After you speak, continue to look at attacker and wait for person to talk about what caused attack.

If attack continues, interrupt with:

"Excuse me, we need to respect each other. And I wonder what makes you feel upset over this."

"Excuse me, we heard that. Now, what makes you feel that way?"

"Excuse me, I'm interested in hearing what your concerns are."

Approach 3: Call a break

If verbal approaches fail to end attacks, then call a break or end meeting. This will give you a chance to meet privately with attacker, rewrite agenda, rebuild communication, and (if appropriate) schedule another meeting without attacker.

You could say,

"We seem to be at an impasse. I want to take a break so we can all calm down."

"This hostility makes it impossible to get any work done. So, I'm adjourning meetings. We'll work on this later and then reconvene at another time."

Note that some people use anger to force others to cooperate with them. If you adjourn meeting, you will have to meet with attacker to resolve conflict.

"We need to work on this outside of meeting. So let's adjourn."

Use these techniques to restore a safe environment to your meeting.

Meetings are a forum for finding solutions, making decisions, and reaching agreements. When you apply these approaches to disruptions, you will maintain productive environment necessary to accomplish your goals.

This is seventh of a seven part article on Managing Monsters in Meetings.

Focus on behavior. Your goal is to hold an effective meeting -- not teach lessons. If you attempt to punish people, through admonitions, ridicule, or threats, you will make enemies. In short term, that can ruin effectiveness of your meeting, and in long term it can ruin your career. So, when unproductive behavior appears in your meeting, talk about behavior. For example, if a side conversation starts, you could say, "We seem to have more than one meeting going on now, and that's preventing us from working on budget."

Apply diplomatic courage. Leaders project strength and confidence; losers project negativity and fear. Detach from behavior that seems bothersome, realizing it is simply something that other person is doing. Assume that there is no personal intent to damage you. Just talk about what is happening and ask for what you want to happen as shown in above paragraph.

Show what you expect. Be a model for effective meeting behavior. If it is your meeting, or if you hold a leadership role in your organization, realize that others regard you as standard for their actions. If you arrive on time for meetings, others will interpret this to mean that they should come to your meetings on time. If you make positive, appropriate contributions in meetings, others will infer that this is what you expect from them.

Apply these strategies to make your meetings effective.

This is first of a seven part article on Managing Monsters in Meetings.