Tag: meetings

Categories
INC.com

Don’t Process Things to Death

Most meetings in organizational life follow a script. Everyone plays their part and says their lines. Someone–the department head, VP, or dean–calls a meeting. His immediate direct report feels that if too many issues are raised, nothing will get done. The administrative director is willing to have the meeting, but wants to specify parameters, set a time limit, and start with the agenda in place. The others invited to the meeting understand the broad agenda, but they have their own agendas and issues. Unfortunately, the meeting chair is too facilitative. After forty minutes, it becomes clear that the agenda has long since crashed and burned. Everyone wants to put their issues on the table, and the discussion degenerates into several smaller, simultaneous conversations. The meeting chair tries to wrest back control, but doesn’t want to be abrupt; others try to help him focus the discussion, to no avail. After two hours, the meeting ends with an agreement to meet again.

Dialogue is celebrated today. As corporations move further away from traditional, directive leadership, innovation team leaders and organization members find themselves spending a lot of time in some kind of dialogue–processing ideas, brainstorming, and engaging in continuous open discussion. Virtual and real meetings are the modus operandi of organizational life. Certainly the internet, webinars, and video conferencing haven’t diminished the need for meetings, but have increased it.

Read the rest here.

Categories
BLG Leadership Insights

3 Keys to Avoiding Meetings That Go On and On and On…

The meeting, or in modern business speak, the act of ‘touching-base’, is a high art. If you overdo a meeting you run the risk of boring your colleagues to sleep. If your meeting falls short you run the risk of leaving everyone with a confusing  what-just-happened feeling.

Meetings can either feel like a soulless cattle call or an energized debate. It’s up to leaders to set the tone, time, and value of every meeting. Here are some simple tips about what to want to do and not do:

Tone: Don’t apologize for ‘forcing’ everyone together. Take responsibility for calling a meeting and state your goals.

Whether you like it or not, your meeting will be a inconvenience to some and helpful for others. Playing to either camp won’t win you friends or standing ovations. You need to demand people’s attention by being forthright and getting to the point.

Time: We’ve all been there: The 4-hour meeting where a topic, unrelated to your department, takes center stage and you are forced to sit and listen.

Meetings can never be precisely planned since compelling ideas and questions generally arrive when the conversation starts. A good leader must know when to digest and discuss interesting conversation points (and questions) and when to let them go.

Leaders should aim for around 20 minutes in a meeting. Any more time than that and you’ll likely have exceeded the normal duration of a college class. Anything dramatically less than 20 minutes won’t be memorable and will be filed under, ‘distraction’, in everyone’s minds. The trick here is brevity and forcing people who want to say something to bring it the fore quickly so time isn’t wasted. Setting a time limit will also help cut off-topic conversations and give your team a sense of urgency. If a question is asked that requires more discussion–remember, not everyone needs to see you solve it. Try working on it later.

Value: As a leader you have to ask yourself, what is the purpose of my daily/weekly/monthly meetings? Are they simply an arena to hit home office policy and restate annual goals? Or are you trying to create a debate over a new proposal? Whatever your goals are focus on them. If you catch yourself veering off topic, people will start to glare at the clock.

Make sure you get value out of every meeting. Wasted time cripples momentum and hurts productivity. Don’t call a meeting if all you really want to do is ‘touch-base’. At the end of every meeting make sure something moved forward and something was changed. If it didn’t go anywhere, rethink what went wrong.

The art of the perfect meeting has nothing to do with entertainment or the perfect power point slides. It revolves around establishing a clear goal, keeping it short, and making sure everyone is moving forward. Leaders aren’t responsible for keeping everyone entertained, they are responsible for keeping the conversation on topic, brief, and forward looking.

Picture Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/alicenwondrlnd/ / CC BY 2.0

Categories
BLG Leadership Insights Features

Silence is a Leadership Trait

Leadership implies action, movement, and, for many, it implies noise. We often think that leadership is a force that is constantly in motion and in danger of becoming overplayed and burnt out. Leadership is defined as a series of actions, movements, and maneuvers. Rarely do we concentrate on the reflective, attentive, and contemplative elements crucial to leadership. The introspective moments of leadership are key tools in sustaining momentum.

Between the words, between the actions, between the political strategies, leaders must create silence. Silence that allows for ideas to be absorbed. Silence that allows for emotions to settle. Silence that allows for bonding and healing. Silence that allows people to sit unthreatened and unchallenged.

Smart leaders know how to create these gentle gaps both for themselves and their colleagues. The best part is, it’s not that hard. Creating silence simply requires stepping away from debates, initiatives, lectures, meetings, adjustments, and plans. It’s a period that is filled with conversation and interaction that isn’t absorbed with pressing issues and problems. Instead, these conversations are informal and happen spontaneously. They give people the chance to relax, reflect, and recharge.

Emily Dickinson said, “Saying nothing…sometimes says the most.” Silence can be a powerful tool.  Leaders who take time to create quiet periods can give people a feeling of calm and confidence. It’s an exercise in self and organizational reflection that inspires thoughtful action. Leaders that can appreciate the value of silence can move forward and sustain momentum by taking pause.

Still, silence and an environment of calm can have its setbacks. There’s always the danger of an organizational respite turning into an extended siesta. Constant reflection and contemplation can drag coalitions around in circles. Taking time off for silence can lead to entropy. Silence can shape a period of reflection, but it can also stall organizations.

Taking time to create silence is crucial to leadership. While leadership is about execution, getting things done, and action it also requires time to pause and reflect. It demands informal conversations and the space to create friendships and bonds.

Picture Credit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/esm723/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0