1. Don’t Meet Unless There’s Productive Conflict
Often, meetings fall into an unproductive, unhelpful dynamic where everyone violently agrees with each other. It’s like each person is the seventh in line to chime in and repeat, in their own words, exactly what the last six people have said. What a waste of time!
Instead, shift your focus from speaking when you agree to more frequently speaking when you disagree, or when you have something novel to bring to the conversation. Speak up when you want to add some tension to the conversation, to stop the freight train, and ask, “Have we considered this? Are we making an assumption? What if this scenario doesn’t hold?”
The people who jump on the bandwagon and simply go along with the meeting’s momentum often aren’t memorable afterward. But the person who says, “Before I agree with this decision, let’s spend a few minutes considering this potential outcome,” that person stands out.
Watch the full video: How to Participate Effectively in a Meeting
2. Know When to Meet
Meetings get a bad rap. I’m constantly hearing complaints about too many meetings or that meetings are a waste of time—what a snooze fest. Okay, I get it. Bad meetings do suck. But that doesn’t mean we should eliminate meetings altogether. There are many valid reasons to meet, and the goal should be to understand when it’s the right time to do so. Once we figure that out, we can focus on making those meetings a productive use of time and energy.
Watch the full video: Why Have a Meeting?
3. Be a Communicator
You can be an effective communicator, bridge, or ambassador between people during a meeting. If you sense friction building between two people, it might be because they’re missing each other or not fully understanding each other. You can ask, “Can I take a crack at this? I think what I’m hearing from you is this, and what I’m hearing from you is that. Am I getting that right?” By helping to moderate conflict so it becomes productive, you can turn friction into productive tension. That’s a great way to optimize a meeting.
Watch the full video: How to Participate Effectively in a Meeting
4. Ask What to Solve For
When someone jumps straight into offering a solution for a problem, a great question to ask is, “What do you think we still need to solve for? What exactly needs solving?” This shifts the focus from the solution itself to the underlying issues that the solution is meant to address.
For example, I was in a meeting last week where someone was discussing a new technology they were using. Another person chimed in, saying, “We’ll need to ensure that when this iterates, we change it in this and that way.” One of the tech folks was thinking, “Dude, you have no idea how this code is written.” Instead, that person could have said, “We need to make sure we solve for what happens if there are new iterations or changes.” That would have been super useful.
Watch the full video: Running Effective Meetings
5. Align Meetings with Strategic Goals
A business meeting is the perfect place to monitor and course-correct any of your strategic projects. If truly strategic, these projects are designed to increase your business’s capability, capacity, resilience, and agility, so they fit perfectly in a business builder. For example, if you have six strategic projects, you might review two monthly on a rotating basis for a deep dive. How’s it going? Do you need different resources? Should we tweak the plan a little?
That’s another effective thing to put in a business builder. Spending one or two hours on a few topics will get you more healthy tension and a deeper understanding of what’s happening. Structure your meetings with lots of time to go deep on a variety of topics.
Watch the full video: How to Structure a Monthly Team Meeting
6. Use Meetings as a Chance to Connect
At the base of any trusting relationship is connection and knowledge about one another, which comes from spending downtime together. Meetings can be a forum for building trust and getting to know each other as people, which is really valuable, too. Maybe some of your meetings need to be content-free when it comes to work, providing a chance to blue sky, discuss what you’re paying attention to, or share what you’re excited about. While some agenda-driven content can be handled offline or asynchronously, when you’re together, use that time to chit-chat, get excited about ideas, and get to know each other as people. That kind of connection is a great reason to have a meeting.
Watch the full video: Why Have a Meeting?
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These are the things that are working for the teams that I’m facilitating. I hope they’ll work for your team, too.
8 Techniques to Make Your Meetings More Effective (Part I)
How to Evaluate the Quality of Meetings