has been said, but not by everyone. Involving too few people leads to relevant information not being available.

Procedure for a successful meeting

In order to hold a successful meeting, a few things should be taken into account.

Clarify the process objective!

You can use the following questions to clarify the process objective.

• Assuming we spend X amount of time discussing this successfully and you leave this meeting room satisfied with the process, what has happened?
• How can you tell that you are on the right track, that it is working?

Write down the contributions as 'ground rules'.

Clarify the objective in terms of content!

• What are the criteria that a good solution must fulfill?
• Which of these criteria do you all agree with?

If the participants answer that the goals are mutually exclusive, ask about the 'goal behind the goal'.

An example: Person A suggests fewer sales employees, person B suggests more sales employees. In this case, your question would be: Which goal should be achieved with 'fewer salespeople' and which with 'more salespeople'?"

Create a public list with the criteria that everyone can agree on.

Clarify suggestions!

What ideas do you have to come up with solutions that meet these criteria?

Make a list of suggestions and address each one individually. It is important that all participants understand what is being suggested and why.

After all the suggestions are clear, get everyone's opinion on them: 'What are your thoughts at the moment, what are you leaning towards?' It is important to make sure in this way that everyone can change their mind - together we seek, we don't fight.

After the break - making decisions

Plan breaks and make sure you take them.

Decide for yourself!

• What else did you think of during the break?
• What new arguments did you come up with?

Once all the arguments have been mentioned, ask what type of decision-making is appropriate:

• Voting with several votes and then deciding on the two best,
• a decision matrix,
• present the two best proposals to a superior,
• consensus.

When voting, make sure that the people whose suggestions are not adopted feel comfortable with the process:

• Can you live with the other solution?
• What do you need to see to convince yourself that it will work?

Give compliments!

Compliment the group on what you observed in the process. Praise anything that will enable the group to make such difficult decisions again in the future: 'I see that you all spoke very passionately about the topic. You managed to stay enthusiastic AND you were able to listen to each other and change your minds. Your egos didn't get in the way, etc.'

The author

Kirsten Dierolf, MCC, President of ICF Germany and Managing Director of the SolutionsAcademy.

© ICF/SolutionsAcademy

Kirsten Dierolf is MCC and President of ICF Germany (International Coaching Federation) as well as Managing Director of SolutionsAcademy, an internationally active training institute for ICF-accredited training courses. Dierolf has been coaching since 1996 and has been training coaches since 2008. She has worked in 37 countries on all continents (except Antarctica) and is the author of the book "Lösungsfokussiertes Teamcoaching" and numerous articles in (specialist) journals as well as co-author of "Der Lösungstango".