How to Fix Meeting Gridlock - Dr Carrie Goucher

If this title doesn’t appeal to you because you have meetings nailed - we want to talk to you! There isn’t a person or company we speak to that isn’t feeling the pain of meeting gridlock in this post pandemic hybrid working world.

It is for this reason we were thrilled to have Dr Carrie Goucher join us and share what she has learnt during her PhD at Cambridge University on this juicy subject. Sam and I literally spent the time picking Carrie’s brain on all the things meetings.  And it is all here for you to listen to!

We focussed on how to make a meeting successful - which, given we spend so much of our precious time in meetings, is pretty darn important to move a business forward at pace.

Carrie has also agreed to come back and talk about changing meeting culture in a company. We hope you learn as much as we did!


Additional Information:

You can find the link to the e-course mentioned by Carrie below. It is released on 31st January 2023 and is available now for pre-order:

 https://www.fewerfasterbolder.com/fewerfasterbolderecourse

Pre-orders already receive 50% discount, but Get Amplified podcast listeners can get a further 20% off with the code:  

GETAMPLIFIED-MEETINGS

If you are interested in some of the other resources mentioned by Carrie such as the invitation template and the capture canvas (no sign in or email address needed), you can find them here: www.fewerfasterbolder.com/resources

We would love you to follow us on LinkedIn! 

https://www.linkedin.com/company/amplified-group/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Welcome to Get Amplified from the Amplified Group, the podcast for tech industry leaders and aspiring leaders who want to help their companies execute faster. As always, we're virtual. Maybe one of these days we should do one in uh in the first person. That would be interesting. Uh the weather here is glorious in Buckinghamshire after a foggy star. Vicky, how's weather in Deepest Oxford and who we've got on today?

Vic 0:33

The weather here is also glorious. I can just see blue sky, which is marvellous to see. Although it's a little bit chilly, but it feels nice and crisp out there. Um, so today we have a very special guest. We have Dr. Carrie Goucher. And this is only the second time that we've had a doctor on the podcast. And the podcast we are going to call this meeting should have been a podcast. And the reason for this is because the focus for Carrie is around meetings, and she is on a mission to change meeting culture. And considering we spend so much of our working lives in meetings, I think this is going to be a fascinating subject to drill into. So can't wait to get started.

SPEAKER_00 1:25

Fantastic. Welcome, Carrie. Perhaps you could start by giving us a little bit of an intro to yourself, your background, how you became an expert in meetings and why you're here to change meeting culture.

SPEAKER_03 1:36

Of course. Thank you for having me. My work has always been about helping companies to collaborate better. So looking at things like culture and relationships and ways of working and helping companies to build an adult-to-adult culture. So I did that for about 18 years in my own agency. And throughout that time, worked with companies like Google and Microsoft, Pepsi, most of Big Pharma, lots of scale-ups, all of whom were pursuing that kind of constellation of cultural, desirable qualities. So lean thinking, trying to become more agile, trying to be more high trust, high performance, a coaching leadership style, that whole bundle of things that lots of companies are moving towards. But the massive sticking point for all of them was meetings. And I remember somebody saying to me very clearly after I'd given them a proposal about their culture project was if you're going to change our culture, you have to start with our meetings. We can't do anything until we get out of these long back-to-back meetings where time is wasted and we're not moving forward with things that matter to us. And I love doing all the cultural work that we did and leveraging all these interesting domains to help companies move into the collaborative era. And I couldn't understand why all that thinking evaporated when it came to meetings, except in a couple of brilliant companies I worked with who modelled it really well. And Unboxed was one of them. And I'm not a very patient person, so I found sitting in slow or unfocused meetings really, really frustrating as well. So I got really, really interested in meetings, and then an opportunity came along. I had um released um some workshops and done some work myself, and then I got the opportunity to do um a PhD. And the opportunity came from Cambridge University, and I thought, you know what, that's not going to come around very often. And even though I felt I was the last person who should do a PhD, so I'm not very detailed, um, start everything, can't finish anything. Um, that is what I did, and I did finish it. Um, but when I read, you know, the 300-ish um peer-reviewed papers written about meetings, again, I could not understand why they were almost exclusively about these very tactical things we're taught about meetings. So it was the agenda. Did it start and finish on time? Um, did everybody participate? I just felt like, you know, come again, sure. You know so much more about the sophistication of ways of working, the human psyche at work, but we're still having these very mediocre meetings and saying if we could just start them on time and um have a list of topics to cover, it would be okay. So that's how I got to where I am now. I and I now I use my PhD research, which took a systems approach and revealed completely different things from almost everything that had ever been written about meetings. Um, and um, and I use everything that we already know about culture and leadership and group psychology to describe a new way of doing meetings. So everyone can recognise what meetings work, makes meetings work, and everyone can spot it and learn it.

SPEAKER_00 4:48

You'd have thought with the number of meetings that we must have collectively had in the history of human civilization, we'd have got it right by now, wouldn't you? You would.

SPEAKER_03 4:57

You would.

SPEAKER_00 4:58

And actually Why is it so blooming hard?

SPEAKER_03 5:01

Well, I think meetings are steeped in um in cultural history. So they come from this kind of so originally, originally, originally in the Middle Ages, a meeting was actually the word for a duel. So it was a um a physical fight to resolve an issue.

SPEAKER_00 5:20

But as society said, I mean, some meetings that I've had maybe not far off.

SPEAKER_03 5:26

Yeah, I mean, it may be something many of you recognise today, um, but it was actually part of the civilizing of society where um it was seen as a sort of a high class, high society to be able to debate with words, and that's where the meeting came from. And that I think that's never left us this idea that you know, if we can debate things with words extensively, that that is um very um cerebral and it's a good thing to do. And we also we have our kind of meeting format from the 60s movement around um group therapy work, um, it comes a lot in schools as well, and so that kind of sitting around a table and discussing things, and it's worn a really deep groove into organizational life. And because meetings are a sort of public theatre, so if I'm running a meeting and you're all there, you're all watching me, and you're my peers, and I'm not I'm a little bit nervous about stepping too far out of what we've done before, they just seem to kind of perpetuate and habituate.

SPEAKER_00 6:24

That makes sense. It's um yeah, we get sucked into meetings for meeting's sake, I suppose, don't we?

SPEAKER_03 6:32

We do, and I guess I can I turn that question on you. So so of all the meetings you've been and Vicky, you've been to, what's what's wrong with meetings from your perspective? Yeah, so so the I think everything.

unknown 6:46

Yeah.

Vic 6:46

Um well I'm hoping now I'm going to learn, we're going to learn some more at the Amplified Group, but we do really try to have very productive meetings where everybody gets has a voice and we're we're very clear on what we're trying to achieve in the meeting and we're making time for each other. But I think that comes from the very conscious going to meetings where it's death by PowerPoint, and the meetings are just one leader after another, getting up and broadcasting. And you think we could have done this over Zoom. Why are we all in a room together? There's no discussion, it's just show and tell.

SPEAKER_00 7:23

Well, and I was gonna say exactly the same thing. You know, the the thing that I hated the most, and yeah, I don't really do meetings these days, um, but the thing that I hated the most was exactly that kind of broadcast mode where you had someone come in and pitch you something on PowerPoint. And maybe it's because of the weird way my brain works, but I can read and digest that stuff faster than somebody can talk it. Um, send me the stuff beforehand, let me learn about it, and then we can talk about it in a constructive manner between us afterwards, and we can have a 40-minute discussion rather than an hour and a half presentation, and everybody get everybody saves time, and you probably get more done. And Vicky, you know, from our days of of the VMware Partner Advisory Committee, I was constantly banging that drum. Yeah, I don't want to listen to Americans coming over here and and and pitching us a PowerPoint. I want to read that stuff. Oh, you nearly used a rude word there beforehand, and then and then we can actually talk about it and use that time productively. It just infuriated me. Yeah, from from VMware's point of view, in that scenario, the expense of flying all those people to a central place and you know hiring a nice hotel for two or three nights, and geez, wow, we could have used that time so much more productively sometimes, I thought.

SPEAKER_03 8:44

So, Sam, what you've what you've described is both the problem and the solution very neatly. So you've described um the solution of flipped meeting. So when when we get this thing where people want to do a lot of presenting on PowerPoint, that comes, you know, this is why it's so important to understand the psychology sitting behind things. That comes from a place of trying to stay safe in the tribe. So um uh, you know, thousands and thousands of years ago, um, staying in the tribe, being useful and valuable and safe in it was was crucial to staying alive. Now we stay safe in our tribe at work. So when people produce lots of PowerPoint, um, and often they'll have spent um five hours on a Sunday doing it, um, not what they wanted to do, but because they want they don't want anyone to think that they haven't done enough work. They don't want there to be any questions that people have that they haven't prepared for the answer. And they want we we have it's almost like the um the weight of the PowerPoint as it thuds on the desk is commensurate with the usefulness, the cleverness of the ideas within it.

SPEAKER_00 9:51

Um it's it's a bit like that old wedding speech gag where the you know the father of the bride walks up and and thumps 500 pages of A4 on the desk and says he's like you know, he's only going to talk for an hour and a half or something like that. It's a bit like that with PowerPoint, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03 10:06

It is. And even though we know that and we've heard that joke, nevertheless, it's still really difficult to break out of that and use a handful of slides. Um so but the problem, as you describe, is that when you present something, everybody else is following your pace. So people can't control their own pace of consumption, they are um hearing it in analogue alongside you. And that's that's a inefficient. It's poor use of this very high-intensity activity we call a meeting where lots of people are committing 100% of their attention, we hope, to the to the session that they're doing together. They're not doing anything else. Or not, as the case may be. They're not doing anything else that's useful. Sorry, what was that? Probably. Um, and so the one answer to that is to have a flipped meeting. So exactly as you suggest, you ask people to share their presentation in whatever format that might be. That could be notes, it could be a series of five sets of bullets, just to make it very quick to do. It could be a podcast, it could be a video. Everybody consumes that beforehand at their own pace, digging into things that they're interested in, doing a bit of Googling if they need to. And then the time, the high-intensity time together is spent discussing the questions that people have brought with them, or the issues, concerns, or the things that warrant that human interaction about what's uncertain, what's complex here. Would that sound simple or your mission?

SPEAKER_00 11:40

Yeah, absolutely. You know, that would have um you know, if I I think about my my time in SoftCap, and you know, I don't think we did meetings badly, right? Uh, you know, I think I think we were pretty good at this stuff. But if I think back to particularly vendor pro vendor presentations, you know, you'd have a new vendor come in and pitch you a new a new product or a new technology or a new service or whatever. And that to me is the perfect candidate for the for the for what you describe as the flip meeting. Um because you've always got a time constraint, and if the pre-sales person doing the presentation witters on too much, you don't get time to ask any questions. And I want to ask questions because I want to I want to stress test it because if we're gonna take it to our customers, I want to know I want I want to have had all the questions answered that I know our customers are gonna ask. Um and so we need time and space to do that. And plus, I just find it found it you're exactly right about the speed of input and the speed of consumption. I and I know my brain works in a slightly odd way, but I would find it really frustrating if we were going at a slow pace, and that would be the point at which I'd sort of drift off and you know, I'd start checking my emails under the desk or something like that, because the the input wasn't fast enough to keep keep me engaged. And so that that would have made a huge difference. But even in board meetings, or or maybe not so much board meetings, but our our weekly operational directors' meetings, you know, uh a director would report back on their particular area once a month or once every six weeks or whatever, and particularly with services utilization and things, that would be very statistics driven. And you know, thinking back, it would have been much more sensible to have sent those statistics around. And anyone for whom you know they were particularly relevant to could have read it, you know, probably only 10 or 15 minutes worth of pre-work. And then you spend more of the time in the meeting, you know, discussing potential resolutions or potential red flags or whatever. It just it just makes so much sense. It's so logical.

SPEAKER_03 13:47

And there are there are a few other things um that uh that sharing things beforehand really helps with. So um, so some people, some people's brains work very fast, they can they can chom down a slide, as you say, far faster than somebody can present it. Uh, for other people, and and then that person's ready to to comment on it straight away. For other people, they really want to read something in advance, they want to think about it, and asking them to comment immediately on something that they've only just seen is not helpful for them. And actually, it can be quite shaming to ask them to deliver work product, i.e., give their opinions or um make make comments um when they haven't had a chance to fully prepare that work product. And at in the workplace, we know um there is far more neurodiversity than we realise. So there'll be many people in your organizations who um aren't neurodiverse and that you don't know about, and there will be many people um with who are neurodiverse who and they don't know. So they've had no diagnosis. Um, many women in particular are having very late diagnosis.

SPEAKER_00 14:56

I was gonna say, does that affect women more than you know? I know of several um ladies of my acquaintance who are, you know, lately diagnosed, interestingly, particularly ADHD, but also ASD.

SPEAKER_03 15:09

Yeah, I think we I think we just don't know. Um all we know is that that we are we are now much better at diagnosing people, male and female, who don't tick outwardly tick the boxes, we might think. Um, women are particularly good at masking, um, so they will be really good at learning what does and doesn't work in terms of responses, conduct, behaviour, style. Um so they themselves have kind of forgotten what their natural preferences are. Um but if you are um somewhere on the neurodiversity spectrum, it is usually much preferable to see things, to have a chance to look at it beforehand, um, and to have a chance to formulate opinions. And there are many people who, many neurotypical people who who want this too. And it just means you are neuroinclusive. So why not provide that option for everybody? Because one of the challenges is of meetings is inevitably we have to bring together many different styles and behaviours, and people who love meetings, and um that's where they think best, and that's where they build relationships, and the world is very boring and dull without meetings, and people whose natural preference is to be in a state of kind of deep work for much of the time, and a meeting is a pure sacrifice and a pure interruption. Nevertheless, all these different styles of people need to come together and form a pop-up team for the duration of a meeting. So let's find ways that that allow people to sort of self-accommodate, if that makes sense.

Vic 16:44

That makes loads of sense to me, um, particularly with all the work that we do. So we use DISC to help with um psychometric profiling simply because I am no doctor and I love the simplicity of it, and it's so memorable with the sales teams that we mainly work with. They can just get their head around it so easily. And then really, what you were talking about, you know, those those of us that are happy to speak up immediately, and then the ones that need time to think and reflect very often because we we um we do a lot of work around productive conflict and having positive debate, or that people just end up being quiet, and it's not because they haven't got an opinion, they want to be asked it, and understanding how how those team dynamics work. Very often we call that workshop an aha workshop because it really is you can see the light bulb going off. I say, Oh, that's why you're quiet, or that's why you you're competing with the micro for the microphone, and having that self-awareness is a massive step in the right direction, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03 17:48

It is, it is, and I think as soon as you start to look at blue, red, green, and yellow, it it doesn't matter what the sort of we're not looking for a scientifically valid um diagnosis. I'm using the air inverted commas. We're looking for something that helps people understand more about themselves and each other. And as you say, it's enormously enlightening and helpful to say the reason that person is not very enthusiastic about the thing I'm really passionate about is because they are, for example, um sitting in a blue space and they are somebody who's really, really detailed and they want to see all the facts and figures, and that's part of what makes them brilliant, and that's it's not about them thinking that what I'm doing is not brilliant. So it's a really powerful.

Vic 18:32

Yeah, it stops it stops it being personal from my perspective. It really takes that out of it, and then you can look at things and and it it starts to create. I think what we're all starting to learn is so important is that psychologically safe space to be able to have that discussion.

SPEAKER_03 18:52

And how do you create a psychologically safe space in in in real meetings in the real world in your real organization?

Vic 19:00

I think we've all learned the importance of being honest and open and that vulnerability that I mean we use, I think you're aware, we use the Patrick Lencioni methodology. And so having that vulnerability-based trust where you build those connections and you build those relationships, and actually you provide that safe space by leading by example and showing actually it doesn't matter if you haven't got all the answers.

SPEAKER_03 19:27

So you say making it okay to say things like, I don't know, or I'm not sure yet, or I need more information.

Vic 19:36

Yes, absolutely. So it's when we when we kick off workshops and we talk about building trust, very often people are talking about, or they're thinking about predictive trust. So I know that Carrie's going to behave like this because this is the way I've seen you behave in the past, versus actually no, trust is about creating that safe space where to your point completely, you can ask for help, admit a mistake, and um and admit that you don't have all the answers. Because I think if you can do that, then it opens the floor up to I think previously, and I think Sam, we've talked about this before. I was I was a bulldozer, I would bulldoze my way through, and if someone was quiet, I would just assume that they were on board. Very often they they they had lots of input that would have actually made the idea even better, but I wasn't stopping to wait for it because I was right. But I wasn't changed. I put myself on mute. No, I think it's I think seriously, I think it's the self-awareness of realizing it wasn't working. It was, and I I distinctly remember working with somebody who I just thought didn't like me, I was taking it personally, and it wasn't that at all. It was they were that detail person that wanted the facts in it because I was I would my role was as a change agent and I needed to drive change, and I didn't I didn't need all the detail, but other people did, and I didn't understand that. So having this awareness and actually understanding disk has helped me immensely, and don't get me wrong, as Sam says, I'm still practicing.

SPEAKER_00 21:26

We're all still practicing, we're never perfect, don't we?

SPEAKER_03 21:29

And I think this is the thing, it's a lifelong journey, isn't it? In the same way that we don't look at leadership and say, oh, well, we just need to pin some um, you know, leadership values or something up in the reception area and work and um uh have a couple of uh formats of for one to one conversations. You know, being a good leader is a lifelong journey and it takes many different forms and different circumstances, you know, it's very situationally based. And meetings is the same, but we've just downgraded it, downgraded this sort of immense task of being. know brilliant at leading collaborative sessions, which are very complex. You know, as soon as you start multiplying up the numbers of people in the session, the dynamics between each of them, you know, it's a very it it it um the the number of interactions and dynamics multiplies up very quickly but we've downgraded that to running meetings or conducting meetings or having an agenda. It's even the language around it is is very tactical and and and sometimes quite formal. So can you um share some best practices for us maybe yeah I'll just I'll rattle off six and then and then everyone will be great at meetings and that will be uh easily magic bullet time.

SPEAKER_00 22:45

But seriously you know there must there must be some things that are sort of universally welcomed.

SPEAKER_03 22:50

Absolutely yeah and I think so so the way I think about it is rather than um so we think about all the stuff we learnt from the industrial era style meetings which is really what we're still in um where it so clearly the the most valuable thing the valuable way to make money in the industrial era was to kind of rattle out um identical products as quickly as possible with manual labour so come it was about command and control. And that that meant that we did want people to do what we said in meetings and it was a lot about informing people and now in the knowledge era we need something completely different. And so I think we need better understanding and we need better technique. So I've there are six areas I think it's helpful to look at and we we don't need to go through all of those today. I think the first thing we need to do is break out of meeting gridlock and burnout. So I think for as long as people are in a lot of back-to-back meetings, they're spending a high proportion of their time in meetings they haven't got enough time to do their deep work, their kind of own work I think it's very difficult to start making big changes to meetings. So I think any changes to meetings go hand in hand with breaking out of that high free high meeting high meeting load. And we can talk about some of those later if you want to I think we need to stop thinking about meetings as things that we run and call and conduct but about a session that we design and that we have to engage people in. And though that sounds exhausting can't I just put it in the diary and everybody will come and we'll just talk about it a bit of thought into what it is that you're trying to achieve and what the backdrop is. So is this um bringing people together where there are some tensions how do we handle that are we are we winning our team at the moment or are we losing and we need to start winning again? Are we just starting something? Are we just finishing something? Are we in a period of very high uncertainty where we're trying to figure out product market fit or are we is this about kind of churning things out? So a bit of thought about what the setting is and some design work and then a bit of pre-engagement with people. So you can think of it like a social contract that's partly why things can go wrong in meetings because people arrive with completely different ideas about what they're supposed to be doing or no idea like I don't know why I'm here or what what we're going to do and suddenly you've got a sort of broken social contract and that's where you get people going into defensive mode or quiet mode or talking over each other or resisting. So that whole piece is around designing and engaging people and creating a social contract. And you can do that with a really really good meeting invite um and I have a template for that on the website which I'll I've shared the link with you it's fearfasterbolder.com.

SPEAKER_00 25:52

So as always I'm sure we'll stick that in the show notes for everybody.

SPEAKER_03 25:58

Then just moving on to a couple of others that I think are really helpful. One is encouraging only clean communication. Vicky you talked about how you generate psychological safety and encourage create the conditions for people to feel they can be honest because as we know bad news is good news if we know it soon enough. So we need people to say give their bad news early um I I use clean communication to do that. So that's in modelling speaking with high honesty high respect for people in the room and with high care for the work. So if you bring all those three things together then you are able to get to the heart of what matters so that we can talk about what's really going on not that surface level thing where we talk about some numbers on a spreadsheet or we kind of give status updates or we kind of talk around something but we can do that without putting others, triggering others into tribal mode where they are defensive or wanting to take control of the situation or um or or um stand back and not say anything. So there are various ways you you can do that. And one of the ways you can do that is to use some element of structuring. So I think we've mentioned the flipped meeting so rather than just arriving and here's what we're going to talk about, let's just start talking. Instead you you we talked about having a sort of more a bit of scaffolding so people having some content beforehand then and a bit of an indication of what they're expected to do with it during it. So here here are six videos for you short videos for you to watch beforehand and please come to the session ready to ask your top three questions um share anything that's concerning you share three things that are exciting you so you're immediately teeing up the really valuable group work for people making that easy to consume and that's just a structure it's just a a light set of rules again in inverted commas that allow everybody to play the game a bit a bit better and a bit faster. And that works really well if you're also trying to equalise voices. So if you have some people who always speak a lot and other people who find it very difficult to then putting a little bit of a structure in um can often allow every give everybody equal um an equal format of which to contribute.

Vic 28:43

So what that's really just made me think because we use something with many of our clients called a meeting checklist which is did everybody have a voice? Has everybody contributed are you clear with the outcomes what I've just realized from listening to you there is we're missing the bit of setting the meeting up for success in the first place.

SPEAKER_03 29:04

Yeah it's and it's such well it it's such an easily overlooked area and I think it's such a brilliant bit of white space it's free it doesn't take very long to write an invitation it it doesn't need to be long but if it has some really key ingredients in it suddenly everybody arrives with this kind of shared brain they've all got the same picture in their head the other thing it does is it encourages people to self-moderate and to moderate each other. So rather than you as the host saying well this is what we're doing today and this is what we're going to do. So oh I'm just gonna stop you there. People start to self-moderate oh yeah we're not talking about that today that's something we said we wouldn't do today or they might to say to somebody else um oh I um I can hear that that's a really important thing but I think that's um that's that's on a parallel track or whatever good language they might use but you you're then encouraging the group to moderate rather than you being the referee. Yeah sometimes people have their own agendas and they'll put those agendas forward whatever meeting they're in whether or not it's relevant yeah we even yeah yeah so even um even if you've done a really fantastic job of setting it up with a with a great invitation when I say invitation that's a whole process by which you might talk to some people before the meeting. So one opportunity is before the meeting if you know somebody's going to bring their agenda then you could talk to them and you could say this is what we're thinking of um covering um what's your perspective what do you think we should be talking so you you can kind of pre-negotiate that bit of the social contract beforehand and again these are things that we often do naturally it's just doing them a little bit more deliberately and knowing when to use them.

SPEAKER_00 30:54

What would you so what would you do in the meeting Sam if despite all that somebody did want to push their own agenda keep them out I mean it it it rather depends on how close it is to the topic that we're working on I suppose if it's something that's at least tangentially relevant then you know we might give it a small amount of airtime and then say right you know we need to take this off as a as a separate uh separate thread if it's something that's really not in not entirely relevant at all to what we're doing and what we're trying to get I would just you know if if I were hosting I would be reasonably forceful in asking them to set it aside for a future discussion because it's it's really important. You know it it's it's the the the collective is more important than the individual. So if one individual has a yeah a point that they're particularly passionate about that's great and it you know may well be something that we need to adjust or sorry address. But equally you might have the time of four five six other people in that room for whom that topic just is not relevant. So it's you have to be I think pretty forceful in in keeping the meeting on track in that sort of scenario.

SPEAKER_03 32:22

So I I think you can handle it in different ways and one absolutely is to say this is what we said we'd cover um with and and doing so with great respect. So I really understand why you want us to talk about this but it but it is another meeting um so that would be one way to be really clear and and you would need to judge when when to do that um and to kind of chop it chop it out you're you're you're clear is my forceful well I guess what is forceful forceful is is is doing something whether everybody likes it or not.

SPEAKER_00 33:02

I think acting creating clarity because that's what you've been asked to do that's what your role in the group is is is a pro-social behavior um I like it that you're owning forceful yes i'm not i'm not thinking of forceful uh on my own behalf i'm thinking of being forceful on on on behalf of the group as the as the custodian of the direction of travel and also sorry i was just gonna say um one of the things that that i know you're really passionate about carry and the way you talk about meetings is it's it's other people's precious non-refundable time yeah and that that almost is the the right to keep it on track yeah yeah so and and if if we just flick our minds back to clean communication high honesty um high respect and high care for the task and that's exactly what you just said Sam was um was in in service of what the group are trying to do so I think that that absolutely gives you permission to be clear I think the other side to it is when people are really um insistent on covering something and sometimes it's a it's something that's off topic or sometimes it's a perspective on something that is absolutely what's being discussed but they have a different perspective to other people and they will not let that let that go.

SPEAKER_03 34:28

And I guess what happens a lot in meetings is we're getting our needs, we're trying to find a way to get our needs met. We do this at home with our family, our partners, our pets, we do it um at work, we do it at lunchtime and we do it in meetings. So one way is to say that needs not getting met right now in whatever clever clean communication format we use to do it. Another is to is to kind of reflect and say what what is it that this person what is it that they can see that we can't see what is it that they um feel is not being heard or not being understood. And a bit like with children if you if every time your child falls over or hurts themselves you say you're fine you're fine you're fine you're fine you're fine then they never learn to self-regulate they just they learn to shut off that voice that says am I okay or not and I think if um and if but if you say oh that looked painful are you okay and they think yeah I'm okay or I'm not okay then so I think some something to allow five minutes four minutes three minutes in a meeting to ask somebody what is it about that so you've mentioned that lots of times now it's feels like you've got a different view from other people in the room am I right? Am I it what is it you can hear that we can't hear what is it you feel we're not understanding and what would it what would you need to feel satisfied that we were handling this so so there's some there might be something in that data and I guess that's the difference between thinking oh some people are just like that in meetings versus everybody's got some data and trying to separate out the fronds and say okay that bit is just them there's some ego going on there's some status there's some something that this bit is useful. So let's take what's useful and then let's facilitate our way through the bit where somebody's just trying to kind of act out a need in an unhelpful way. Does that make any sense it absolutely makes sense what is your view on a regular weekly team meeting so is it should we have on is it worth it yeah um so all teams function best off high trust high information high collaboration so team meeting is one way to do all of those things you model collaboration you hear important information that you you that might pass you by otherwise and you have a chance to um to bond develop trust and so on so so fundamentally it's a good thing are they well run some are many aren't do you need them every single I was just a quality team meeting is a good yeah so so I think they and I think meetings are these regular meetings they are a constant adjustment process. So the idea that you put something in the diary and and have a format and okay we're set for the next year I just don't think that's helpful in the same way that you wouldn't have exactly the same conversation over lunch every every week. So I think for as long as that meeting's serving people and they feel like this is absolutely fantastic, I get so much out of it. It's a real highlight for the week brilliant but it will it presumably will fatigue over time either the format or the requirement to have it every single week. So then that's an opportunity to relook at how it's being done and then to decide might we have it every other week or every four weeks and then have some asynchronous chat in between. And I guess the other side of it is and meetings never my research shows so clearly meetings do not sit in a vacuum between nine o'clock and 10 o'clock in the morning they are deeply embedded in everything else. So if for example your team already have daily standups or they're constantly they sit together they're co-located or they are on asynchronous chat all the time to then have a team meeting as well for another hour plus that it might just not be needed. So I think meetings are one element of a network or a sort of ecosystem of how we communicate how we keep work safe etc so does that give you a bit of food food for thought it it it certainly does but what we're also seeing is now in this post-pandemic world yeah how many of us are working remotely and we're starting to get a sense that people are feeling more disconnected than ever and yet they don't really want to go back into the office. Yeah yeah and I don't think I have an answer to that. Yeah where where do you sit on that stand?

SPEAKER_00 39:15

Well I guess yeah a lot of the teams that I was involved in at SoftCat, you know whether directly managing or being the director responsible for were were quite distributed because they were often consultants who were out on the road or you know pre-sales guys or specialist sales teams who were you know out in front of customers and spread around the offices and that sort of thing. So I think I was an advocate of less frequent but better quality contact. So for me the regular routine team meeting at 10am on a Tuesday for argument's sake wasn't ever so useful and could rapidly lead to disengagement through meetings for meeting's sake and you know not having anything necessarily to talk about. For me the team meeting was about building that sort of social connection almost yeah that that personal connection between people within the team rather than necessarily the dissemination of you know the the flow down meeting where you know it's discussed at the top and then that's flow down to the next tier of a manager and the next tier and the next tier um it's I'm not sure that's ever so helpful necessarily um you know that that kind of dissemination of information is particularly with a distributed team and you know in the in the scenario where we're frequently more remote that kind of thing can go across by email the stuff that is more important is the time to genuinely bond a team together through shared experiences or yeah I'm not just talking about going get going out and getting pissed um you know genuinely do you know doing something that creates that that cohesion is probably a a a good word and the you know the clarity of communication and the dissemination dissemination of information is almost more of a one-to-one does that make any sense that's a really waffly kind of vague sort of answer but that that was closer to my kind of way of of doing things perhaps I think it's back to um back to flipped meeting so providing people with the information beforehand and then using that team session to say what does that mean for us?

SPEAKER_03 41:36

What questions would we have what decisions would we need to make who would we need to talk to so using as you say not using team meetings as a cascade method um although I do think if there's something really really mission critical or or very sensitive that is well handled team meeting. Yeah yeah yeah in terms of and in terms of bonding and building trust team meeting is one way but only if supplemented with lots of other ways so things like I really like a Linkers and a thinkers program or some people call it coffee roulette where every week you have a half hour coffee with somebody different. Oh yeah donut is is another app I think yeah yeah that matches people together and often that and if you again if you set a few light you could you can just let people have a have a chat or you could set a very light agenda for it like um uh one person in the linkers and thinkers one person's the linker um they do they do all the kind of setting it up putting it in the diary um and the other person is the thinker so they get to bring something they're interested in talking about um and they may or may not end up talking about it but it's a little bit more purposeful than just oh let's have a let's just have a coffee and a catch up.

Vic 42:54

And I think those one-to-one relationships really bolster people and create psychological safety in a group yes because you can't read what everybody else is thinking in a group no that's a really really good point because best practices for what we're talking about here um a client that we've been working with for three years now which is optic customer success and they do everything that you've just talked about there but they also have these connections where everybody knows everybody else in the team and that makes such a difference for when they're in a meeting together.

SPEAKER_03 43:29

Yes yeah and it it's all these foundational elements another thing I like is to do to have a sort of internal team podcast so every week um just very short 15 minutes somebody interviews somebody else that file is shared and people can listen to it while they're commuting or traveling somewhere and you just get a chance to get to know somebody a little bit more and it's a bit quicker than doing a newsletter where somebody's got to do the interview and then write it all up. And a newsletter is a little bit heavyweight for one team Yeah. But some kind of podcast season.

Vic 44:05

Listening is yeah, it's it's it seems to be such a medium now for people to learn new things. I mean the uptake of audiobooks, etc., is really, really caught on, hasn't it?

SPEAKER_03 44:18

It's it's very powerful. Yeah, I heard um somebody who has a very successful podcast. Um he said to me that he thought podcasting was as as revolutionary as as the printing press in terms of allowing anybody uh you know, liberating anybody to produce long-form content that anyone in the world can listen to, and that the impact on ideas and dissemination of of new technology was would be revolutionary.

Vic 44:46

Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_00 44:50

So as we come to the end of this episode, and it's been fascinating so far. Perhaps you could give us, Carrie, uh three key takeaways for our listeners.

SPEAKER_03 44:59

Wow, so many to to choose from. Um, but let's let's take these three. So, firstly, I think make a social contract. So, what is in people's heads that isn't written down that is setting them up for a different expectation? Actually, can we do the can we do the three tips? Because I'll frame it positively. Sorry, I'll make it crisper. So, first, make a social contract, set the same expectation, set the same scope, set the same um indication of what kind of behaviour is going to be helpful in everybody's mind so that everyone comes with ego dulled down, ready to contribute, feeling safe and on the same page right from the first minute. That's the first thing. Um get people to contribute as early and as equally as possible, using a light structure, something like rounds, where everybody answers a question in turn at the very beginning, so that you're modelling everybody's voice matters. We will hear from everybody, and we'll use some sensible ways to speed up the process of hearing from everybody. And then the third thing which we haven't actually talked about so far is what do you do with everything at the end? And part of my approach is to capture outcomes on a shared canvas together. So on a document that's on screen, on a shared um Microsoft Exchange document or a Google Doc, whatever it is, or a whiteboard. But rather than just everybody taking their own notes, um, produce a set of notes together under headings like decided, what decisions have we made? Um, next, what actions are we going to take? Um, comms, who do we need to talk to about what we've decided today? And you might have a car park. So what's what do what came up today that was important but is for another meeting? And that um single capture can be shared with lots of other people. So instantly your notes for the meeting are already made, but you can send that to other teams to help them just be able to eyeball it and see what happened in that session.

Vic 47:16

Brilliant, thank you. I feel like I've learned so much, and so much of this just makes sense, but we don't, it's that um subconscious to the conscious, isn't it? It is.

SPEAKER_00 47:31

Yeah, it's it's all crazily logical.

Vic 47:34

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 47:35

But we just get on with doing meetings the way we've always done meetings because that's that's how we've always done meetings.

Vic 47:41

Yeah, it is. Or we've learned how badly others go and what can we do about it, and we've muddled through. So this is so helpful, Carrie. Thank you. Um I have a feeling that you have some additional information or um courses that that our listeners could potentially look at.

SPEAKER_03 48:01

I do. So if if if all this sounded interesting and you wanted to um really get under the bonnet and be able to use the whole toolkit um of which we've just sort of scratched the surface today, really, then I do have an e-course. It's with testers at the moment, and public release for the first cohort is 31st of January. And you can pre-order it on my website at the moment. And I think Vicki, you'll put the link in the show.

Vic 48:28

Yeah, I'm signing up.

SPEAKER_03 48:30

Wonderful. And I'll provide um, I'll give you a discount code as well for any any listeners. Super, thank you very much.

SPEAKER_00 48:38

Lovely. Excellent, that's really good. And and lastly, before you we we let you go, presumably, to head off to a meeting, um, perhaps you would be so kind as to give us your uh favoured book recommendation.

SPEAKER_03 48:52

So this would be Nancy Klein, Time to Think. And it sounds like a book about thinking, but it's a book about listening. So it describes listening as a radical act, something I think we could massively, massively utilize in meetings. And the idea is that the quality of our listening improves the quality of others thinking and what was that? He's being funny. I'm so sorry.

Vic 49:17

But you know, all the way through this, I love that you said that's because all the way through this, I've it's been making me thinking about listening. Isn't that interesting? Yeah, actually, in between moving from Citrix to VMware, I actually put listening on my CV and my other half looked at it and went, everybody listens, and I said, Oh no, they don't. Yeah, and I'm still working at it even more so now. But everything that you've talked about, if we're not doing active listening, what's the point of other people speaking?

SPEAKER_03 49:54

Exactly, exactly. And I think we're in this thing where we're thinking competitors with each other in meetings, and actually we need to be um thinking peers.

Vic 50:02

We're in this together. Yeah, yeah, we're in this together. What are we trying to achieve together? Wonderful. Um, I just found that so valuable. Thank you very much. Sam, do you want to just wrap us up?

SPEAKER_00 50:13

Yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah, I'll wrap it out for now because I think we we definitely need uh to have you back on the show again at some point in the future. Um, I just thought that was brilliant, really interesting stuff, and really useful, practically applicable stuff that you can make a difference with really quickly. So thank you for that. Really enjoyed that. Just remains for me to say thank you for listening to Get Amplified from the Amplified Group. Hopefully, active listening. Um, as always, your comments and subscriptions are gratefully received.