There’s nothing quite like a business meeting to demoralize an already tired employee.
But we all have to agree that meetings provide opportunities for growth, so how can you properly conduct one for maximum productivity?
Patrick Lencioni’s “Death By Meeting” brings out the age-old tradition of getting everyone to listen to you in the conference room. For sure, there is no other venue for demonstrating your leadership and management skills, which says a lot about cohesion within the organization.
For this purpose, you will need to consider these important elements in conducting effective business meetings:
Drama
Patrick L
encioni states that the first ten minutes of any meeting is crucial. Therefore, you shouldn’t pad it out with unproductive conversations that bore your employees.
This isn’t a night out with the lads. You’re having a serious discussion with the people involved. You just have to figure out how to steer it towards a logical conclusion.
Here are a few things to keep in mind:
- No rambling: As was stated earlier, no padding. If you want to be dramatic about it, open with statements that provoke debate and discussions. That way, the meeting can flow in the desired way.
- Encourage healthy conflict: Don’t shoot down or force out opposing opinions. Instead, welcome them! Let those topics be the discussion and meat of the meeting if you must.
- Don’t be autocratic: Don’t take full control of the meeting. Your colleagues at work are present for a reason. Allow them to contribute so you can get a lot of insights for possible solutions you can work out with.
- Thriving on the collective wisdom: At the end of it all, you may need to gather all the insights that have been discussed up to that point. Make sure to get as many of these as you can and see if there are any gold nuggets you might want to keep.
Mining Positive Conflict
Knowing how to start and move the meeting is only half the battle. You must also be prepared for co-workers who will cause a clash of ideas.
Lencioni says intuitiveness is the key to maintaining healthy competition. You have to be sensitive in identifying potential points of conflict and coming up with an effective approach to dealing with them.
Developing The Context
Meetings are going to lose meaning if you lose focus.
Remember when this article started talking about the right way to conduct meetings? Well, what if I lost focus and started talking about how hotdogs have a weird shape? Now, this review makes no sense, much like how a meeting that lacks consistency can barely achieve anything.
Set a meeting with a proper agenda, objective, and purpose. Have it flow naturally and try not to let it wash away in multiple directions by, you guessed it, going completely off the grid. You’ll find yourself chasing your own tail as you ramble randomly.
Patrick Lencioni masterfully looks at the inner mechanisms of successful meetings.
“Death By Meeting” is actually one of those guides that I recommend a lot! It shows you the ropes of conducting a proper and entertaining meeting. That way, you can fire up your employees the next time you call them to the conference room.
Want to get the book?
Read more blogs.
