POV when I’m in Meetings without agenda, purpose or seemingly anyone who knows any actual relevant thing, but everyone still seems very impressed and willing to free associate and reinforce each other.
EVERY leader I have worked with admitted meetings were there least favorite, biggest time (therefore $ waster). I had group coaching with VP’s and THEY complained about the meetings. I said if YOU can’t and wont change them how are you blaming “them” who works for you?
Some symptoms and reasons:
- Its very hard for leaders (and all humans in most settings) to know and clearly communicate what they DO want and need.
- Often then the meeting (conversation, text, e-mail) is a form of trying to figure it out
- Then when it goes wrong, we don’t get what we wanted (but how could we when we hadn’t gotten clear on that) we blame THEM (more fun)
- We’re great at saying what we don’t want, its difficult to get clear on what we do
- Meetings are highly reinforced, being overbooked, overscheduled running around, while most of us claim to not like it and want to it change wont admit we’re reinforced for it, it feeds our sense of self and traditional measurement of “hard worker” by never getting rest
- If you really think of it the smartest most valuable people are ones who think of better, more efficient ways of doing things including delegation
- How many times though have you ever heard anyone promoted, getting an award or reinforced for having free time
- We keep adding meetings and more people to the meetings to try to bridge the gap that trust, communication, sharing of ideas and collaboration would do. We could Vastly reduce the number of meetings and people at them (and e-mails and redundant work and deadlines) if we focused on the real cause
What is needed:
- With meetings (or any interaction) prep and getting VERY clear on what the purpose is, why, what’s needed what is success
- Are you aware of your "own stuff" that is getting in the way of being clear and asking for what's needed?
- Consider all of the participants, are there different styles of thinking, expressing, contributing? Can we prepare for that ahead of time. Do people need or would they feel more comfortable preparing, reviewing ahead?
- How are we making room for everyone to give input in their unique way? (some take longer to think about things and have thoughts after the conversation has moved on)
- What is EVERY single person invited to do. Why are they there, what prep, what is their input
- If you can’t answer that don’t invite them
- If you don’t make that clear in the invite don’t invite them
There is so much more to this we could cover it could be a course or months of coaching work to change,,, oh wait 😊.