I find it extremely common that people dread
workplace meetings. They don't look forward to them.
There's something that they're demotivated to attend.
Not everybody, but it doesn't have to be that way. You
can actually have meetings where people leave energized, they
leave fulfilled and they're excited about the next one
because there's some universal, some factors,
aspects that you can incorporate that will make your meetings
go much, much.
We're going to talk about that today in the Decide youe Legacy podcast,
how to energize your workplace meetings. Three
keys, aspects you want to keep in mind. And so by the end of
this podcast, I can promise you that you're going
to learn a formula that will work. It's not
complicated that you can implement today in your meeting
tomorrow and it can work in personal
meetings as well. So. But we're going to use a lot of the
illustrations and everything going to be related to the workplace. There's reasons
for having meetings and you're going to learn how to have very
productive meetings because it benefits you. There's open communication,
you're more apt to succeed. You get different perspectives, you make more money,
you see opportunities you wouldn't have seen before as you communicate. Communication is a
big deal. You're going to make better decisions and you're going to feel some
excitement about the future because of the other insight you gain
during meetings. I'm your host, Adam Gragg. I am a legacy
coach and a corporate coach. I've been a family therapist for over
25 years. I founded Decide youe Legacy in 2012 and
our purpose is helping businesses and people,
all businesses, all people, live with courage.
I struggle with meetings myself. I'm a
guy that puts together agendas at the very last minute.
I don't like the preparation time that goes into
actually having a good meeting. I feel scattered.
I'm a guy who can procrastinate
on a lot of things and meetings and getting ready to lead them is
definitely one of them. And I'll even tell myself, you know, I'll put the
best agenda together or I'll be able to facilitate a great meeting if I wait
to the last minute because then it'll be all this inspired content that
I know we need to discuss. Not true, because I go in then
lacking some confidence because I'm not prepared and I'm doing
things off the cuff so I can avoid
and I can get anxious
during meetings. And I'll tell you if I keep the truth in
mind about how to have a Great meeting, which I'm going to share with you
today. And you're going to find one of them incredibly
fun, something I'm going to recommend. Eventually you'll find it fun,
but if I keep that in mind, I enjoy them, they go much better. And
there's a lot of reasons why people
do dread meetings because they've been in bad ones and
they've gotten negative feedback. I mean, they've been embarrassed, they've
maybe even gone in under prepared or maybe they always get
over prepared for meetings. There's so much pressure they put on themselves
and that creates this dread as well. Maybe it's their
mindset that it's going to go bad. Based on what happened in the past,
it could just even be the potential conflict that can occur.
Pushing back. You know, I had a meeting with a company,
just got done with it about an hour ago, and I knew
everybody involved. It was the third monthly meeting that
we have had with the ownership of a company. And
I knew going into it that there was going to be some anxiety
and there were some situations at the very beginning of the
meeting that could have derailed it. My job was to keep it out of the
drama, to turn the drama into something productive. And it actually
ended very well. I sensed energy, I sensed
excitement. I, I not perfectly, I mean it,
there's still future meetings to be had. But I
sensed this desire to engage at a
higher level, all these leaders as well. So that was super energizing for
me. I mean, I'm pretty energized right now. Plus I just came off of a
two week vacation, which is kind of cool. Having meetings
where people leave energized, ready to take
action is not only just possible, but it's something
that you can learn how to do and it's
gonna take you doing some things differently
to get there. So every episode I like to share something that I
have done recently that was facing a fear. Because
where our fear is, there lies our task. And what
I did is at a graduation party on vacation for my
daughter Emerson, I actually
facilitated a discussion
about giving her our best pieces of advice. Becoming 18,
everyone shared something they could if they were
to give her advice, they asked for their best piece of advice on
something she could stop doing, something she could start doing, and then something they hope
she continues doing. Wrote these things down. And the reason it
was a risk is because sometimes when I've decided with family to,
to challenge people to engage in that way, I
get some negative energy towards me, like you're being a family
therapist you're trying to control the conversation. But I didn't
get it this time. And I was surprised actually because everyone jumped
in, I think partially because we've done these types of things
in the past with family that I facilitated and they've been
pretty fun. So maybe they are even wanting me to do this now.
I can struggle with meetings. I know that you can
as well. And if you're human like me. So
the first important aspect of a great
meeting is to start it off by making it fun
so that people come in anticipating something fun, to get it
rolling, something light, engaging,
not too deep. And have this planned in
advance. An icebreaker.
And some of my favorite icebreakers I actually have
listed in an article that I've written called 17 Fun Icebreakers for
Workplace Meetings. You can go ahead and go through that list and pick one
that you can engage in. And I mean you will find that they work
at family events. I'm Pretty sure all 17 will
work at family events. So either way, because but couple
that I like one, and I use this one today as well, is you
share what your top 90 day personal goal is
and what you think you can do today to get started
on that goal. So everybody shares. You get to know more about what
they are focusing on in their life and then
they will leave, hopefully energized to take some kind of an action to reach
that goal. That's a fun one. Of course you may know that one of my
favorite beginning questions to ask at a meeting is, so what was something positive
that happened yesterday? Something exciting that you have planned for the
day ahead? Really good fun icebreaker. Another
one is what I just shared. You can do it in a workplace meeting. Stop,
start and continue for yourself. So here's something I want to
stop. Here's something I want to start. Here's something I want to continue. So everyone
shares that. That's different than how I use that activity
in at my daughter Emerson's graduation party.
But it's a great one. You just do it for yourself personally.
And another fun one kind of bonus is you have a jar of coins.
Everyone picks a coin and they share something historical or personal
that happened during that year listed on
the coin. And they can use their phones for that too if they want to
do some research. I don't know, maybe you got to 1925
coin and you'll remember what happened in 1925 because you weren't alive. So that's number
one. Make it fun intentionally put energy into making it
fun. And that's even your attitude about the meeting. Everybody picks up
their cues off the leader. And there needs to be a facilitator
in every meeting. It's somebody that keeps it heading in the right direction
on topic, so that you don't go on a tangent. Because one
of the reasons people dread meetings is because people may have
a certain person that easily goes on a tangent
and then they take up all the oxygen in the room and they demotivate
everybody and it's just not a good situation. So facilitator, it does
not have to be the CEO, it does not have to be the president. It's
simply the person running that meeting. It may be because everybody that's in
a leadership position has to learn how, in my opinion, to run an effective
meeting. But it needs to be somebody who's willing to keep that
meeting on track. There you go. So the second
aspect of a great meeting is people are going in
with some level of embracing drama.
Not loving drama, not looking for drama, not trying to cause drama,
but embracing the potential that comes out
of that drama. Seeing it as an opportunity, seeing it as something
that really needs to be discussed in many cases, sometimes it doesn't, but a lot
of times it does. Seeing it as something to ask questions about, something to dig
deeper on. A solution can come out of you, you facing that
thing that's not being addressed. Your job as a facilitator is to
be the drama miner. You're actually pulling it out, looking for
it. You may be prepared to bring up a topic that you know people
want to avoid, but you are the one who's willing to bring it up. That's
what I do with companies. I mean, I bring up the topics that as I
meet with them one on one, people are sharing and then I can
subtly, in a kind direct way, which is not really
subtle, but in a way that gets people engaged, bring it out so we can
have a discussion about it. Not a monologue, not
a beat up fest, but a discussion so we can
get insight and then take action based on that.
Drama. Drama. So you need a facilitator to help you with that. Another
reason is because if you don't have the leader, if you're not being a leader,
it will, it will easily get
directed towards the person who either has the most drama in their life,
who is naturally wanting to be the center of attention possibly, or
it'll easily go to the least important topic because
it's safer to discuss that than, rather than the most important
topic to discuss. Maybe it's the financial condition of the company or hiring
somebody new or firing somebody, or the direction of the company. I mean, companies
frequently. And I heard this just recently, I asked a
company leader what she thought, what she
would like the business to look like in 10 years. So creating a vision for
the business, and she couldn't go there. And she
identified that there was too much conflict amongst
the leadership and too poor communication amongst the leadership for
her to even want to dream that far ahead. And she's
the president of the company and she wasn't willing to
because she had to get the organization healthier before she
could feel she could dream. But I challenge her to step back from
that and say, hey, you as the leader, have to be casting a vision. I
mean, it's not going to be the perfect vision, but something that people can grasp
onto that says, we're going in this direction and we want to
take you as the team there. We want to help people in this way, want
to dream big time. So that drama,
it's being willing to have a conversation about it, being
willing to ask questions rather than get consumed by it. But if you go
in good meetings, have some drama, just like a good
movie, it's going to have some drama. Your life has some drama. Are
you willing to face it is the challenge. If you're willing to face it and
see that when you get to the other side of that personal drama in your
life, then you have all the good stuff on the other side of that, which
is a huge deal. So the third aspect of a great meeting
is that it ends with action.
So this is what I require when I have a meeting
with my team and then a team that I'm facilitating a
leadership discussion or an ownership discussion, is that at the very end of
the meeting. And they know once they've actually gone through some of these meetings, there
is going to be a couple questions that I'm going to ask. I'm going
to have them rate the meeting on a scale 1 to 10 and 10
is high and 1 is low. So they get going to assess the quality of
that interaction. Today, I got a 6, I got a 7.5, I
got a 7 and a 7 from a meeting that I was leading of an
ownership group. And I could look at that and say, oh, I wish it was
all eights and nines, but, you know, it was still higher than the last one
and we're trending in the right direction. It was hard, though. It was a hard
thing. And I felt energized by it anyway because I know that
things were addressed that were so crucial. So you end with action. And so the
other question I ask is, you know, what was helpful from this meeting
today? And people get to share. And in this case today, they
shared that there was some openness to hearing and
understanding and letting go of assumptions. They shared that there was
people interacted in a more positive fashion, that they went
deeper. One person said, we talked about core issues in a way
that I didn't think would happen. And she was
very encouraged by that. So then the third question I ask that
leads to action is what are you committed to applying from
today? You know, what are 1, 2, 3
actions with deadlines that I have them write down
and then I write down and email out to that group once I'm done with
that meeting that they can physically see that I'm going to get this thing
done with a deadline. That action orientation
creates hope because the dread comes from
people feeling in meetings that we're not going to make any decisions
that we act on. So there's not actually going to be any good, positive,
productive change based on this meeting. I mean, so why would I be looking
forward to it? It's just a, it's just a
complain fest. It's just a get together, you know,
it's just a coffee sipping time. It's not a productive
workplace meeting. And then if you look at that, it leads to a lack of
hope because then you think you're going to go back and talk about the same
stuff the next time you all visit or you think you're going to go back
and just waste time in the future meetings. But once you can see, and
I find that once people can see that a meeting can be
effective, it can be fun, it can be dramatic and we still stick through it,
we can find productive action to take at the end, then
they're energized and you have them. You know, after this meeting
today, I had requests based on, and this is what I get too,
when it's a good productive meeting is like, when's the next one? When's the next
one? And wow, I mean, can we do the same thing
then? You know, and so, and I'll ask them that as well, like what was
helpful from today? They're giving you feedback. Well, you, you pushed us, you challenged us,
you kept us on topic and there were a number of times where it could
have gone on a tangent that derailed the whole thing. But you can do that
as a leader to say, hey, we're going to focus on this and to do
that too. I like to think about their being four different types of
meetings. I learned this from Patrick Lencioni and the advantage. Four key types of
meetings. So one is called a weekly
tactical meeting. And at a weekly tactical meeting, you're sharing
updates on divisions of the company, future plans.
You're sharing metrics like sales
metrics, sales calls, revenue. You're sharing
detailed information about problems in the organization. If there's a mo.
If there's multiple divisions in that company, then they're
all giving updates on their section of the company. So that's what's going
on. And then we're doing a real time agenda, which means
what is it that you believe we need to discuss in a healthy, effective way
during this meeting for it to be productive? And people are sharing and there might
be 8, 10 things depending on the size of the meeting. And then they decide,
or the leadership decides, or sometimes I decide because I've had times where
everyone in the meeting seems to not want to talk about what is the most
essential core issue. And I say, hey, well, if I ask them what
they want to discuss, they nobody mentions that as a topic they want to discuss.
And I'm like, well, you guys have mentioned this as a problem and
you've even identified that this is the thing that needs to be most addressed, but
for some reason you don't want to. What is that all about? Well, we're going
to offend this person or that person that's actually in the room. Okay, so what's
going to offend them about this? Well, they're not going to like the feedback they
get because it relates to their job and their performance. And even just getting
that out gives them generally a willingness to say, hey, we're even. From
the person who is. Who is
who they're afraid to share this information with. There's an openness because
we've gotten the elephant out of the room and now we're talking about that, that
drama. And, and then hopefully over time they see that's going to lead to
action, positive action, productive action, fun action.
So they make a commitment and then they can even ask somebody. I often
assign this with companies, somebody to hold you accountable.
Accountability is necessary between meetings.
So big, good stuff. So I went
to Portland, Oregon over the weekend and
I was went to see a friend, my friend
Aaron and Ryan and John
and another buddy, Max, and another friend, Jeremy. And
these are all college fraternity brothers. I decided to
do this fairly last minute because his wife Erin
sent the invitation out like two weeks ago. And so
I think he was really surprised that a number of friends flew
in from out of state to attend. And at the
very end of this event we came in Friday, we left Sunday morning, we all
had breakfast together. There was a party, got to meet his friends in Portland, Oregon.
And I went to college in Eugene, Oregon at the University of Oregon. So I
know them from, from Oregon. And Aaron and
his friends I got to meet from that area right there.
And it was. It was a really great time. It was a blast. But I
remember at the very end we had a meeting. Basically we went to
breakfast and we talked about the trip and it was fun
because we reminisced on the night before. There were some really silly funny
things that happened at his party and it did involve
some very random things like a parade in Portland that I never knew
existed. And I can't really talk too much about it on this, but you can
look it up. There's a. There's a parade in Portland. It's called
the. Anyway, it's called the Naked Bike Rice
Bike Race anyway. But that. That legit
exists. And it was going by the venue where we
had our 50th birthday party for Aaron. And
so people got to be near
this event. But. But at the very. So we laughed and that was the fun
part of that meeting. And then, and then there was some talk about when do
we get together again. And there's some drama in that because some people
can't make certain dates and other people have ideas about going to a football game.
Some of the friends had ideas about celebrating another 50th birthday party. Others
like myself had an idea of meeting somewhere in the middle because I'm the furthest
away. A little bit of drama. And then there was some action at the end
like we are committing to
following up to talk about this as do we organize our
schedules on this specific date
ten days from now. And that's not exactly what happened. So
we didn't totally. We failed the action part because we didn't nail down a
specific date and a specific commitment. The commitment would have been verbalizing that we want
to do this again. This was fun. You can do this when you
practice. Give yourself 90 days. If you're going to
commit, which is what's required if you're going to have good meetings, if you're going
to commit to making your meetings much more productive, much more enjoyable, much
more action oriented, more fun and drama facing fear facing.
Give it 90 days assess but be all in
because you won't want to do it when it's hard
unless you're committed. That's how we work. You know willpower
doesn't work. You don't will your way in anything. You have to create the environment
that makes it easy to go downhill. So you schedule the meetings at
the same time every week? Oh yeah, I was gonna tell you the four different
types of meetings. The weekly tactical. There's a daily check
in where people meet in the morning or the afternoon and they check in for
five or 10 minutes and it happens every day. People go and they share
it can bring questions for their co workers to that meeting so they know they're
gonna have that regular consistent time to check in. There's a topical
meeting which during your tactical meeting you might realize that we
need to spend some time, a whole hour on this topic. And so you put
that into the schedule where you're talking about one specific topic and you're
staying on topic, not off topic. So you have a topical meeting
that keeps you away from tangents as well. And then there's like a quarterly retreat.
A way to do strategy, a time to plan strategy. It could be
on site or off site. I like off site. Get people thinking, get people
dreaming. So there you have it. So let me summarize
three different aspects of a great meeting. It's fun. Go
into it with fun. Have an icebreaker at the beginning. That's fun. Good
stuff. Embrace the drama is number two. And
that does mean confronting it at times as a leader.
Confronting people during these meetings for behavior that you don't think is
leading towards your goals or their goals and then end with action. So
there's commitment, there's follow through, there's assignments even potentially
of who's going to hold people accountable. But, but the main accountability is the fact
you have a follow up meeting where it's part of it at least where
you're gonna ask, did you get this done? Well that's two weeks from now, a
week from now, it could be a month from now. But there's a follow
up aspect. So if you found this content helpful
you are gonna wanna check out Shatterproof Yourself
Lite. So this is a free mini course and in this course
one aspect of it is relates to
relationships. It's seven small steps to a giant leap in your mental health.
So step seven is building true friends. And if you check that
out, you're gonna see and learn some skills on
making the types of connections in meetings. Being an
ace, you gotta look at the course to see what that is so that you
can help people go further and beyond what they believe. Possible. And that's what a
good friend does. So check out Shatterproof Yourself Light. Hit the
link. Don't miss that content. There's a worksheet you can go through as
well. So in in summary,
as I said, you know, make it fun, embrace the drama, end with action.
Remember that nothing will make my day more
bright than knowing that you have left this podcast with some kind of action that
you're gonna take based on this content. So send me an email
share comment below. I'd love to hear about it. Give us a
rating and review on Apple or Spotify, wherever you get your podcast content. And share
this episode with your team because I'm sure you
got other colleagues that do not like meetings. Don't believe it's possible.
If you are interested in digging deeper, check out the
Advantage by Patrick Lencioni. He talks about meetings in this book and has a
bunch of other great content as well. So there's no positive change until
you decide to change. You can decide today because your
legacy depends on you acting, doing something about it. To
decide means to eliminate other options. There's so many options out
there, and your legacy is the impact that your life is going
to have on others after you leave
God's good green earth. So today I want to close the way I always do.
Live the life today that you want to be remembered for 10 years after
you're gone. You decide your legacy. Nobody else. I
appreciate you greatly and I'll see you next time.