I had to look up the definition of “high sign” because I’ve said it for the entirety of my life, but it doesn’t feel right in this day and age. But sure enough, it means what I thought: “a surreptitious gesture, often prearranged, giving warning or indicating that all is well.”
I’ve been blogging about planning for the unexpected but you can’t prep for every contingency. So sometimes you will be called upon for guidance from the meeting chair (or whoever is speaking), and you need to be prepared so that it goes as seamless as possible. The speaker may need guidance about how to handle an unexpected situation that is brewing – or you may need to alert the speaker that they have gone off the rails on something that should be fixed sooner rather than later.
For example, perhaps an attendee raises their hand and asks a question related to an agenda item. But this happens before the Q&A session has officially started, and the meeting chair waves it off. The attendee keeps interrupting to say that their remarks are related to an agenda item – but the chair doesn’t realize that the attendee has the right to ask that type of question then. This is an example where you might need to confer with the chair to explain to them that they should answer the question.
You want to make this imparting guidance as non-intrusive as possible. Nothing is worse than a company lawyer standing up in the middle of the meeting and publicly correcting the meeting chair. This shouldn’t be done within earshot of anyone. It shouldn’t take a long time. You want it to happen so fast that attendees might not even remember it happened by the time the meeting ends.
Here are three tips to make that happen:
- Sit in a place where the speakers can see you easily – and make sure the speakers know where that will be. It should be a place in their sight line because you may be signaling to them instead of them signaling to you. But you also want a seat where you can quickly get to the end of the row and up to the stage. Balance the two competing factors. Your pre-planned seat should have a “Reserved” sign on it with a special color code.
If your meeting is a virtual-only meeting, you still need to figure out how to handle this type of situation. - Come up with a hand signal that is not overly disruptive. The Carol Burnett tugging of the ear might work. Raising your hand does not as it’s too abrupt. You might have to resort to that if the speaker doesn’t see your ear tug.
For a virtual-only meeting, you might be sitting right next to the chair and can either slip a note or mute the mics within earshot and speak to the chair from outside the camera view. - When the signal is received, quickly make your way up to the end of the stage. The speaker should come over – after informing the audience that they need to briefly speak to someone – and a short conference huddle can ensue.
For a virtual-only meeting, you may need to inform the audience that you need to confer with the chair for a second and then mute the microphones to speak among yourselves. Even if you mute the microphone, whisper among yourselves in case the muting didn’t work.
Authored by
Broc Romanek