Oh, But You Digress

Digressions in team discussions are frustrating and counterproductive. They can take teams off task, waste valuable time, and severely impede progress on the important issues the team needs to discuss. 

Once a major digression occurs, it is exceedingly hard to put the genie back in the bottle. As the team patiently endures the digression, what needs to be said and discussed has to wait. As a result, some team members check out and disengage, at least temporarily, and find it difficult to reenter the discussion.  

Major digressions introduce a topic or stream of thinking that is not what the parties agreed to discuss. They can redirect an entire meeting and prevent the team from achieving its stated purpose. 

While team members occasionally digress on purpose to avoid focusing on a topic they don’t want to address, most digressions are unintentional and occur when one team member introduces a loosely connected idea, and others take this topic up and add to it. Leaders are expected to do something about this but are often unintentional accomplices by adding their own two cents to the digression. 

Minor digressions occur when a person speaking on an issue adds unnecessary or irrelevant information to their main point. This makes their advocacy disjointed and extremely hard to follow. 

These within-topic digressions irritate those who want to hear from other colleagues and find the detour an impediment to keeping the discussion moving along. When a team member does this repeatedly, especially within the same contribution or every time they speak, their colleagues find this highly annoying and often disregard or diminish the value of what that team member has to say. 

When they occur, digressions are a curse. In some teams, digressions are the norm and consistently prevent the group from making the progress they should. Good leaders find a way to limit digressions and stop them from undermining the value of meetings. 

The first step in discouraging digressions is to describe them and ask the team to avoid inadvertently engaging in them. While this seems obvious, it doesn’t occur very often. Leaders who are aware the team often digresses, or recognize patterns of an often-guilty team member, need to call this out and warn people of the dangers. 

The best team leaders go one step further and notify the team in advance that they will interrupt digressions when they occur. This advanced notice reframes the interruption from one of impolite interjection to a necessary action to support team progress. 

Of course, leaders must follow through with this promise and limit the number of major or minor digressions in any meeting. Interrupting digressions and bringing the team back on topic is what good leaders do. 

Digressions are the enemy of every meeting and team discussion. Count how many digressions occur at your next team meeting. Now do something about them.