How many meetings have we been in where someone starts to slowly drift away from the topic? When this happens, how dose one politely request them to stop? When one is cut off, how would they react? Jellyfish may be your answer. I have found that calling out Jellyfish leads to cutting people off in meetings the right way.
The First Time we Heard It?
Firstly, I do not know it’s origin and why it came to be. The first time I heard about it was in a meeting.
The meeting was focused around defining some ‘ways of working’ for the team. A member in that same meeting then started to talk about the ‘hierarchy of the team’. At the time, discussing ‘the hierarchy of the team’ was different to talking about the ‘the ways of working’, this lead to another member of the team randomly shouting out ‘Jellyfish’. At first, it looked like a random word that someone just spilled out but after a moment I noticed that the discussion of the hierarchy stopped and discussions around the ‘ways of working’ continued.
It felt a little strange to see how a random word such as ‘Jellyfish’ completely rearmed the meeting with it’s core focus back in conversation.
What is a Jellyfish?
Jellyfish, why Jellyfish? Let’s take a moment to try and understand what the Jellyfish is and why it may be used as a term.
Biologically a jellyfish does not have a heart, a brain, any bones and simply drifts all day. It’s body is made up of entirely water and very soft tissue. How does this relate to using ‘jellyfish’ and cutting people off in meetings the right way?
Well, it appears when someone drifts away from the conversation (just as jellyfish drift’s pointlessly), this appears to be the relation. It is used to remind ever member in the meeting that the current conversation has drifted too far from the meeting topic without any blame. Naturally there is no connection between the biology of the jellyfish and the member’s who’s conversation was shut down.
How to use Jellyfish?
Using this method is actually very simple. Whilst in a meeting, if the discussion ‘drifts’ away for the meeting topic, any given member may ‘shout’ out ‘jellyfish’. When done, all other members would need to judge if the topic did indeed go of course form the meeting topic. If everyone agree’s then the conversation is shutdown immediately and the topic of discussion for the meeting is resumed.
Does it Cut People Off the Right Way?
The big question, does it work? In short, yes.
As opposed to making a statement (which may upset someone) or an excuse, simply saying jellyfish acts as an announcement for everyone to quickly recap on the topic discussion point. It certainly helps to avoid any personal moments and helps to increase attention for the topic point.
Have you used the term jellyfish in any of your meetings? Have you heard of other similar terms? Let me know in the comments section below.
