Observer Reviews

This is a way to handle a ViolentAgreement and also a way to improve any regularly meeting group's performance.

Forces

• Process can dominate substance.
• Humans get emotionally entangled in discussions and can not see what is going on.
• Most Humans get into habitual roles and never notice this.
• Most people just want to be heard.

Solution

An observer mustn't take part in what is going on. So an independent observer can tell the participants what pattern they've noticed: Jan seems to be saying x and Jude sounds like it's y. This can rapidly terminate a ViolentAgreement and leaves both people feeling good: "Somebody heard me".

A more complex form is to appoint a silent observer for a long meeting and allocate time at the end of the meeting to go back over the whole thing from the point of view of "process" rather than content. "At this point Jan seemed to be very angry at what Jude said. Jan, what where you feeling?... Jude, why did you start hitting Jan over the head?"

Related Patterns

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