Alan Barker

Why 'so'?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ve been monitoring the growth of ‘so’ for a few months now.  You know the one I mean: the ‘so’ that has leapt from being a conjunction to stand irritatingly at the start of our sentences.  ‘So’:  the new ‘um’.

But an epiphany occurred the other day.  We were a family group of ten, enjoying a significant birthday in one of the best restaurants in the land.  The conversation was intelligent, relaxed and varied.  Three twenty-somethings were ‘so’-ing predictably; but only when my sister-in-law’s brother – a GP, like me in his middle-aged prime – started to ‘so’ did I take note.   Unlike ‘like’ (as in “Is this toilet, like, free?”), this linguistic virus seems to have crossed the generational barrier.

What’s going on?

The curmudgeons, as usual, have little to offer by way of serious explanation.  John Rentoul, quizzed by John ‘Today’ Humphreys in 2011, dismissed the phenomenon as just another ‘idiocy’ like ‘going forward’.  He did sensibly point out that the word seeks to grab our attention; and his notion that the word implies membership of a private club with shared knowledge is intriguing. 

Oliver James, in The Guardian, thinks that “all this So-ing may be a symptom of broader trends.”  Invoking Orwell on the importance of language in public life, James suggests that ‘so’ is the new ‘look’ – notoriously deployed by Blair and Cameron in media interviews to signal “a rehearsed manipulation of the truth”.  At a time when we’re all, apparently, seeking to “increase the value of our personal brand,” he says, “’so’ has become a way for a person to begin delivery of a packaged account of themselves.”

This idea of prefabricated deception is picked up by the disciplinarians.  Typical is Hunter Thurman in Fast Company. ‘So’, he warns us, undermines our credibility in business conversations by announcing: “here comes the rehearsed part of my discussion.”  It also demonstrates “that you’re not as comfortable with your story as you think you are.”  Drop the ‘so’, orders Thurman: “you’ll appear much more confident.”  Deception upon deception, it seems.

Can the linguists help?  Maybe, if we’re prepared to tolerate a little heavy jargon.  Bruce Fraser, Professor of Linguistics and Education at Boston University, explains that ‘so’ functions as a ‘discourse marker’: it indicates the relevance of a new remark to previous remarks.  According to Galina Bolden, Associate Professor of Communication at Rutgers, ‘so’ “implements incipient actions”: if we want to say something not immediately related to the preceding conversation, we throw in a ‘so’.  Emailing Anand Giridharadas for his thoughtful article on the subject, she also says that ‘so’ “suggests that we are concerned with displaying interest for others.” 

Now we’re getting somewhere.  ‘So’ reinforces the relationships underlying our conversations: between our ideas, and between us.  Which, if you think about it, figures.  Consider: the ‘so’ we’re pondering is a conjunction.  We might expect ‘so’ to make connections.  And so we find. 

 

For decades, we’ve lived comfortably with ‘so’ as a topic-changing discourse marker to preface a question.  (“So how was the lunch on Sunday?”).  Now we’re extending that use to statements, usually in answer to questions.   We might say ‘well’, or ‘you know’; but increasingly we choose ‘so’. 

There may be a clue in the word’s dictionary definitions:  it means ‘consequently’ in an explanation, and ‘therefore’ in an argument.  ‘So’ offers more cognitive heft than ‘well’.

All of which fits the marker’s supposed origins.  Michael Lewis, in The New New Thing, locates its birthplace among the geeks of Silicon Valley.  Giridharadas agrees, suggesting that ‘so’ creates a sense of ‘algorithmic certitude’ in technical explanations.  ‘So’, he thinks, indicates the kind of thinking that appeals to problem-solvers: “conversation as a logical, unidirectional process.”  He points out that many of those techies would be using English as a second language; in immigrant-filled tech firms, ‘so’ “democratized talk by replacing a world of possible transitions with a catchall.”

It’s the double role that’s significant.  The new ‘so’ helped these people explain more clearly and bound them into a new community of interest.

‘So’ seems to have spread from software to the wider academic community.   (You certainly hear it a lot on Melvyn Bragg’s In Our Time).  And now we’re all at it:  perhaps, in a data-driven society, we all feel the need to explain more.  Maybe ‘so’ tells the other person:  “I’ve heard your question accurately and I’m concerned to answer it well.  And, although I may be about to display deeper or more detailed knowledge than you possess, I still value this conversation.”  

Quite a lot for a two-letter word to carry.

But something even deeper may be going on.   We’ve used ‘so’, for years, to start a joke.  (“So there are these two blokes in the pub...”)  Attention-grabber; subject-changer; interest-whetter.  It’s the narrative ‘so’, a shorthand ‘once upon a time’.  When Seamus Heaney came to translate the first line of Beowulf, he was confronted with hwæt: a word usually rendered as ‘lo’ or ‘hark’.  Heaney needed to find his own voice, and he discovered it in his “big-voiced” Irish relatives: in their idiom, he writes, “‘so’ operates as an expression that obliterates all previous discourse and narrative, and at the same time functions as an exclamation calling for immediate attention.”   His version begins:

 

 

 

 

So. The Spear-Danes in days gone by
and the kinds who ruled them had courage and greatness.

 

 

 

Maybe ‘so’ carries some of that weight in more prosaic conversation.  It fulfils the need for something more comforting than a technical explanation: something with the aura of a story.

Of course, our conversations might improve if we removed this irritant.  But we might self-censor more easily if we understood the source of the infection.   As modern conversations threaten to splinter, perhaps we’re using ‘so’ to weave them into a tighter web.  Listen, we say; you need to hear this.  You’ll like this.  And I’m saying it just for you.

Take the Chair: a guide to running meetings

 

Think of chairing a meeting as being like air traffic control.

 

The participants are all flying their kites.

Your job is to keep the airspace clear.

 

We all know that groups go through a four-stage life cycle. (If you don't, Google 'tuckman group development'.  It's an old model and a great one.)

 

 

 

 

 

Groups in meetings are no different.  So the way you lead the meeting will depend on where the group is in the life-cycle.

Lead the group in two ways.

• Task leadership - clarifying objectives, setting parameters, guiding the group in its thinking - will tend to dominate the first two stages of group development, as the group is forming and as diverse views emerge at the storming stage.

•  Social leadership - helping the group to negotiate conflict and maintain coherence, establishing norms of behaviour - will tend to dominate the central stages of development, as conflicts threaten group cohesion and as the group seeks the values by which it will operate

 

Opening the meeting

Start on time. If you don’t, you’ll have late arrivals for the next meeting. Lateness can become a chronic problem if not dealt with immediately. Anybody who arrives late at a meeting that started promptly should soon get the message.

 State the purpose or objective of the meeting. Refer to the agenda, and indicate the common ground that exists within the group to reach this goal.

 Make all suitable introductions. Check that everybody knows each other. Attend in particular to new members.

 

Announce procedures and the timetable of the meeting. Tell people how long the meeting will last, and times of breaks. Indicate how you expect them to contribute and how you intend to control the discussion.

 If you are chairing a new group:

• identify and agree the group's purpose;
• give information on everybody attending: their expertise and relevance to the task; and
• invite everybody to introduce themselves.

 If the group is well established:

• identify the purpose of this meeting;
• note any changes in circumstances since the last meeting;
• remind the group of its identity;
• introduce new members or guests;
• praise achievements of the group or individuals since the last meeting;
• acknowledge new difficulties; and
• reaffirm the determination of the meeting to meet the challenge.

 

Managing agenda items

 

Lead by example.

 

 

Keep the group focused on your vision of the meeting: not only what we want to achieve, but how we want to behave.

Manage the conversation by asking questions, listening, energizing, praising, accepting and, occasionally, disciplining.

Check that each task leader is satisfied with the outcome: that decisions and actions, and the responsibilities and deadlines associated with them, are clear.      

• Refer to the agenda.
• Do not start an item before concluding the previous one.
• Clarify the purpose of the item.
• Start the discussion positively.
• Remind the group how much time is allocated.

Most of us sometimes need to be encouraged to speak out. An important idea may never emerge because somebody is too reticent or overawed to volunteer it. Meetings can easily become 'tennis matches' dominated by a few strong personalities while everybody else looks on helplessly.

You can encourage democracy in two ways.

• Task behaviour: initiating discussion, building on it, making suggestions 
• Process behaviour: gate-keeping to allow everyone to contribute; time-keeping to concentrate people's minds; and summarizing the group's feelings

Everybody should feel relaxed about contributing, and that their contribution is valued. Distinguish contributions from the people making them. Praise useful ideas and remarks rather than according the speaker gushing adoration; be critical, if you must, of a comment without condemning the speaker. Be open, honest and specific.

Using questions and statements

At the next meeting you attend, count the number of questions. Compare it to the number of assertions made.

What conclusions can you draw?

'Questioning,’ wrote Samuel Johnson with typically heavy irony, 'is not the mode of conversation among gentlemen.’ As a result, many managers become much more skilled in advocating their own ideas than in enquiring into those of others - or into their own

 

We ask questions to find out, to check our understanding and – if we are good questioners – to help others improve their understanding.  But we also question for many other reasons: to ridicule someone, to criticize or to make ourselves look clever. We need to make sure that we’re asking questions for the right reasons.

Become aware of the repertoire of questions available to you. Use them to help you pilot the conversation: to open it, keep it alive, take it in new directions, steer it away from dangerous waters or shallows where it might get stuck, and bring it to a close.

Ask genuine questions, truly seeking information, encouraging people to speak from their experience and expertise, rather than 'putting answers into their mouths'.

Making statements

Statements are useful at the beginning of a meeting, to define the purpose, objectives and scope of the conversation. Make your opening statements positive. You can use statements during agenda items to:

•  introduce it: 'We're all aware of the problems in this area. They include...';
• give information: 'This is a new venture for the company. Briefly it works like this...';
• temper conflict or confusion with fact: 'Perhaps I can make a few points clear at this stage. . .';
• gauge the mood of the group: 'I can see that there's a good deal of frustration about this...', 'I think we're all satisfied about that decision . . .', 'It seems to me that we're getting confused. . .';
• provoke, to energize or stimulate discussion: 'Our jobs all depend on this!'.

 

Summarizing

All meetings go through periods of relative calm, between or within items.

The group may be uncertain of the next move: the conversation dries up, begins to go in circles or degenerates into chat. At times like this, the Chair should intervene with a summary.

 

 

Good timing is essential. Don’t try to summarize when the discussion is in full swing: take notes to prepare yourself for the moment when the group stops generating ideas. There are three main points in any meeting when summarizing becomes a useful tool to guide the conversation.

• Summarizing within items. Control contributions by summarizing them: when they ramble, repeat themselves or become anecdotal. Mark the end of one phase of the conversation with a summary before inviting further comments. Summarize to bring together the strands of a discussion, or when it goes slack. Sometimes a summary can be used to check how much agreement you have achieved and to reopen the discussion.
• Summarizing at the end of items. This will seal an agreement or clarify exactly what has been agreed. This is a task that can usefully be given to the administrator, to help clarify what to put in the minutes.
• Summarizing at the end of the meeting. A brief summary will remind the group of its achievement and point the way forward to the actions that will be taken.

 

Closing the meeting

Closing the meeting well is as important as opening it. The group is about to disperse. We should show everyone what they have achieved, acknowledge their success and thank them for their efforts. And we must also make sure that people commit to taking action.

 

 

All agreed actions should have a named 'actioner', who should feel that they 'own'the action. They should understand why they are doing it and have the authority and resources to carry it through.

 

 

Make sure that nobody takes on an unrealistic amount of work. Schedule actions to happen as soon as possible. Participants are more likely to take prompt action if they are still fired with enthusiasm by the meeting they have just left! 

Back up all decisions and actions in writing. A summary action sheet distributed with (or before) the full minutes can be useful. Others affected by the action may need to be contacted by memo or e-mail.

• Summarize what has been decided and point the way ahead.
• Briefly announce what actions are to occur: by whom and when.
• Test for commitment.
• Check that the administrator is happy with the record of the meeting.
• Set the time and date of the next meeting if possible.
• End positively. Emphasize the achievements of the meeting.
• Thank everybody for their attendance and their contributions.

What do you mean, 'agenda'?

Every meeting has an agenda.

No, really.

Every meeting has one.

Or more.

Some of them hidden.

The agenda may not have been written down, discussed or even thought about. But the agenda exists, all the same. And whoever controls the agenda controls the meeting.

The most effective agendas are public and written down. If there's no public agenda, the meeting may be hijacked by private agendas.

Result?  Confusion, frustration and failure.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The final responsibility for setting the agenda is the Chair's. After all, it’s the Chair who is calling the meeting.

Keep it simple. The more complicated your agenda, the more likely it will be that the meeting will flounder.

The word 'agenda' is Latin for 'things to be done'.

Not, please note, 'things to be talked  about'.

So: no more agendas that look like this, please.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An agenda is a plan of the meeting.  It should tell us all what we're supposed to be doing here.

Why have an agenda?

A written agenda allows everyone to focus on what they are to do before, during and after the meeting. It acts as:

• a plan of the meeting to aid preparation;
• an objective control of the meeting's progress;and
• a measure of the meeting's success.

An ideal agenda item tells us:

• what the task is;
• how it will be tackled;
• what the group will do at the end of the item

Every item on the agenda should contain at least one verb, indicating what the group will do.

 'Item 7: New IT network'

- says very little that will help participants to prepare. Verbs clearly indicate what kind of thinking you’re expecting at that point in the meeting.

‘Item 3: New IT network. Clive to present quotations and essential specifications of systems under consideration. Team to agree system to be recommended for purchase.’

 This much fuller entry indicates what the group is to do, who the task owner is, and how we will know whether we have achieved our objective.

What's on the agenda?

The most formal of agendas will include (in this order):

• Title of meeting
• Date, time, venue
• Apologies for absence
• Minutes of previous meeting
• Matters arising from the previous meeting
• Other items to be discussed and decided
• Motions relating to the above
• Reports from sub-committees
• Contributions from guest speakers
• Any other business
• Date, time and venue of next meeting

Your agenda may not need to be so comprehensive. (And I strongly suggest removing 'Any other business'.  But we'll discuss that shortly.)

Include timings and task owners for each item.

Constructing the agenda

As you gather items for the agenda, look for:

• a logical order;
• a common thread: keep linked items together;
• routine items: place near the beginning;
• special factors (for example, people who are only involved in a part of the meeting);
• difficult or contentious items.

The best agendas reflect the natural energy levels of a group over time.

 

The most 'difficult' items - those needing the most discussion and thinking work - will be best placed in the middle third of the meeting, when the group's physical and mental alertness are at their peak. Routine items, information items or urgent matters that can be dealt with quickly, can be put first; and the 'easiest' items - those of greatest interest, or presentations by guest speakers - towards the end.

The agenda should also reflect the thinking process that you wish to follow.

Assembling the agenda items

Here's a checklist.

• Remove any unnecessary items.
• Give detailed titles to each item.
• Every title should contain at least one verb: what the group will do.
• Give timings to each item.
• Indicate any specific speakers to an item.
• Note any attached papers - in case of loss.
• Consider putting motions on a separate sheet, for ease of reference.

Beware 'Any other business'!

If something is worth discussing, it should be itemised on the agenda. All too often, people use 'AOB' to pursue private or hidden agendas, to settle old scores, reawaken old grudges or make lengthy and irrelevant complaints.

If you can, remove this item from the agenda. Remember that your meeting should end on a positive note, with a summary of what you have achieved and the suggested next steps.

How to avoid 'any other business'

Distribute a draft agenda, with invitations for contributions. Invite participants to submit any late business at the start of the meeting.

Decide whether to include extra items, on the basis of their urgency, not their importance. Make it clear that any late inclusions are at the Chair's discretion.

Amend the agenda. Consider placing the new items at the beginning of the meeting, rather than at the end.  Allocate time to the new items and revise the timings for the rest of the agenda. Keep to the original overall timing of the meeting; simply extending it is counterproductive.

More than a minute-taker: the role of the meeting administrator

There are three roles in most meetings.

Chair.

Participants.

And -

well: what do we call them?

I suppose the most common term is 'minute-taker'. 

But the minute-takers I meet usually do so much more.  They prepare the room, the papers, the equipment - and the jammy dodgers. 

 

 

 

 

They liaise with Chair and participants.  They take notes in the meeting and write up a record after it.

I'd like to call these stalwart professionals 'administrators'.

The administrator is principally responsible for taking an accurate record of the meeting: what happens, what is discussed, what is decided and what actions are agreed. But they often take on other responsibilities: preparation for the meeting, arrangements during the meeting and follow-up after it.

 

The administrator can contribute powerfully to a meeting’s success. They can take over critical tasks from the Chair: summarizing agenda items before discussion, and summarizing the discussion after each item; keeping time; even, on occasions, intervening to maintain order.

If you are a meeting administrator, here are some tips to help make your job more effective and more interesting.

Many administrators tell me that they:

• have been brought in at a moment's notice;
• are unclear what their responsibilities are; and
• don't understand what people are talking about.

The key to developing your role is to create a close working relationship with the Chair.    

That may be an immediate problem.  Many minute- - sorry, administrators - hardly meet their Chairs outside the meeting room, and may not have the chance to speak with them before the meeting.  If that's your situation, you may need to develop your relationship with the Chair one tiny move at a time.  Most self-respecting Chairs will welcome any offers of help you can give them - providing you don't threaten their sense of competence.

Alternatively, you and the Chair can forestall many problems at a ‘pre-meeting meeting’. At this meeting, you can discuss:

• the purpose of the meeting;
• who is attending;
• what will go on the agenda; and
• background information to help in taking the minutes.

 Anticipate success with Kipling's famous six serving men.  You know who I mean: the 'w' questions.

 

‘Why?’: clarifying the purpose of the meeting with the Chair

If you have some idea what people are talking about - and, more importantly, why they are discussing it - you will be able to follow the conversation more fully. Better still, by understanding the goal of the conversation, you can also judge whether the group has arrived at a decision that meets the goal.

 

Understanding more about the meeting’s objectives will also help to make the meeting more enjoyable - or, at least, less boring.

‘Who?’: liaising with participants

 

You may need to manage arrangements with the participants in the meeting. It’s probably you who'll be distributing the agenda (perhaps in draft form, inviting contributions), or the minutes of the last meeting. You'll also probably need to manage travel arrangements or prepare papers and presentations.

 

 

Making these connections is useful work to help you put names to faces when you are in the meeting room. Helping others will almost certainly help you.

‘When’: times and timings

 

Work with the Chair to organize both when the meeting is happening and how long it will last. Check all the item timings; do they add up to the total amount of time allocated for the meeting?  Encourage the Chair to reduce the amounts of time allocated. Remind them of the cost of lengthy conversations!

 

‘Where?’: the meeting’s venue

The venue can be as critical to a meeting’s success as the time of day it’s held. Is the venue conveniently located?  Is it accessible: for people with disabilities, for example, or women travelling alone at night?  Are you meeting on 'home ground'?  Will everybody feel at ease when they are in the room?

 

Is the room the right size and shape?  Is it suitable for your purpose?  The Chair may wish to place allies (or potential troublemakers) in 'control positions'. You should be able to communicate easily with everybody - and especially the Chair - while taking the minutes. Everybody should be able to see a screen or flip chart with a minimum of disruption.

Effective participation depends on easy eye contact. Participants should be about one arm's length from each other. Closer, and they will invade each other's space; further apart, they will feel isolated and the group dynamics will suffer.

 

 ‘What?’: preparing materials

You have a key role in preparing the materials that will support the meeting’s thinking. You may need to print and distribute papers, prepare presentations or set up equipment.

Get to know how things work. Be ready to save the day when a beamer fails, or if a laptop fails to connect. 

 

‘How?: setting the procedure

Your procedural style will determine how the meeting - well, proceeds!  What type of meeting is it? Do you have to abide by regulations or legal requirements in the way you run the meeting? How do you expect participants to contribute? 

 

You'll be able to take the minutes much more effectively if you have the authority to:

• intervene to clarify points that are unclear; and
• summarize at the end of each item with details of decisions and actions agreed.

That last idea is particularly useful.  Not only can you check that your notes are accurate, but the group has a chance to stop, take stock and reflect on their work over the last twenty minutes or so, before moving on.

A meeting administrator can be so much more than a human sound recorder. 

Do meetings make you stupid?

A mildly amusing piece caught my eye in the Grauniad the other day, about how meetings impair your IQ, if only temporarily. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tim Dowling summarized the topline finding thus:

"Research from the Virginia Tech Crilion Research Institute showed that subjects performed less well on IQ tests directly after spending time in small social groups than they did when they were alone, and even worse when their performance was publicly ranked among their peers."

Given my interest in how groups think together, I dug down a bit.  Among the 17 comments were some interesting points, including - thank you, Leslie Butler - a convenient link to the press release from the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute, from which I'm quoting sporadically. 

The scientists used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate how the brain processes information about social status in small groups, and how perceptions of that status affect expressions of cognitive capacity. 

 

 

Now we need to be careful: 'cognitive capacity' here seems to mean 'the ability to score well on an IQ test'.

"We started with individuals who were matched for their IQ," said Read Montague, research team leader. "Yet when we placed them in small groups, ranked their performance on cognitive tasks against their peers, and broadcast those rankings to them, we saw dramatic drops in the ability of some study subjects to solve problems. The social feedback had a significant effect."

So, it seems that, if we tell people they're not as smart as someone else, they think less well.

Hm. 

IQ attempts to measure an individual's ability to think rationally.  The idea of measuring a group's IQ is apparently meaningless. 

We seem to find it hard to imagine intelligence as a social activity. And yet clearly some forms of intelligence can only be expressed socially: the ability to organize an concert, for example, or perform a heart transplant, or win a game of football.

The most interesting comment in the press release comes from one of the coauthors. 

"This study tells us the idea that IQ is something we can reliably measure in isolation without considering how it interacts with social context is essentially flawed," said coauthor Steven Quartz, a professor of philosophy in the Social Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory of Caltech. "Furthermore, this suggests that the idea of a division between social and cognitive processing in the brain is really pretty artificial. The two deeply interact with each other."

That sounds like a very sensible conclusion to me.

And one with profound implications, for meetings as much as anything else.  Here are just a few of the less profound ones that occur to me.

• Our brains are social. Much higher-level thinking is not social.
• We always need to feel at ease in a group before we can start thinking.  It's the way our brains work. 'Social processing' always takes precedence over 'cognitive processing'.  It's the conflict between the two that can make meetings so exhausting.
• So: use meetings to do social thinking: sharing information, offering ideas, making connections, finding new perspectives, encouraging talent, inspiring people to act. 
• Limit the amount of thinking required in any meeting; help the group to think more coherently; and manage the social interactions as competently as you can.

There's more advice about how to make meetings more bearable in my book, How to Manage Meetings.