How to Cope with Meeting Madness
[Music]
when you think about your past
work week and all the meetings that you
had
what was the thing that you found most
frustrating
as a meetings trainer and coach clients
call me
because they want to get engagement and
focus
in their meetings it’s always the same
people who do all the talking they tell
me
and they’re the ones that take us off
track and make us run over time
and it’s always the same people who stay
quiet
and we’re worried we’re not getting the
engagement we need for really good team
commitments
so what can you do to solve these
problems
well i’d like to give you a strategy to
cope
but like all coping strategies they
won’t remove the problem
completely meetings are a fact of life
and in meetings we have people
and the moment you have people i like to
say
you actually got two meetings you’ve got
the meeting
that you’re in and you’ve got the second
meeting that’s going on inside your head
and that’s the reason we sometimes don’t
step in
and save our meetings when they’re going
off track and we’re going to talk about
that
in the second half of the talk so first
of all
what are the coping strategies that you
can do
well cope stands for captain
outcome process and equity
let’s look at the captain every ship
needs a captain
to get it safely to its destination on
time
and meeting science tells us that the
meeting leader
makes or breaks the meeting
the wonderful thing is that meeting
skills is something that you can learn
and get better and better at every time
you lead a meeting
because there’s no right way to do it
and you can find your own
unique leadership style
o stands for outcome
if we don’t know where we’re going we’re
likely to get lost at sea
and it’s very important to articulate
the outcome
that you want so if you’re the meeting
organizer
write down the outcome you want in the
meeting invitation
so that your participants can see what
to expect
and what’s expected of them and they can
even make an informed choice as to
whether to catch this ship
or to stay behind this time and get on
with work that they think
would be more productive the p
stands for process like any destination
we need to know how we’re going to get
there
and that also takes planning
so when you’re thinking about your
meeting and you’re planning the process
you have to ask yourself some questions
for example
if the outcome you want is a decision
when you’re planning your process you’d
be asking yourself questions like
well how are we going to reach that
decision is it going to be a vote
is it going to be by consensus or is it
going to be the loudest voice
wins and it’s extremely important
that the captain shares that process at
the start
of the meeting meeting science tells us
that when we have a clear outcome and a
clear process of how we’re going to get
there
our stress levels go down and we can
release our higher cognitive functions
to really collaborate together think
creatively
and get the best outcomes for our
meetings
and the e stands for equity or equal
opportunity
to speak it’s no good having a few
people
who do all the talking while everybody
else stays silent
but how do you encourage that in your
meetings
well there are three steps listen
validate redirect
so imagine you’re in a meeting
everything’s going well
and all of a sudden a couple of
colleagues start having a side
conversation that’s when you can bring
in
your listen validate redirect and it
looks something like this
you listen and you wait for an opening
eventually your colleagues are going to
have to come up for air
and have a natural pause and that’s when
you step in
with your validate piece to do that
you ask a question to break the momentum
of their conversation
and the question can be as simple as can
i ask you a question
that stops them in their tracks and you
can step in with the validation piece
which is
that sounds really interesting
and now you step into the redirect piece
which is
can you help me understand how what
you’re saying relates to the topic we’re
on in our agenda right now
and you’re bringing them back to the
objective
of the meeting without alienating them
and everybody else sighs a big sigh of
relief
because now you’ve saved their meeting
now when i give these tools to
people they feel very comfortable using
them
with their peers with a little bit of
practice
but what about if the people that are
having the side conversation
are your superiors what would you do
then
and if you were the boss how would you
feel if your team member
actually interrupted you and brought you
back
on track well these
are the kinds of questions that cause
all of us to stop in our tracks because
we’re dealing
now with the meeting inside our head
and i like to use this quote from
football coach
mike dicker he said in life you get
what you tolerate and i’ve changed that
quote
to say in meetings we get
what we tolerate so why
are we tolerating these kinds of
meetings
well it’s because of the meeting in our
head we don’t
feel that we can interrupt our
colleagues
and especially not our superiors because
we’re worried
that we might look rude
but i think we’re actually worried that
we might be rejected
our biggest fear in life is to be
rejected
from our tribe or our group
and so we’ll do anything we can to stay
in the good books
so i like to get inspiration from elon
musk
ceo of tesla he wrote an email to his
staff
showing them how important it is for him
to have a great
meeting culture in his organization
and he said walk out of a meeting or
drop off a call
as soon as it’s obvious you aren’t
adding value
it’s not rude to leave
it’s rude to make someone stay and waste
their time
the reason i like that quote is that it
recalibrates
what we mean by being rude how would it
be
if it was okay not to accept a meeting
invitation
that didn’t have a clear objective
how would it be if it was okay to cancel
a meeting that was already set in time
because there wasn’t any need for it
as we recalibrate our future and we
think about
how we want to do our best work together
wouldn’t it be great if we could have
these kinds of conversations
inside our organizations so next time
you’re in a meeting whether you’re the
ceo of an organization
whether you’re the meeting leader or
just a meeting participant
think about how you can step in to save
your meeting
with the coping strategies that i’ve
shared with you today
[Music]
you