Lesson 10 – Hidden Agendas

From your own experience, describe a situation in which a hidden agenda was encountered. What was the effect on the group?

I assumed I understood the definition of “hidden agenda”, however, I wanted to compare it to the definition offered in the readings.  A hidden agenda is “private goals that members may be pursuing which they feel would not be accepted if made public”.

One recent meeting that I attended comes to mind when I think about hidden agendas.  I was called into an impromptu meeting with a Vice President in our HR department to discuss some equity adjustments that needed to be made to a handful of associates.   He indicated that these adjustments would be a positive message to deliver to the associates, since they were going to be making more money.  He further indicated that although he would love to deliver the message himself, he thought it would be best coming from me and my team because it was more of an “HR responsibility” and my team was better equipped to deliver “good news”.

It was apparent to me that regardless of how much sugar he was coating around this information, there was the possibility that this communication would not be received so positively by the associates.  I knew that it was likely that associates would have a lot of questions around this decision, particularly, “why now?”  and mostly, “does this mean you have been under-paying me?”

This, of course, was not addressed by the VP as something that my team should anticipate, and it was very clear to me that by making it seem like a great thing to deliver, we should be so lucky to have  this responsibility.

Clearly, there was a hidden agenda to the purpose of his meeting.

My team did deliver this information, however, we made sure to script out the communication to include an appropriate response to questions or concerns that may have been raised by the associates.    Because of our preparation, the meetings went well.