Let's face it - the phrase 'I wish I could go to more meetings today' is not a sentiment commonly heard in the workplace. Meetings, despite their integral role, often draw attention for the wrong reasons. According to Otter.ai, remote work has led to a 70% increase in weekly meetings, with an additional 10% in meeting time, resulting in three extra meetings per week for employees. Atlassian adds that the average employee attends 62 meetings per month, with half of them considered a waste of time.
As the facilitator, you hold the key to transforming these statistics. Your meeting, your accountability. You shape how time is spent, how contributions are valued, and how focus is maintained.
Join Jennie & Craig as they unravel the intricacies of holding an effective meeting. Discover strategies, tips, and ideas to elevate your facilitation skills, ensuring meetings become a space where time flies, contributions are enthusiastic, and focus is unwavering.
Follow SAIT Corporate Training on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/saitcorporatetraining/?viewAsMember=true
Connect directly with Jennie and Craig on LinkedIn:
Have burning questions about leadership that you'd like us to address? Email them to leadership.questions@sait.ca and let your voice be heard.
Let's face it - the phrase 'I wish I could go to more meetings today' is not a sentiment commonly heard in the workplace. Meetings, despite their integral role, often draw attention for the wrong reasons. According to Otter.ai, remote work has led to a 70% increase in weekly meetings, with an additional 10% in meeting time, resulting in three extra meetings per week for employees. Atlassian adds that the average employee attends 62 meetings per month, with half of them considered a waste of time.
As the facilitator, you hold the key to transforming these statistics. Your meeting, your accountability. You shape how time is spent, how contributions are valued, and how focus is maintained.
Join Jennie & Craig as they unravel the intricacies of holding an effective meeting. Discover strategies, tips, and ideas to elevate your facilitation skills, ensuring meetings become a space where time flies, contributions are enthusiastic, and focus is unwavering.
Follow SAIT Corporate Training on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/saitcorporatetraining/?viewAsMember=true
Connect directly with Jennie and Craig on LinkedIn:
Have burning questions about leadership that you'd like us to address? Email them to leadership.questions@sait.ca and let your voice be heard.
This is the Leading Beyond Any Title podcast, your guide to transformative leadership. We're your hosts. Hi, I'm Craig Hess. And
Jennie:I'm Jenny Gilbert. Each episode of Breakfast will bring you weekly quick lessons and conversations about topical leadership challenges. You're guaranteed to leave with one big idea, two applied strategies, and three questions to consider that can help enhance your leadership every day. We'll bring you
Craig:insights on how to lead beyond any title and unlock your own leadership potential. And we
Jennie:both hope you enjoy this episode. I'm just waiting for a moment for technology to catch up with us. There we are on your screen. So good morning, whether you are joining us for the first time, the 62nd time, that's pretty big mouthful these days. And, or if we're in the background, somebody said that to me the other day. I do like just having your voices in the background. We'd like to have you here, whichever version that is. And as Craig said, We're excited. We really are excited actually to welcome you all next week those of you that will be joining us and if you're now Suffering from a little bit. Am I missing out? Reach out to Craig. He can help you. There's still a few seats For our conference next week. The picture that you can see is Heritage Hall. Sadly I don't think we'll have the blossoms quite there for next week, but the forecast is good So we might have the the blue sky, and I love this building, like I'll often go in those doors, even if I don't need to, because there's just something. wonderful about the heritage that sits in Heritage Hall, all puns intended. But as we very often forget to remember where we've come from and where we're heading to. And as you turn around on those front steps of Heritage Hall and look out to Calgary and it is a fabulous view, there's an awful lot to remember and be exceedingly grateful for. Macintyre is the traditional name for Calgary, we now refer to it. as Calgary, and McIntyre stands for where two rivers meet, or the elbow of two rivers. We are situated on the Treaty 7 region, the lands of the Treaty 7, and that encompasses our indigenous people of the Siksika, the Bukhani, the Ghani, the Sutina, the Stony Nakoda, and the Northwest Métis homeland. So hopefully we'll see you next week, and regardless, thank you for taking a moment just to recognize where you are today.
Craig:Perfect. As always, Jenny, so very well done. And yes we're meeting here today to talk about meetings. Seems like a little bit of a story within a story. It's almost like a Quentin Tarantino kind of plot. But anyway no, but without the blood and gore. So I won't get too far off topic, which is April's question in the Q& A. And for those of you who have joined since we kicked off, if you do have a specific question as we go through, please find the Q& A button at the bottom of your Zoom screen. And pop your question in there. But Jenny, this is interesting because I think you mentioned this is Episode 62. If I recall, Episode 1, way back to the very beginning, was about meetings. And I think we even titled it Our Roundtable Meetings Rubbish. Something to that effect. Yes. And it, we, it's an important topic. We, we will talk about this. I think most organizations are going to talk about meetings, how to make meetings better, how to eliminate meetings, how to have conversations. Days without meetings. How do how do you have virtual meetings better? How do you go from one meeting to the next? And how do you have blended meetings? So the word meeting now has lost all meaning to me, but maybe let's kick this off from the standpoint of the leader's role. So if you're the leader calling the meeting. What's your role? What is ultimately up to you to make sure this is the most effective use of everybody's time? Because we know how expensive meetings can be.
Jennie:The question is where to start with the questions. Great question. So there's an awful lot riding on you if you call a meeting. And I think That often gets forgotten. I'll just pull everybody in and we'll have this conversation. And often that leads to an extraordinary cost. And those of you who might have a question to the cost, add up the salary of the people around the table. But not just that, what is lost by them not doing the work they would have been doing if they're sitting in your meeting? And there's nothing wrong with that cost. If you cause something to happen or if you have a valuable outcome, then it's money well spent. You have people sitting in there or got, on their phones, worst case, or just not paying attention or not speaking up, then you're losing the value straight away. So the cost was a really important one. But I think even before that, as a leader, You have to decide why are you having the meeting what is it that you want to happen and how are you going to achieve that? And there's numerous different kinds of meetings. You can have a meeting for informational purposes, although we probably need to talk about that. You can have a meeting to make a decision. You can have a meeting to solve a problem, present a new idea, sell something, influence the people around you. And each and every one of those has a different focus and requires a different structure. So your job is to decide how can I engage everybody to contribute creatively. And all that together means a meeting requires preparation, not just fill out an Outlook meeting invite for the bog standard hour or 30 minutes. Yeah,
Craig:and I wonder how so many of the meetings that we have, in my opinion are habit, routine, it's the regular standing Monday morning round table meeting where people We all get the update on what everybody else on the team or the department is doing and you walk in with your coffee and you sit through it and you walk out and have you actually left, more aligned, more energized, more equipped to do what you're supposed to be doing that day. And I think, like we've talked about many times, leaders need to be intentional about everything that they do. And it's very easy as a leader to get stuck in that rut, in that routine, in the standing meeting and so on. And to actually not stop and think about what is this meeting for? What am I doing? What, why do we want, right? How can I make sure my team is. truly energized or excited leaving it, perhaps raises the stakes and makes it a little bit more taxing on the leader, which may be in itself is why we sometimes just avoid and just keep the standing meeting there. But I guess where I'm going with this is how can we help folks in the line who are responsible for running meetings, calling meetings? How can we help them think about the intentionality of it? And how do we even where you started there, the type of meeting that you're having, An informational meeting. I think my first reaction to that is why is that not just an email? Because nobody
Jennie:reads the email.
Craig:There's that too,
Jennie:There's a couple things. So first off your roundtable on a Monday morning. Hashtag 101, the way to suck the life out of all your employees before they've even started the week. Like really, if you want to put a dampener on the week, go for it. And you mentioned walk in with your coffee, but even worse, let's do it online and have cameras off. I'm really sorry, but nobody's listening. Everybody's getting a headstart on their emails and their team's messages and everything else. So back to your point is, what do we do? Is Really, again, look at, I think it was Andy Bounds who said, meetings need to be called causings. What are you going to cause to happen? So that really is the first thing. And one of the really good things that the pandemic gave us, as tough as it is, we now have to think very carefully if we're bringing people together face to face. Lots and lots of organizations are working on hybrid models, fully remote models, like there's different setups out there. So how are you people set up and what is best? For the meeting that you want to happen. So it would start first off with, can you answer that question? Why am I having this meeting? Why am I pulling these people in? Cause if you can't answer that question in a tweet, if you like, don't tweet it, but in a tweet, like that many characters, you're probably not ready to have that meeting yet. And then the second thing is who's coming to your meeting. And this is where it almost gets laughable because we have that optional line in our meeting invites. As I often joke when I'm chatting with people about this, when I rule the world, I'm taking that out. Because when you're in the optional line, people don't want you to come. We're just human and we're social and we're kind. So I might invite Jenny and somebody from the team and I don't want creative Phil left out, so I'll pop him in the optional line. And our habit is back to a point of habits. Oh, I have a meeting invite. I have nothing else on. I'll accept that. Now we've got three people from the same team in the same meeting. That's just longer conversation and waters down what could have been a great conversation if we'd had the right people in the room. And so your starting place has to be, why am I doing this and who needs to be there? I think.
Craig:Yeah, and I think it's a great place to start. And obviously many of us are on teams where we do have reason to meet on a regular basis. And then, and I think that's important because you do, especially as we have moved into more hybrid, there's lots of organizations that are all back full. There's some of us that are still. Maybe in the office one day a week, remote the rest of the time, there is something to be said for the connection and the face to face interaction and the fact that you do have that opportunity. To bring your team together and enjoy some of that social capital. But how do you make it productive? And I think that's the key thing you have to come back to. You mentioned what is your why? And, I think about our meetings that we have as a group and I truly do try to think about them in those three words of how do we make sure we leave that meeting feeling more aligned, more equipped, and more energized to do what we do every week. Whether I hit that mark every week. Is debatable, and I think we can talk a little bit about how we evaluate our meetings, but the why is so important. But I think the key that I want to, get off my chest here is that, as the leader, it's your opportunity to set the tone, right? It's your chance to think about what kind of team do you want to be? And, your meetings reflect that. Jim Harbaugh college football coach, and now moving on to San Diego. We can talk about the recruitment scandal that happened this year at Michigan, it doesn't matter, but when he moved to Michigan, he had this reputation as a turnaround specialist, and one of the questions that was asked of him in the press conference was coach, how do you know you're going to be able to, how are you going to, how are you going to be successful here? And he basically said his answer was somewhere along the lines of we are going to win in our first team meeting. Which I thought was a really brilliant way of saying this is how we set the tone. You use your meetings to set the tone. Okay, so enough on that. We've talked about what's the meeting you need to hold. And I think there's a lot. I'm looking at the slide that you had shared with me ahead of time that everybody will get following this. So an information meeting, a decision making meeting, a problem solving meeting. A new idea presentation, a sales pitch et cetera, et cetera as, as we're going through here, maybe we can talk a little bit about how you should think differently about different types of meetings. Maybe you can help us drill into that a little bit. And of course, folks, as we are going through, please, I see the chat is going already. Thank you for that. If you end up with a specific question in April, we will get to your question. Throw it in the Q& A.
Jennie:Okay. So thinking about the different types of meetings, I think that's where we left that off. So if you're holding a meeting for a specific reason, what's your focus, and then that helps you to align what's going to happen in your meeting. And there was a lot of really. Good, small ideas in that whole story of the football coach there that are really crucial. And a lot of them came from you too. And as a leader, what is the energy that you're taking into the room? Our energy is 100 percent in our control, and we still are often running back to back meetings. And in fact, for the people here, Craig, let's share that article from Corporate Rebels as to why back to back meetings are so stupid. There's real science behind this. But if you can just go simply, if I walk out of a meeting where I've either been bored, there's been high friction, I'm annoyed at what's ever happened in there, I carry that energy. Into the next meeting if I don't do anything about it. And likewise, if I'm delighted, excited, whatever that might be, I carry that energy in and our energy is contagious. And so if it's your meeting, the next one that you're going in, the energy that you bring into the room sets the tone for the meeting and the transition time, and this is the piece that we're not. Always that good at is how am I transitioning between the two meetings? That's why there's so much sense in then in the new sort of popularity of starting a meeting at 10 past the hour or finishing a meeting at 10 to the hour or whatever that might look like, because people get time to breathe. Like I often laugh if I finished 10 back in your life. That's a big gift. Thanks Jenny. But actually there's time in there to breathe, refocus, reset. What is it that I'm doing? If you are running on a really heavy schedule. And then, when you're a leader and when it's your meeting, once you've decided what the meeting is for, the next question is, what is the process that I need to make that happen? So our bog standard ritual is, I'm going to have a meeting, let's have an agenda, and then let's just stick to the agenda. Now there's nothing wrong with that in a lot of meetings. But actually, Craig, you talked about reoccurring meetings and teams who need to get together. Those are the meetings where you don't actually need an agenda. Because the most important thing in there is the human connection. And if you're going to Have a meeting with human beings. We probably need to be human within there. So that whole social capital piece that you spoke about is important, but we're under the gun of that magic whirlwind and we, oh, we haven't got time for that. You've always got two minutes. You can do it really quickly. Like the quickest connect before content is a magic line that we've picked up recently. And the quickest connect before content is a two word check in around the table. We are not taking a lot of time out of that meeting for a two word check in, but it is as a leader, that's your window on what's going on for the day. And then when, once you're in there with your people and know agenda gracious, what do we talk about? Ask them. They're your team. They're the ones who are doing the day to day stuff. They know exactly what needs to be talked about. And then you can create your agenda within the room. There's a whole process to making that happen. And as a leader, you do have to be a little bit organized, even for that. But now you're talking about the things that are really important to your people. And so it doesn't have to be agenda. We can change this up. And then the other one I'll throw out there, there's a breath in the middle of all that. My soapbox is halfway out from under the table here. Is that, you come in and let's say you, a problem solving meeting. Okay, we talked about that as being one of them. So in a problem solving meeting, your focus is on the process. How do we solve this? How do we solve the issue in front of us? And the classic way is somebody starts and asks a question and we wait for information back. We know this two people are going to do the talking, but that's it. And getting to a let's go around the table isn't going to stop that or solve that. And so we really have to look at how are we building that conversation and encouraging people. I said at the beginning, quite boldly, we want to engage everybody and we want to have creative collaboration within a lot of those meetings. How do we do that?
Craig:There's a lot to unpack there, Jenny. No, I think there's a couple ones, if I can remember them both. The first one I want to go back to is how do you build that agenda in the room at the moment? You mentioned that there's a number of ways that could be done, and maybe it would be good here just for some tactical and practical advice for folks. So I love that, right? You get folks into the room, you take that time to connect before content. Find out how everybody's doing, see if there's any, burning issues that need to be addressed by the group. Because sometimes there's burning in, burning individuals, burning issues. If there's a burning individual, that clearly is changing your meeting agenda. But, if there's an individual burning issue, I think you can agree to pull that off site. You don't need to hijack the meeting with. But. some tactics. I love this idea of you don't have to be so rigid to have the dictated agenda every two weeks or whatever your meeting is, but how do you build that agenda in real
Jennie:time? so the easiest way. Is once everybody's in, you've done, you connect with full content, I'll ask what, what's important for us to talk about today. I'd like to say there's six of us in the room. You might have six ideas straight away. Now you can do that via a post it, via a whiteboard, via a Jamboard if you're working virtually. You can do this virtually as well as face to face. So now you've got six ideas. It's possible you've only got four. It's very possible you're like, nah, I'm good. So you've got those ideas up. And then as a team, you vote on which one needs priority. And you can also, depending on what you're seeing in front of you, it might be, okay, Jenny, you'd like to discuss the marketing approach to whatever it is. How long do we need for that? And I might say to you, actually, I think we're going to be good with 10, 15 minutes. I just have a couple of questions and need some information from, or whatever that might be. And so you can put times on there too, that will help. The important part often gets missed. As a team, what will we do if we don't get to all of these today? Are we extending? Or are we tabling for another meeting? Makes the hairs on the back of a lot of people's necks go up when we say that, but you have to agree to that prior to Putting this all together, and this happens pretty quickly, so you vote on them, reshuffle them according to the team's version of the priority, and there's your set for the rest of the meeting. You've got your four items, they're really important to your team because they came fresh from their mouths and their hearts, really, this is what they need to talk about. And now Everybody's engaged because this is the information, or the process, or the decision, or the ideas that they want to bring forward. And I will, I'll pop something together so we can put them in the resources in here so there's a step by step. Because the first couple of times you take this on, it's a little bit scary because we've moved away from what we always do. But I think that's the key is, how prepared are you to step in and try something different?
Craig:Yeah, absolutely. And I think to that point, if you're sitting here and you're thinking, yeah, I've been running meetings the same way for weeks, months, years on end, and you want to try something new, my advice, if I can be so bold, is don't just start your next meeting, trying something new, prep your team, prep your folks, send them a note, right? We're going to try something new next meeting. Here's what we're probably going to try. And get into it. It's not a switch that you're just necessarily going to flip that moment because but, maybe depending on your situation, if you really want to shake things up and jar people out of the rut and the routine, you do wait and just start that meeting that way
Jennie:the next time. And it depends too how rigid the habits are, because most people, familiar people in the room. They will invariably come in and sit in the same place with the same people on the same side of the table, if you're face to face, expecting the same thing. And when you host a meeting, as a leader or whoever you are, if you chair a meeting, the room is yours. You absolutely can change where people sit, how you sit. If you sit, yeah. Standing meetings are a thing. Where you hold it. If you want to have a creative process, let's say that you're problem solving towards, I don't know, it's a collaboration meeting. The more you have space to move and play and think, the more collaborative you can be.
Craig:If you hold a meeting in a typical room, same time, same place, change that. Find a different meeting room in the building, if you can, right? Or, we're fortunate on campus, we've got many choices. I still picked the same room. So maybe that's something for me to think about a couple of comments in the chat that I'd like to get to that kind of tie some of the things together Courtney, absolutely building a team of trust where people are comfortable speaking up, obviously is going to help create to the development of a much better. Team agenda in the moment. The emotional weight that leaders carry into the room obviously really set the tone and Aaron. Yeah, I agree. Your comment, Folks with mental health, mental illness issues, there is an aspect here that perhaps we won't necessarily get into in this conversation, but the level of energy and how folks experiencing these things are dealing with their situations can certainly have some impact on that comment about the energy that you bring, and certainly not trying to minimize that. Couple questions here. Oh, sorry, Jenny, go ahead. Let's just
Jennie:hang with that energy because that is a really important point. And I think the understanding of the understanding of where we're at. And we've talked about this somewhere along the line as well, and mental health to one side, like that's an important part of knowing what's going on for you and where you're at in the day. But there are days, excuse me, where we want an energy in the room and we don't have the energy. Ohio. And School of education question? For myself. They're gonna come at 14. I don't have it. All to give to them out How will I contribute in this meeting? And actually, am I able to contribute? Because I'm not able to contribute. Do I go into that meeting or not? And so I think we can Hold that awareness, hold that reflection and hold that awareness and reflection for other people as well. Our stories are not the same. And I think that's really key. So that's a vital comment in there. Yeah,
Craig:absolutely. So a couple of comments here with, or questions with respect to meetings. And April, since you were so quick this morning getting your question in here. How do you handle it when the manager is the person who gets most off topic or too far into the weeds? So I'm gonna take manager in this case being the person who is running the meeting They've set the meeting and now they are going down every rabbit hole like a lot of my questions, Jenny How do you pull me back
Jennie:in? That would be different So I see this is a place where If there is an agenda, that's helpful because anybody around the table can say, I've noticed that we've gone far off agenda here. Is this essential, valuable, crucial to where we're heading? Or should we come back to the agenda and hold this for, you put it earlier, an offline meeting or a different area? Classically, that's the host or the chair's job. So it is much harder in this example when it's them who are taking their own conversation down a rabbit hole, as you say. But I think, we talk about this all the time too, leadership is a behaviour, leader is a role. So step into leadership, if there's an agenda, and, note the time, note that the conversation's gone astray, do we need to come back to the agenda? It's the best that we can do in that situation, I think.
Craig:Yeah, in the use of the parking lot and perhaps the use of specific roles in meetings, if you do want to have somebody play timekeeper and watch the agenda and watch, you do have that ability. I think it's also going to be very much tied back to what Courtney raised in the chat. And is that, do you have that level of trust and psychological safety on the team to be able to say. For my team, Craig, where were you going here? This isn't what we were here to talk about, but if you don't have that, yeah, clearly might be a little bit tougher. And so perhaps referring back to the agenda that leader created is a way to. And
Jennie:the bigger the meeting, the more essential those roles would be. So if it's just your team and you're familiar, excuse me, you probably have them in there already. Like in every team there is someone who looks out for the people, there's someone who keeps an eye on the time, there's someone who will hold you accountable, even if it's just with an eyebrow or a note like it's a nonverbal communication when it gets bigger with more people involved. Those roles are quite crucial and as a leader, you set the stage. I have Jenny here. She's just going to keep an eye on time. If we're drifting, she's going to call us back to time. I've got Nancy, who's going to. Take some notes for us so that our actions or our commitments at the end of the meeting are noted and we can all see back to them. When we ran liberating structures within meetings, which is a very cool way to open the meeting up and bring in all the people, all the voices in the room, there's often some key roles within there because they're built to a structure.
Craig:Yeah and absolutely Aaron makes a great point here that the parking lot is great, but follow through on the parking lot is critical, right? Don't abandon your car in the parking lot. Make sure that you move it somewhere. Another Listener Has a question here. A little bit lengthy, but it's not a complaint. I'm just prepping you Jenny. How do I push back against a hippo? The highest individually paid person's opinion in the room or the owner or CEO who wants to see regular meetings by their senior managers with their teams to hold them accountable, in quotations, for their actions. I have switched those group meetings to one on ones and the occasional team workshop to address issues and come up with new approaches. The owner is a command and control type of leader who gets very defensive about any pushback or ideas that may contradict his point. Some strategies and or tactics for this type of individual would be welcome, I can imagine.
Jennie:And they're the CEO. I think we often talk about move within the constraints. That you have, so the CEO wants regular team meetings and I don't have the questions up in front of me, but regular team meetings to achieve something and hold them accountable. That's it in a nutshell. A team meeting that time can be in there. The question is, what are we holding people accountable to? So on your team, if you're building social capital, building the trust, building the psychological safety within your team, that is building your team culture. Holding people accountable when you have those foundations becomes much, much easier because if I trust you, it's much easier to hold account to that. In fact, eventually it becomes too, we're in discussion at the end of the meeting, you say, okay, now, how will we each hold ourselves responsible as opposed to the control and command? Sort of stick, if you like, that comes out. I'm going to hold you accountable. And we get people operating in fear and anxiety. So if the ask is to hold the meetings, then hold the meetings. But as you hold the meetings, that's your room. And so what you don't have to do is hold the meeting in the most boring, bland way that it's always been done. People operate because they do what they've always done until somebody sort of disrupts it all. So hold your meetings, but think really carefully about what is it that you want to achieve and what is the best way for those people to Connect, collaborate, to reach that part that you have to hold them accountable for. Because driving to metrics isn't going to increase performance. Performance is how, and so setting them up for success, in whichever way that looks. It's probably the most valuable use of that meeting. Now you can check the box and say, yes, I've held a meeting, but the fact that your meetings are slightly different and one week, they're all one on ones and the next week it's a team meeting to discuss something. And the next week it's here's our new ideas to elevate from a six to a 10 and we get into that. You're still holding a meeting. You're still doing what's being asked, but you're owning your room where that meeting is.
Craig:Yeah, I really love the approach there and I, I don't think it's being disingenuous, right? You're still doing as asked, but to your point, Jenny, it's your meeting. It's your time. It's your time with your team or your time with your individual to work through and hold people accountable. I love that approach. So somewhat, I think, tangential to this, maybe somewhat tied into it. Yeah. Rolling back to the previous question is what if it's a senior official vice president or senior VP that is the one that keeps digging in on a topic, it's not their meeting. I've tried tabling the topic, but they keep rolling back to
Jennie:it. There's a choice at this point. We've mentioned this somewhere along the line, I think it was Deb Hurlock, time and time ago, who brought it to us. The choice is call in or call out. And sometimes it's going to depend on context and personalities. Sometimes calling out in a meeting isn't going to lead to a wonderful outcome. So you might have to wait until the end of that meeting to call in. And there is, there's always a blanket of psychological safety, whether it is present or not. And the question or the part is I noticed that We don't seem to have answered or be providing what you were looking for on this topic. Can you explain what it is that you need or that you want or something? Because if somebody keeps coming back and keeps digging in, there's a reason for that. And what we need to do is find out what that reason is. Because we're human, if they sit higher than us on the hierarchy, for some people, that's a tough conversation. And so that's going to depend on the context and the personality piece. In a lot of teams where we can flatten the hierarchy a little bit, we don't have a problem saying, Craig, I noticed that you just kept coming back to this one point. What are you not seeing? Or what am I not seeing that you're seeing? And that opens up that conversation. Call in is kinder to the person than calling out. Calling out can be very.
Craig:Yeah, no, so true. Hey, we've covered a lot here. I think there's a couple things that we also wanted to look at in terms of potential quick wins around meetings. And we went back and we labeled these as the, as we were looking at the slides and it reminded me of the five W's that we always talked about in school, right? But this is four W's and an E. We've touched on this a little bit the who, when, where, why, and energy, maybe you want to, maybe we can touch on those just a little bit more before we kind of transition into wrapping things up.
Jennie:Yes. Yeah, we can run through them. So the who actually I would start with the why and the what. So we talked about that early off the mark here in why are you holding the meeting and what is it that you want to. Achieve. And that's, we'll come back to it in a moment, but that's a big idea. You have a choice. You're hosting the meeting here. You have a choice. It can either be an effective meeting that's thoughtful and geared towards the people who are in the room. Know your people, or it can just be another version of every meeting that we go to in the day. So there's your why and your what. And if you're not really sure on why, then don't hold the meeting. Table it for some another time when you've got some better direction around there. Then when we're looking at who, who is crucial to the conversation and we need to be a little bit careful. We are very much creatures of comfort and we invite the people that we like. It's a really good idea to invite somebody if you're in decision making or problem solving, even new ideas to have the people who don't think like you who will offer diversity of thought perspective. Etcetera. Within the Who as well, our meetings, nine times out of ten, are set up for the extroverted people in the room. Everything that we do within meetings is geared towards extroverts. And a moment of thought beforehand on how you're going to work within there, with twelve people sat around the table, you're going to hear from the two or three extroverts who like the centre stage, like the sound of their voice. So how are you going to set that up so that you hear from Everybody and allow contribution from everybody that requires some thought too. So know who's in the room. Where did he get to them? When the timing is everything holding a meeting first thing on a Monday morning may not be the best for productivity on your team. Your team, the best possibly, I'm going to energize and inspire everybody. Fantastic. If you can do that week in week out. but maybe that would be better in a different place within the week. So think really carefully to when we, when we talk collaborative intelligence, when do you not collaborate three o'clock on a Friday afternoon, nobody wants to do that then. They want to close their week. And then how long is your meeting for? We're creatures of habit again. And Microsoft, when we're sending invites, if that's the platform that you use, encourages us towards 30 minutes or 45 minutes or an hour. Hold it for 22! People will be like, what? Then they're coming. Then they're intrigued. They're interested. So the when is important and the reoccurring meetings. When we talk about when, yeah, we'll just do it every week. It's okay to say, you know what? We don't need a meeting. If you really don't need a meeting, we don't need a meeting or go agendaless. And as you said, Craig, set your people up for success and change it accordingly. What else did I miss? Oh, the where, as well. Like, where are you holding your meeting? We talked about that a little bit earlier. My the line on the slide that you'll all see is, whoever named the boardroom was just a genius. We don't want to have same people, same place, same staff. It's not a wonder that they're bored. What do you need? What do your people need within there? And then energy, I think we've covered. Yeah,
Craig:absolutely. And the who, I'm just going to pop something. I love this little tool. I threw it in the chat. It's a Harvard Business Review meeting expense calculator. Have fun looking at that. It's actually fascinating to me that, and it may exist if it does, I'm sure somebody will tell me in the chat. But it's shocking to me that Outlook hasn't built this in to automatically every time you schedule a meeting automatically calculates how much that meeting could potentially cost. It probably exists. Yeah. Another question here. What if the team has the best intentions and continues to have Huddle check in meetings, but the manager only tends 10 percent of those over the last year? Add to that not having the psychological safety to highlight to your manager that their absence is not helping build a balanced team to manage those louder voices.
Jennie:That's an interesting one. I was going for originally, that's fab that they trust you and you can have those meetings and get on with it. And then it changed slightly. If their absence is making a difference, I'd call in. Have the conversation. Again, if hierarchy is an issue, who has the relationship where that could be a question and we don't need to go in with an accusation. It might just be as simple as Craig. I've noticed that the last four huddles we've held, we haven't seen you and your presence makes a difference. Shall we change the time? Okay. Is there a better time for us to have that? Like it's a, we don't know until we ask the question. And then if in the absence there's a little bit of a ritual that's built up. The line we've used a couple of times in here, connect before content comes from connect first. That's their creation for how we do social capital. And it's a ritual. It's done. It's held at the beginning of the meetings. So ensure that the manager joins in when they do come and welcome them in, welcome them. Because if he's like, Oh, you're here finally, we're not going to want to warm up and join in within there. So there's a human dynamic place within there. I would encourage you if you can't have the conversation and see, it might be that they think you're best to get on with it yourselves. Or I'm doing this so that you can do that. And they don't realize how important that they are. It's a, we say run an MRI on it, run a most respectful intention. Maybe it is.
Craig:Yeah, and I just realized folks that I only sent the the calculator Jenny. So I'm now going to send it to everybody. So there we go. But Jenny, it is about that time to wrap up with our big idea. Yeah. It's surprising. Look at that. Our meeting has run smoothly. And while Jenny is getting there, I will let everybody know that for the next month, we're going to disappear. But we have recorded four episodes that look at culture that will be released in a podcast version. More to come on that. Jenny, over to you.
Jennie:Thank you. Yes, that was fun. But I'll let you talk about that later. As always, just in case somebody is listening to this, not watching, we finish with a big idea. Two things that you can take away and use immediately. In this case, towards your meetings. And then three questions just to ponder or noodle, if you like over the weekend, over today, some another time, some when. So our big idea today, and I did mention it earlier, the choice is yours. So what is it that you want to achieve and how are you going to achieve what it is that you want? And that will lead to the difference between engagement or frustration with in your meetings. Two things that you could do straight away. I did touch on this gently. Be the host. You've invited these people into your meeting. Be their host. And what does that mean? How do you welcome people in? How do you make them feel welcome? Feel valued. How do you offer them the space to be able to contribute in the manner that they want to? We, I've been to many meetings where we're not even introduced to each other. We're let alone having the understanding of the value or why people are there to contribute. Be the host, welcome people, and when you're finished, be Gracious to say goodbye. I was going to say thank you, but the worst thing you can say at the end of a meeting is thank you because everybody says you're welcome and then they've moved on. So maybe thank you and then our next steps are and then they leave looking at their next steps. Second thing to take away, have you, will you, could you evaluate your meetings? So three different ways to do this. Did we set out to achieve what we wanted to achieve? Just ask the question. If you're using an agenda, put it on the end of the agenda. Fun way to do it is with a hand vote. So you ask people around the table. On a scale of, and your fist is zero. Okay, this meeting sucked the life out of me. Compared to a five, this was the best use of my time right here, right now. Get your people to vote around the table. The reason we use a zero, which is Fairly harsh version is it's really easy to see the difference between a fist and a full hand, but you can vote 1, 2, 3, 4 within there as well. And then the last one on there that you could use to evaluate your meetings, and you can do it you personally as a chair or you can ask everybody. What went well today, WWW, and what would make it even better? It would be even better if we finished on time. It would be even better if we had created more space for contribution. And listen when you evaluate. And thank people. If they offer stuff for your evaluation. And then your three questions, I behaved myself today. There are just three questions, and just in case anybody is brand new, sometimes three equals six, I'm not very good at numbers. But we do just have three today. What will your contribution be? Just ask yourself that to the meetings you attend today. What am I going to contribute here? Listening, it might be speaking, might be anywhere in between those. Where can you say no to a meeting? We didn't really touch on this Craig, but we do attend more meetings than we need to. So cleanse your calendar. Where are you not required or needed? And then where could you break the mold, especially if you're chairing a meeting? Let's stop doing what everybody's doing all the time. That's causing frustration, disengagement, boredom, break the mold. Try something different, do something different. If you're joining us for the conference next week, I'll be running through two or three different versions that we can do in meetings there as well. That's me, Craig.
Craig:Perfect. Thank you, Jenny. And yes, we're back on April 5th. Between vacations and such, March has gotten away from us, but we'll be back April 5th to chat about the six intelligences of leadership. And over the month of March, we will be releasing weekly on our podcast four episodes looking at culture. How do you build it? What do you need to build it? How do you change culture? And how do you kill it? So that's that, that might be something to tune in for. As always, Jenny, I appreciate you. Thank you so much. And folks, have yourselves a great weekend. Thank you once again for joining us on the Leading Beyond Any title podcast. If you'd like to stay connected and receive more updates from us, please follow state corporate training on LinkedIn. Stay in the loop with the latest insights and valuable content to the link in the show notes.
Jennie:Additionally, don't miss out on the opportunity to experience leading beyond any title live. Sign up for our webinars and experience the podcast before anyone else. Finally, make sure to rate, review, and subscribe wherever it is that you listen to your podcast. Thank you again for listening.