Cuatro ojos
ven mejor
que dos [Spanish]
Four eyes
see better
than two

This section discussed meetings of three or more people in which there may be a power struggle. Another type of meeting has only two people. There is a major difference between meetings of two people and those with three people.

In a meeting of only two people a great deal can be accomplished. It is far more effective to get things done when only two people are involved if the two people meet than if they correspond by any electronic means. A face to face meeting is essential in order to see the body language and to feel the urgency of the situation. You know precisely whom you are talking to.

The only exception to this may be the picture phone in which there are only two people speaking and they see each other on the screen as they talk or a limited video conference in which there are only two people. In that case it may be nearly as effective as a meeting of only two people. However, there's no question that the best situation is a face to face meeting in a closed room without distractions in which both people literally have to see eye to eye because they are facing each other. This is the most effective type of meeting. It leads to least amount of power play and the most can get accomplished.

The factors that are involved in the other types of meetings in which there are cliques or power struggles do not exist here.

It is the best way to resolve differences between people.

It is also the best way to make decisions because you can get things done right away. You can decide what you want to, come to conclusions, and there is much less a chance of misunderstanding because only two people are involved. If one of the participants then writes up the minutes of their private meeting, an amazing amount can get done.

Indeed, if there is a small private meeting, a series of small private meetings involving only two people that will precede an important or major general meeting of any organization the person who calls all of the smaller meetings unquestionably has the upper hand and will stand much more of a chance of being successful in the larger meeting. He has bound the loyalty of each member individually as he faced him eyeball to eyeball and when they all get together they will feel individual loyalty to the leader who called the small meetings small paired meetings sometimes more strongly than their own loyalties to the group or to other individuals or cliques. This is an extremely way to gain control over a meeting and power when it is needed.

Yes, it is time-consuming to do this. The individual paired meetings preceding the general meeting may each take a considerable amount of time. If there is a large number of people at this larger meeting then a lot of time will have to be invested in the smaller paired meetings but by increasing the chances of success it may be worth it.

In a really large organization in which there are too many people to speak to feasibly it may be necessary to have paired meetings and with each paired meeting each partner in the paired meeting is then given the responsibility to have a paired meeting with another set number of people, say five to ten individuals. That way each paired meeting really effectively reaches a larger number of people and the leader can get his way can be able to maintain his position.

In this way the leader may speak on a paired basis with ten individuals. Each one of these ten individuals is then asked to speak to another ten individuals from a predefined and specified list so that there will be no overlapping. The result is that these people have effectively spoken to a hundred and eleven people are involved in this discussion. How do we get to this figure? There is one, the leader, ten people that he speaks to, that's a total of eleven, and each one of these ten people that he speaks to each speaks to another ten people. That's another hundred. The total is a hundred and eleven people that are contacted by this method.

It is important to set a schedule in these paired meetings of when the smaller paired meetings will be completed and it is important to report back to the group leader regarding the individual meetings, the successes, some hesitations about whether the position has been accepted and recommendations about how to overcome these hesitations.

In some cases where there are a larger number of hesitations than desired or the hesitations occur among some of the more powerful people, it may be necessary to have some more preliminary meetings with those who discussed issues with the problematic people in order to decide how to convince them.

In other cases the leader himself may want to call private meetings with the recalcitrant members who may not want to follow the group position in order to make an effort to convince them or to tone down their hesitation or rejection of the issue at hand.