LEADERSHIP | BUSINESS

Are Your Meetings a Meaningless Gathering of People?

A discussion about how leaders can tap into the collective intellect by making meetings more engaging

Few meetings are dialogues. By that, I mean that they do not invite openness or untethered contributions from workers on the front-line.

In my 20 years of experience, most meetings are ill-structured. They fail to capture individual opinion. Nor are they a forum to collate collective insights.

Too many meetings follow the same form regardless of function or output.

Today we have presentations, Zoom, flip charts, white-walls, coloured pens, post-its, cookies, coffee, tea, and buffet prawn sandwiches. None of which substitute real progress, the true output of a collective opinion.

Too often meetings mute the inspiring exchange of collective insights, blocked by conformists who control their own ‘agenda’ to validate their confirmation bias, which ironically invalidates the output anyway.

Don’t Lead

Never let anyone lead a meeting. Leaders do not own meetings. Period. Some think they do, and others support that belief, as a result, they are surrounded by “Yes” people.

Leaders should only attend, or at best open and close a meeting. A pre-appointed chairperson can take notes, guide and manage time. The point is that in order to make meetings matter they should function as a conduit to tap into the collective intellect of others.

A leader should not be getting their hands dirty in whatever passionate, creative, ridiculous conflict or playful problem-solving train that’s unfolding. A leaders presence is to support, not dictate. To simplify, a leader should either shut up or leave.

Spend money on people participation, not on prawn-sandwiches or a fancy 5-star off-site location.

A leadership weakness occurs when their authority leans disproportionately on an opinion that they agree with, encouraging others who match this belief to speak more often, with an air of certainty.

Great leaders appoint a chairperson to guide a discussion, like a relentless renegade who’s respected among the group. The more important the meeting, the greater the benefit if a renegade-facilitator chairs.

This article will highlight 5 essential elements for meaningful meetings.

Essential Elements For Meaningful Meetings

The following tips summarise what many leaders view as best-practice to enhance the time invested in meetings.

Tip №1 — Ask attendees to prepare

Idea generation before a meeting is a worthwhile exercise. Now, this is not so everyone has a turn to present their idea, which can be dull and ineffective, but so that the people attending have done some thinking in advance.

In the past, I’ve attended meetings completely unprepared simply because I was invited. To allow this to happen is a failure of leadership. Brainstorming is just a technique, not the objective.

Never assume that group brainstorming is automatically a good thing. It can be bad too. It’s not what you do but how you do it that’s important.

Tip №2 — Avoid minute monologues

The rule that only one person can talk at any one time is effective in some settings, but in other situations, it can limit the number of ideas that people can discuss at the moment. Also, it allows others to coast, contribute nothing, not even thinking about the problem if their mind wanders.

People who talk can block out others from sharing their ideas. As a result, others forget what they were about to say, or don’t get the time to say it.

It’s tough to be the only speaker in a large group, I get that, but avoid a situation whereby too many people refrain from sharing their ideas because they’re afraid of sounding stupid or don't have the opportunity.

It’s not enough to simply tell people to share crazy ideas, encourage it, reward the most outrageous concept that’s likely to fail. See what happens. That’s where the diamonds lay.

Tip №3 — There is no one-size-fits-All

Facilitate open time for people to just talk with one other by limiting regulation and meeting constraints where possible.

Speed-meet, with sixty-second slots. Date meet with twenty-minute meetings. Use communal spaces of various sizes and functions with whiteboards, sofas and coffee so that colleagues can chat between meetings. Open up meetings to everyone. Some companies ping a mobile message for open meeting invites. Others use flashing lights or free food to attract attention.

Get outside. Take people out of the office. Gather at parks. Hold meetings in art galleries, pubs, clubs, arcades, restaurants, just break the norm, the mould of normal thinking. Do something less boring or, if possible, something extraordinary that scares you. Allocate time at work for writing, ideation, reading, thinking, meditation and even sleeping.

Meetings that embrace the entire being of a human can unlock the depths of our imagination.

Tip №4 — Problem-solve with purpose

Pinup articles, case studies and principles of problem-solving around the meeting room to set the tone.

Take account of what worked in the past and what didn't work. Try to figure out a way to remove the non-functional problems that impede the momentum of problem-solving.

Excite attendees. Invite participation. People can tire quickly when they run out of steam, their contribution fades as their ideas lose traction.

When people are bored, they disengage. Distractions can easily become a fascination. So to keep people on their toes, involved and alert, design a meeting with no fixed shape, boundaryless even. The type of gathering that can call on their expert involvement at random moments gets noticed.

Tip №5— Record significant contributions

Take snaps, images of group-work as it unfolds. Post-it notes or whiteboard scribbles are important too. Refine them to form a document rather than wasting time to compile an executive report of what was said and by whom.

Recording and structuring group contribution in this way has a meaningful impact on attendees. People get to see what they suggested, encouraging the group to collaborate and build on every idea, developing new insights in the process.

Final Thoughts

Above all, meetings should be designed to capture the knowledge in the room. Focusing on what’s important, helpful or irrelevant.

Break rules, phone an external source or industry expert during a meeting if it means that momentum will be maintained.

Doing anything to avoid derailing progress is progress. If things are paused because the right people or information is not in the room then the lesson is simple, prepare better for the next meeting.

Problem-solving is not a continuous stream of linked activities, it’s rather a series of disconnected events.

The weakness with meetings is that they constrain work by defining what must be done with a clear ending. Fitting at times, but boring for most. Objectives risk becoming time-bound rather than contributing real improvements that have an impact.

Another weakness is that some leaders avoid meetings unless those in power are attending. A self-serving tactic, yes, but a ploy that can limit progress in the long term, a potentially damaging outcome.

In contrast, leaders who deploy formal power to facilitate informal gatherings are more likely to get things done by following the 5 tips discussed above.

The message is clear, leading meetings is not leadership. especially those that stink of ego. True leadership occurs when meetings are designed to engage everyone, a forum that ignores rank and status to harness the collective intellect.