Issue No. 398 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting warns—your meetings stink! But—good news—read this five-page HBR article for solutions. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and visit Issue No. 397 for my 2018 Book-of-the-Year and my Top-10 books of 2018.
Your Meetings Stink!
At your next meeting, does your team need to make a quick decision—so discussion doesn’t drag on and on and on? Schedule the meeting in the elevator. “Okay, team…enjoy the ride, but we’re not leaving until we have a decision on the Nelson Project.”
No elevator? Take a team walk and don’t turn back until you’ve made the big decision! Once made, celebrate the decision—immediately!—with Starbucks or Chick-fil-A gift cards for everyone.
Those two ideas from the Hoopla! Bucket reminded me that a new year is the perfect time to refresh your weekly staff meeting. (You do have a weekly meeting right?) And just in time, is a brilliant five-page article from the Harvard Business Review. This poke-in-the-ribs for meeting facilitators is perfectly titled:
“Why Your Meetings Stink—and What to Do About It”
by Steven G. Rogelberg
Ever heard of “meeting recovery syndrome?” The “stink” article reports that “one recent study found that the effects of a bad meeting can linger for hours in the form of attendee grousing and complaining—a phenomenon dubbed ‘meeting recovery syndrome.’” Yikes!
Another yikes: “One study found that despite the prevalence of meetings today, 75% of those surveyed had received no formal training in how to conduct or participate in them.”
That’s not you, I know, because you’ve read many of the Meetings Buckets books I’ve recommended over the years:
• Death by Meeting: A Leadership Fable...About Solving the Most Painful Problem in Business, by Patrick Lencioni
• Read This Before Our Next Meeting: The Modern Meeting Standard for Successful Organizations, by Al Pittampalli
• The Secret to a Good Meeting Is the Meeting Before the Meeting: Lesson 18 from Leadership Gold, by John C. Maxwell ($1.99 on Kindle!)
• The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
So we all agree that most meetings stink (right?), but note Rogelberg’s findings—and his solutions:
THE PROBLEM:
• A survey found that managers reported high productivity in meetings they led—but lower productivity in meetings they didn’t lead—“clear evidence of an ‘I’m not the problem’ attitude.” Ouch!
• People who lead meetings talk the most. Ouch!
• Leaders who run ineffective meetings—and “thereby failing to make the best use of the talent around them”—will likely lose good people.
• Most organizations don’t train their leaders and managers in meeting self-awareness—what they do well, and don’t do well, when leading meetings.
THE SOLUTION:
• Ask your meeting participants to regularly evaluate the meetings you lead. Use surveys, one-on-one short conversations, and include meeting productivity assessments in your 360-degree feedback surveys.
• Define your meeting goals. “If you don’t have a clear mission or a list of agenda items, you should probably cancel.”
• Use a timed agenda.
• “For high-stakes meetings your preparation should go even further. Try having a ‘premortem’ (also known as prospective hindsight), which involves imagining that the meeting has failed and working backward to ascertain why. Then plan the meeting in a way that avoids or mitigates those problems.”
Here’s the deal—I’m trying to inspire you to read a measly five-page article (not a 300-page book) as your first assignment in this new year. If you have a meeting scheduled—and you don’t have time to read this article—cancel the meeting. Or…ask another team member to read the article and facilitate the meeting!
MORE MEETING MORSELS:
• “Facilitation starts the moment attendees walk into the room.”
• “…the key to successful facilitation is understanding that you’re primarily playing a supportive role.”
• “To prevent groupthink, consider incorporating periods of silence throughout the meeting…”
• Instead of verbal brainstorming, use “brainwriting.” (A must-read paragraph!)
• Shave five or 10 minutes off your normal one-hour meeting—“to create a bit more urgency and focus.”
And Rogelberg’s final recommendation in the Meetings Bucket: “If your organization isn’t training you in this key skill, it’s time for you to develop it on your own using these strategies.”
[ ] OPTION 1: To purchase and download the five-page article, “Why Your Meetings Stink—and What to Do About It,” by Steven G. Rogelberg, (Harvard Business Review, January-February 2019), visit the HBR website here.
[ ] OPTION 2: To read on Amazon Kindle, you can subscribe to Harvard Business Review and immediately download the full January-February 2019 issue. (See the 30-days free offer, currently available.)
[ ] OPTION 3: Note to meeting zealots! The Surprising Science of Meetings: How You Can Lead Your Team to Peak Performance, by Steven G. Rogelberg (192 pages), was published on Jan. 2, 2019. Click here to order from Amazon. (Note: I have not yet read this, so I am not yet recommending it. If you read it, please pass along your feedback. Thanks!)
YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) Rogelberg writes, “…when you’re a steward of others’ time, you owe it to them to make some modest upfront investment” as you plan your meetings. How much time do you invest in meeting preparation? Is it enough?
2) My 2018 Book-of-the-Year, Scaling Up, notes: “At the heart of a team’s performance is a rhythm of well-run daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual meetings.” Who will you assign to read “The Meeting Rhythm: The Heartbeat of the Organization,” chapter 11 in Scaling Up? Order from Amazon.
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The Meeting Begins When the First Person Arrives
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook
Do you facilitate “WOW” meetings? Click here to download a one-page PDF from the Meetings Bucket: “Create a Welcoming Environment for Every Meeting: The Meeting Begins When the First Person Arrives.”
This “W.O.W. Factor Meeting Evaluation” measures three key elements of effective meetings:
• Welcoming
• Organized
• Warm
Inspire a team member to become your meeting evaluator—and suggest ways to improve your meetings and your stewardship of everyone’s valuable time. For more resources from the Meetings Bucket, click here. And try this: present a "I Survived Another Meeting That Should Have Been an Email" coffee mug or t-shirt to your new meeting guru! Click here.
TRY THIS! Amazon's Jeff Bezos often begins a meeting with a “silent start,” according to Jason Pearson’s commentary in the Meetings Bucket chapter of Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook: Management Tools, Templates and Tips From John Pearson. Order here on Amazon and read more about effective meeting management.
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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. So…you and your team just had a meeting (that didn't stink!)—and you're oozing with ideas? Looking for new ways to communicate your mission—with messages that won’t be lost in the sea of kitten videos and fake news? Check out the innovative work from Pearpod Media (branding, digital, print, and video). Click here.
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