Making Meetings Work
What's the purpose of a meeting? How do we make sure everyone contributes? And why is this important? Key questions that have only been exacerbated by the pandemic and remote working.
Let's start with the last question. Why is it important that everyone contributes? We all know that a diverse team is only half the story - the environment and culture needs to also be an inclusive one in order to get the full potential from your diverse workforce. Ground-breaking research on high performing teams carried out as part of Google’s Project Aristotle https://www.sportandbeyond.co.uk/blog/2016/7/11/what-google-learnt-about-building-the-perfect-team has highlighted that teams that ensure equal contributions outperform those that don't.
Now let's take the first question: what's the purpose of your meeting? The pandemic has encouraged many people to actually focus on this, which is brilliant. There should be a clear reason why you are gathering everyone together in a meeting. Is it to build connection? To brainstorm? To share an update? To kick off a new project? To solve a problem? To make a decision? To get the team behind a decision? Take the time to ask yourself: is a meeting the best way to achieve what we want to achieve?
Finally, how can we make sure that everyone is heard, especially when some will be attending remotely? Three quick tips.
Use a mechanism that ensures everyone contributes at the start of the meeting (think each footballer on the team touching the ball in the first two minutes). Examples include asking everyone to share how they are, or asking everyone what their favourite tv programme/film/podcast has been over the last seven days. This sets the tone for further equal contributions.
Structure the meeting so that it's clear what you are expecting (ie an information 'give' section, and information 'get' section, a 'challenging our assumptions' section).
(This one is quite hard, you need to be very effortful about it) leave proper pauses during the meeting - particularly helpful for those attending virtually.
And after each meeting - score yourself from 1-10 on how it was, against the relevant criteria you have set yourself (eg 1. Has the meeting achieved what we needed it to? 2. Did everyone contribute equally? 3. Has everyone left the meeting clear on next steps? 4. Has everyone left in the right frame of mind?) And where the scores are low, work out, together, how to bring them up. And, if you’re brave enough, you could ask one other question: “did we need a meeting to achieve this?”
For more on this or any aspect of leadership, with a healthy dose of mindset, sport, and I hope usefulness thrown in, do feel free to browse through all the articles in the Huddle, or get in touch with me directly on catherine@sportandbeyond.co.uk