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Lead The People is your guide to unlocking your true potential as an authentic leader. Hosted by Dr. Matt Poepsel—The Godfather of Talent Optimization—this podcast dives deep into the art and science of what it takes to lead at the next level. With insightful conversations and practical strategies, each episode equips executives, strategic HR pros, and aspiring leaders with the tools it takes to boost performance, inspire teams, and drive meaningful impact. Whether exploring the latest workplace trends or tackling real-world leadership challenges, Lead The People offers an enlightened approach to leadership. Embark on a rewarding journey to become the leader your people deserve—the leader you were meant to be.
Jess Britt (00:00):
Meetings test our leadership in the conversations we invite, the way we respond to pushback and questions, the way we use meetings to develop our teams and model leadership behaviors, how we exercise personal leadership over our emotions that might come up in a meeting and just the way you run a meeting really communicates what you value to your team and to your peers and those around you. Do their time matter, whether input counts, whether you've thought ahead and what behavior gets celebrated and tolerated.
Matt Poepsel (00:38):
Meetings are one of the most complained about parts of work, but complaining hasn't fixed them and AI note-taking hasn't fixed them either. And so today what we're going to do is we're going to get into the why and the what it actually looks like to run a meeting where people leave feeling clearer, more aligned, and part of something. So our guest today is Jess Britt. She is a leadership coach and a meeting design and facilitation expert whose newsletter has been helping leaders like me think differently about the time they already have on their calendars. Jess, welcome to the show.
Jess Britt (01:04):
Thanks so much for having me.
Matt Poepsel (01:05):
I got to ask you the question, Jess. Meetings, that's not exactly the most hot off the presses topic. What got you so interested in meetings and helping us fix them?
Jess Britt (01:13):
Well, if I go way back to the beginning of my career, I loved meetings. I looked forward to them. It was where I got to be social. It's where I got to meet other people. It's where I got to figure out how the tiny kind of tedious work that I was doing in my corner actually related to the big picture and it's where I learned a lot about the organization. Fast-forward, I spent several years of my career working at a nonprofit workforce development organization where all staff, regardless of role, were involved in facilitating program and coaching young adults around skill development. And that facilitation and coaching skillset really translated into the meeting culture within this organization. And then I stepped outside those doors. I was on boards, I was working with clients, and I started to realize, wow, I really took meeting skills for granted.
(01:57):
And I think that there is so much leadership that happens within meetings and that people have so much more agency over their experience of meetings than they currently feel like they do.
Matt Poepsel (02:08):
It's so true that when you leave a meeting that was a really good meeting, you're like, wow, you're energized, you're pumped, you had a chance to talk to your teammates and all that good stuff, and you feel a part of something just like you said. And then when you think about how many meetings, I would fall out of my chair if I thought about how many meetings are taking place just today alone across the world and how many of them, vast percentage of them that are just, let's just say they could be better.
Jess Britt (02:31):
Those meetings, that could have been an email.
Matt Poepsel (02:33):
Yeah, right. 100%. Or they unfold in a very certain way. But I want to pick up on something you just said, which was that leadership skills actually show up in the meetings. I certainly believe it, but I don't know that I could articulate it. Most of the time we think about leadership and we think about somebody standing in front of the room and they got the big strategy and they're going to cast the big vision or they're commanding all these different parts of the organization. Tell me, connect those dots for me when it comes to leadership skills in meetings.
Jess Britt (02:58):
Yeah, so I think when we get to a meeting, we need to know what's in those decks and in our emails inside and out real time. And meetings test our leadership in the conversations we invite, the way we respond to pushback and questions, the way we use meetings to develop our teams and model leadership behaviors, how we exercise personal leadership over our emotions that might come up in a meeting. And just the way you run a meeting really communicates what you value to your team and to your peers and those around you. Does their time matter? Whether input counts, whether you've thought ahead and what behavior gets celebrated and tolerated. Really all of that shows up in a meeting.
Matt Poepsel (03:38):
I love the idea of a team meeting in particular for leadership skills because you've got me thinking about this now that there's three layers almost happening. There's myself and my own personal leadership. Maybe I'm trying to learn a new skill or apply some new technique or try to change my behavior in some way. I tend to be a person who talks out loud. I'm not very good at the follow-up and the detail stuff. So maybe that's an area I want to improve. Meeting's a great place to do that. But then there's the team dynamic. How am I leading the team? How am I making a personal connection with everybody, making space, holding space, whatever it might be? And then there's the org. How am I bringing these strategic things that only I get to hear when I'm in the bigger senior meetings or I just want to tie people to the work we do every day and say, can we just take a moment here or whatever it might be.
(04:22):
It's such a great opportunity, but it's a very different way I think of looking at meetings, which tend to be like, how do we unblock things? How do we make decisions? How do we get aligned? How do we share status? More of the day-to-day sort of parts of it.
Jess Britt (04:34):
Yeah, absolutely. There's a whole lot of value that's already sitting there on our calendar that we're just not making the most of. Yeah.
Matt Poepsel (04:41):
It's so true. I know you have referred to this opportunity cost of a bad meeting. So sometimes I think about just the payroll that we spend for people sitting in a meeting that could have been an email, like you said earlier, but I don't think that's the extent of it. What else comes to your mind when you're thinking about this missed opportunity?
Jess Britt (04:56):
Yeah, so I think there is the, what would people be doing if they weren't in the meeting either in terms of work execution or work-life balance or work that may be more aligned with the priorities that they have in a given moment. If a meeting is about something that's not particularly urgent and it's taking them away from something else they could be doing, that mismatch is likely to be felt. And I think we all feel this. I mean, a lot of people are in meetings. They lead meetings, but they're also in meetings that they don't necessarily feel like are the best use of their time. And so I think that opportunity cost is something we are all familiar with and can be even more thoughtful about in what ways might we be creating that for our teams. The other opportunity cost isn't just in the meet or don't meet.
(05:40):
It's also in what we were just talking about around how much more value could you get out of the meeting time you already have? Everybody's already in the room or in the Zoom room or whatever room you have. How are you making the most of that time to actually get input? Spend a few minutes truly building relationships and trust among the team, challenging each other's ideas, setting norms that are going to carry you beyond the meeting. If you're already all in the room and not making the most of that time, there's an opportunity cost there too.
Matt Poepsel (06:08):
Yeah. There's so many positive things that can happen from recognition, connecting people to other people that they don't get to meet with that often or help celebrate people who feel like they've done something well or provide some thoughful alignment that's needed for the team. There's so many things I can think of that might be on that list of good things. But I want to go back to something you said in the beginning, Jess, which is really talking about this nonprofit that you work for. Did that meeting culture, did that just kind of happen or did you just notice that they happened to be really good at it? Was that a point of emphasis for the culture? How'd you find yourself in such a positive constructive situation?
Jess Britt (06:42):
As I said, part of it was that the program itself was developing young professionals. And so people were really intentional about what does it mean to model skills that folks are going to need in a corporate setting? And therefore, how do we need to facilitate in alignment with adult learning theory, positive youth development theory in order to make that happen? And all staff, regardless of role, were involved in that program delivery. And so those components around how do you engage adult learners, which we all are as employees. We are trying to teach our teams about the new strategy, something else. All of those components of what makes a effective nonprofit program can also translate into how we show up and deliver and build new skills and communicate. And so I think it really came out of wanting to model and mimic some of what we were doing in program in the staff experience.
(07:35):
And then I think it just became embedded. It was like the water we were swimming in within the organization. And then as I left, that's when I really realized it was unique.
Matt Poepsel (07:41):
It's almost like, well, if this is kind of what we do, we should probably do it well for ourselves since we're modeling it for others. It makes me think of this notion too of if you want to be seen as a capable leader, lead a capable meeting. Let's start there. If you can't run an effective meeting, then I'm not sure what kind of leadership behavior you're really showing. So this is why I appreciate your newsletter so much in giving us these tips on how to do this well because it's not second nature to people and we didn't all grow up in really positive meeting cultures. But I want to touch on something. You've got these four building blocks and it's a way that really helps us to run more effective meetings. Can you tell us about what those four building blocks are and how to get the order right?
Jess Britt (08:17):
Sure. So I think all meetings have housekeeping, warmup, content, close. Those are four building blocks. Housekeeping, how do you set expectations for the meeting? What's the purpose, the plan, the norms? Warmup gets everyone engaged early on and in the right head space for the conversation. Content is the heart of your agenda and close is how you intentionally wrap up and close the meeting. I think of every meeting like a puzzle that has these building blocks. Whether or not you're doing them well or intentionally is another question. And by naming them this way, you can start to bring some more intention to how they're showing up in the meetings that you run.
Matt Poepsel (08:55):
They're nice and sequential, which is good. It removes some of the mystery and I feel a lot of pressure about how do you run an effective meeting? It's like, no. Whether it's a small group, whether it's a big group, those four blocks are going to show up, which is really nice. I like that very much. And let's talk about housekeeping for a second real quick. Does that mean in terms of I've heard that every meeting should have an agenda? Is it more to it than that?
Jess Britt (09:15):
Yeah, so I think having an agenda is good to do before you even get there, but then when you actually get to the room, you can't necessarily trust that everybody read the agenda or is clear on what everything meant in it. And so taking a few minutes right at the top to ground everyone in, "Hey, this is the agenda. This is the objective. This is how we'll know what success looks like at the end of the meeting. To do this, we are going to hold questions until the end or we're going to work in small groups to make sure that everybody has a chance to get their voice heard. Or today's purpose is to get input for a decision that the COO will make next week versus today's discussion, we're going to make a decision today." Those are all different meetings and really guide how people show up in the conversation and set you up for success or don't.
(10:02):
And so housekeeping is really kind of taking a few minutes to just ground everyone. Why are we here? What are the rules of engagement?
Matt Poepsel (10:10):
Are you a fan or not a fan of pre-read? Sending materials saying, "Hey, be sure to listen to this podcast or watch this video or read this document before you show up?" I've had mixed experiences.
Jess Britt (10:20):
Ooh, I'm a fan of the concept, but that's only if people do it. And so I think you need to be really honest with yourself about whether or not people will do it in your culture. And if it's really important that people do, how are you going to cultivate that on the team either by giving enough advanced notice and making it clear why that was necessary? I think sometimes we skip doing a pre-read if we think it's just going to be repeated in the moment. If you're not in a culture where that's something that's going to work well, I recommend skipping it and saying, "Hey, this is an optional pre-read for folks who like to process more in advance, and then we're going to go over it in the room and give everyone five minutes to read the memo." I think that's the Amazon style of this.
(11:04):
I think doing some combination to be inclusive but not making it required can often be the best way to avoid frustration either of you as the meeting leader who no one did the pre-read or the people who did it and then have to sit there while you go over it all again.
Matt Poepsel (11:19):
It's so tricky in that regard where sometimes if people didn't read it, was it really required? And if you're going to make people stop and read it, well then it's not really fair to the people who are diligent and did it. That's why I have this kind of love-hate relationship with pre-read. But I do think if it' short enough, you could be like, "Hey, let's just watch this three-minute thing or let's read this Amazon model as you pointed out. " So we got the setup and then we got the housekeeping. So then what happens during warmup? It sounds important. It sounds like something I should do before I exercise, but what happens during the warmup?
Jess Britt (11:44):
Yeah, so a warmup question is asked at the beginning of the meeting and everyone answers it. Why does this matter? It gives everyone a low stakes opportunity to get their voice into the room early on, which can pave the way for more participation later. And it also forces presence. It's really hard to be sending email or thinking about your last meeting when you know you're about to be called on to answer this question. When people hear me talk about this, they often asume I'm talking about icebreakers, which are typically light and unrelated to the work, which can be really helpful for building relationships and rapport. But what I'm talking about here is a little bit more strategic than that. I recommend thinking about a warmup question as a way to get folks in the head space that you want for your meeting.
Matt Poepsel (12:29):
Yeah, as you're saying, an icebreaker might be, "Hey, let's get to know each other." It might be good with a new team or if we haven't got together, we want to build some social bonding. But you're talking about a warmup is related to the topic at hand and it's like not making we work too hard yet, but you're kind of seeding it and like you said, getting everybody the experience of contributing so therefore it starts the ball rolling down the hill, so to speak.
Jess Britt (12:49):
Yeah. So if you're going to talk about a big change for your organization, you might say, when was the last time we rolled out a change here that went really well? What made it go well? That's a good way to get people in that head space. Or you're going to be talking about something totally new. You might say, when was the last time you were a beginner at something? These are ways to get to know one another and build those relationships, but also tie it to the actual topic at hand.
Matt Poepsel (13:12):
And when you talk about content, are you talking about what actually comes out of your mouth during the meeting? Is it like if we're using sticky notes or something, is the format part of the content or is that totally separate?
Jess Britt (13:21):
The content block is what I think most people think of as an agenda item. So that's the stuff that's the heart of the meeting that comes after the housekeeping and warmup. And this is where you actually get into the decision you need to make or the input you need to gather or the presentation you need to give. And I think each content block really needs to have its own objective, its own kind of engagement structure. How are you actually going to engage folks in the meeting with that content? That's what it's all about.
Matt Poepsel (13:49):
Cool. I work with a lot of extroverted people and I know I'm guilty too of taking us right to the end of the meeting time and then we're running out the door, still having the meeting while we're spilling out into the next room and all this kind of stuff. That doesn't sound like a very intentional close that you would have us do. What is an actual intentional close supposed to look like to properly cap off an already successful meeting?
Jess Britt (14:09):
Yeah. An ideal close has three parts. It starts with basically the way it started. Hey, we were here today to do this and this is what we did. Remind people what this was all about and then clearly state next steps. If you are down to the wire, that can be as simple as, hey, we are going to get clear on action items, deadlines, and owners by COB tomorrow. I'm going to send this out and I want everyone to populate who's going to do what. So you don't necessarily have to get it all in the meeting if you're running out of time. And then the last piece is a checkout question. So this can be used to get people to reflect on what they learned or took away from the meeting, or it can be used for you as the meeting leader to get some feedback on how did it land?
(14:54):
How did it go?
Matt Poepsel (14:55):
And I think having clarity about that is really important. As a podcast person, you're always watching the clock trying to make sure because you don't want to get squeezed at the end. It's true when you're leading a classroom session too. For example, if you know a bell's going to ring, people are going to run out the door. But I don't find that being as instinctual even though I've been in thousands of meetings in the corporate world where it's just like you have to know that if you're going to take five minutes for your close to be intentional and the ideal close, you better keep an eye on that clock if you're running that meeting to give yourself time. Otherwise you're going to get squeezed and it's not going to be high quality for sure.
Jess Britt (15:27):
Yeah. And then that's what makes you need to then do all that extra work after the fact to scurry and try to follow up with folks. And so if you can get it in there, I mean it happened to me last week that I didn't, so this is always a learning process, but really taking that time to say, "Hey, we have five minutes left, here's how we're going to wrap it up," can go a really long way.
Matt Poepsel (15:47):
I don't want my listeners to fall over or pull their car over to the side of the road if they're listening. It sounds like a lot, even though it's only four steps, especially when you look back and if we were being honest with ourselves in the meetings that we're leading, can we say we did all of these things properly? The answer's probably no. It's easy to get out of these great habits that you're teaching us. Do I have to shut down my job and say I got to make this a focus area? Or what do you recommend in terms of hypothetically, Jess, that I have a lot of work to do in this area? Let's just pretend.
Jess Britt (16:14):
Okay,
Matt Poepsel (16:15):
Because it's entirely true. How should I approach this?
Jess Britt (16:18):
Well, I like to break it down in a couple ways into very small steps. I think one is I would focus on what's one thing you've heard so far. Is it warmup question? Is it housekeeping? Is it ending on time? That sounds like something you want to try out and pick one meeting that you can try it in the next week. Don't try to do it all at once. That's like starting yoga and weightlifting and running all on the same day. The other thing you can do is think about is there a higher stakes meeting or a higher value meeting that you have that you really want to dedicate some time to going through the building blocks and designing more intentionally in this way? You don't necessarily have to apply all of this all at once to all of your meetings.
Matt Poepsel (16:55):
What's resonating with me a lot is the warmup question because you get two for one almost. It reminds you to remind everybody why you're here having the meeting in the first place and to lightly introduce the topic and to get everybody in the room to weigh in on it however they're most comfortable. And I think that's a really neat practice that we could be doing because sometimes we either launch right into the content. I have to give some though to that, but I feel like that's a really good one. But I love what you're telling us regardless of whatever the listeners are thinking resonates with them the most is just pick an area until it almost becomes instinctual, I guess, and then just move on to the next one and don't feel like you have to just fix everything all at once.
Jess Britt (17:31):
Absolutely. It's
Matt Poepsel (17:31):
Pretty cool. I'm going to shift back to something I find intriguing because this is a leadership theme podcast and meetings I think we've already established are really a great opportunity for us to develop and practice our leadership. And you mentioned something to me at one of our calls we had where we were talking about a personal meeting objective, which is not necessarily the same as the agenda for the group. Let's just say that I'm running the meeting in this case, or I guess I could be an attendee as well. But yeah, either way you want to take that, but what's the difference between a personal meeting objective versus an agenda item?
Jess Britt (18:00):
So when we go into a meeting, there's this kind of shared objective that we all have as a group. Ideally, it's written in a way that's outcomes-focused and specific and realistic with all the context at play, but that's really more about what you're trying to achieve. The personal objective I think about as guiding how the meeting is designed and how I need to show up in that meeting to help us get closer to that objective. So as a leader, that might be if I'm gathering input, I want to make sure I hear from at least 50% of the group and hear at least two different viewpoints. For me, that's an objective. I may not share that with everybody else, but that's going to guide how I'm showing up and designing and leading that meeting. And I think what you said is so true. It's not just for the meeting leader.
(18:43):
Even though we wish we didn't are in meetings sometimes where we can't control or shape the agenda, we may not believe that we necessarily need to be there. And ideally we build some skills to push back and shape and do all of that, but even without being able to control or shape the agenda, we can get something out of that time. And so what I think about is, okay, maybe my teammate is also going to be in this meeting and they're my direct report. And so my objective personally today might be observe how they show up and give them feedback after. Or there's a VP in this call who I really respect. I want to observe how they handle questions and see what I can learn from my leadership practice. Those are examples of personal objectives that can take something that may feel frustrating and give you a little bit more agency over what you could get out of that time.
Matt Poepsel (19:35):
I think that's a really powerful suggestion too. I'm a huge to - do list guy, but the idea to be able to say on my own personal scratch pad or if I'm on a Zoom meeting off to the side, have just one or two checkboxes of things that you want to accomplish. And whether it's a kind of a reminder like listen before you speak, that would be a good one for me. But also a checkbox of observe Sally and make sure Sally's had the chance to get her opinion out. Or I know that Sally has told me that she wants to be seen as a more vocal leader, so make sure that she's taking advantage of that or provide the feedback, like you said. I think those are great things to have as they're almost side quests. Absolutely. It's a side quest to the meeting and I think what a great opportunity.
(20:18):
I love that.
Jess Britt (20:20):
Yeah. And I mean, I think back to a project I was working on at one point and we would have a meeting, agree on next steps, and then come back together and the steps weren't done and it felt like we were having the same meeting over and over again. And so my personal objective became make sure everyone understands the purpose of this project. Now everybody else in the room thought they already did, but as a leader, that's what I needed to do. So that's just another example of how this shows up.
Matt Poepsel (20:45):
I fundamentally believe that being a leader means developing other leaders and I don't think we always take advantage of those opportunities to do that because sometimes we get into solution mode because we're really good at it. That's why we got promoted. Or we just want to solve the problem or we're super busy, but we don't often remember often enough to develop the leaders around us. And so how can I use a meeting as a chance to develop my team in the moment in parallel with advancing the meeting, for example? That sounds like some next level stuff.
Jess Britt (21:14):
There's a few great ways to do it. I think one natural place is to improve your team's meeting skills. And so what that can look like is delegating housekeeping, warmup, close to others on your team and helping them understand how these pieces fit together. Another piece is say you have a team meeting and you want someone on your team to bring a share out of a particular project that they're working on. Work with them to make sure there's a clear objective and that they're thinking about how to structure engagement. That sets them up to be more capable of leading their own quality meetings. You can bake it into the warmup question. So at the beginning, say what's one new thing you learned in the last week? Or say, what's one skill you're working on and one way you'll practice it between now and when we meet next?
(22:03):
Those are examples of just bringing development thematically into your meeting. You can build in recurring content blocks, if you will. I once worked on a team where we had a bunch of people who were working on different projects, but everyone needed to be able to speak clearly about the whole team's work to the broader organization. And so we built a repository of FAQs that everyone needed to respond to. And then we would save the last agenda item on every team meeting was FAQ practice. And if we had time, we would either put someone on the spot to practice or we would say, has anyone gotten a question lately that they want to workshop how you'd answer it? And that built that skill collectively as a team within our team meetings.
Matt Poepsel (22:47):
I like the idea also of just taking your four building blocks and just putting them right out there. Everybody should know what they are. That's not for you to hold privately and say, I want to be a better meeting runner, so I'm going to follow Jess's ideas here. The answer is just let everybody be in on the game and just be like, okay, first thing we're going to do is our housekeeping because Jess taught us how to do housekeeping, so we're going to do our housekeeping. And you're like, it makes it more likely that you'll do it. It normalizes it. You can delegate it like you said. Okay, Sally's going to do our housekeeping today. Go ahead. Thanks so much. Here we go, here's what we're going to do. All that good stuff. So I think it really sort of levels the playing field and makes it very transparent in a way that we all get to play, which I think it's going to accelerate the ability to run a lot better meetings.
(23:28):
Let's touch base and get your take on something that I call special situations. The first is that sometimes I find that if I run a particularly bad meeting, that means it's only going to be a meeting that's fun for my extroverts like myself where I haven't really thought things through. I'm going to throw you a topic in real time and say, “Give me ideas,” people go. It's not that bad, but it's pretty close sometimes. So let's say that I've got a team member who's a litle bit more reserved, a little bit more naturally quiet, and it's easy for people like that to get drowned out, even though they might have the best ideas in the place, the ones we need the most. What should I do in that situation where I don't want them to feel uncomfortable? I don't want to put them on spot and say, "Hey, everybody, pipe down.
(24:09):
I want to hear from Sally on this one."That's not probably a good idea. What is a good idea?
Jess Britt (24:13):
There's a handful of things that you can do, and some of them are before and some of them are after. Well, let's focus on during. So if you're midstream in a meeting and you're noticing this dynamic and Sally's really quiet and there's other people who are louder, you can pause and say, "I want to hear from someone we haven't heard from yet." And just wait and be comfortable with the silence and see what happens. You could encourage people to participate in the chat if you're on a video conferencing meeting. And then when they do contribute, read it out loud as a way to get their voice in the room. But then you can also structure engagement differently. So when you say, "What are your ideas? What questions do you have? " Instead of just letting people shout out, you can say, "I'm going to give you two minutes to jot down your ideas and then invite contributions." Or if that doesn't help, you can put people in pairs.
(25:02):
That way Sally gets to practice what she came up with, with someone else, get some feedback and then say, "Okay, now that you've been in pairs, what came up in your pairs?" These are all ways to get a little bit more reflection time and time to build comfort before sharing with the group.
Matt Poepsel (25:18):
I like that. And I think they're all very intentional in just making sure that everyone has an equal opportunity to contribute ideally and align with their own behavioral preferences and styles. If you're going to have everybody in the meeting, you want to hear from everybody in the meeting, but it doesn't mean everybody wants to contribute in the same way. And it's not a judgment call. It doesn't mean that the people who are the most vocal or have the best ideas or are creating the most value. I would say that it's on the meeting leader to make sure that that outcome is happening, that people are contributing. We get people coaching to say, "You know what? What can I do to make our next meeting more conducive to how you might like to contribute? Because I need to hear your voice." I think that's totally fine.
Jess Britt (25:58):
Yeah, that's what I was going to say. I just kind of answered that with this is what you do real time if you're noticing it. There is something here around what are the one-on-one conversations that are happening both with the folks who are dominating and the folks who aren't speaking up and figuring out, "Hey, we need to make space for everyone and how can we set this up to effectively do that? " You may find out that Sally is scared to participate. You may find out that Sally needs a free read a week in advance. And those are very different kind of responses or different issues to be solving for.
Matt Poepsel (26:25):
Yeah, that makes sense. What about the nightmare scenario where you have half the people in the room, half the people on the Zoom? That's already a little bit challenging. What if you have a handful of people who are remote? That's the worst feeling to be on when you're not in the room and everybody is, and you watch this meeting just running away from you and you're like, "I can't even get in. " As an extroverted person, I hate that feeling. But what tips do you have for us when we're running these hybrid style meetings? And are they in fact the most challenging kind of meetings to run?
Jess Britt (26:51):
It's a tricky one and I'm laughing because I mishandled one of these just last week. And I think the key with all of this is being intentional. And that's I would say some of what I missed in the scenario that I'm thinking about last week. So I think a few tips that can make these work better are if you are the leader as much as you can start with people who are on video and not in the room because the room dynamics are likely to lead. And so whenever you're transitioning or starting with the next, anyone have any questions, anyone have any input saying, let's start with the folks calling in. You can also set some clear norms at the top around, "Hey, we are a hybrid group today. To ensure that we're hearing from everyone who's calling in, we're going to be more structured than we might normally be.
(27:38):
Every time we answer, I'm going to ask us all to answer and if you don't have anything to contribute, say pass." That takes a bit more effort, but it avoids that no one noticed that you were there. Something else that can work is making sure that the person calling in has a direct line to someone in the room. There's someone in the room who's the buddy or advocate for the folks calling in to make sure that no one forgets.
Matt Poepsel (27:59):
And I want to get your quick take on this one too, which is AI. AI is everywhere now. I can't join a meeting today. It doesn't have an AI note-taker in it. And I tend to like it. I think I'm learning to like it, I guess. But my question is for you just has all this AI that's joining our meetings now, is it making our meetings any better or what's your take on all this?
Jess Britt (28:20):
Oh, I think it makes it better in a few ways. I think it saves time and can actually allow people to be more present. So the person who was taking notes might not have been able to fully contribute before and now that's taken care of. And I think sometimes it prevents action items from being missed that might've been missed. At the same time, some caveats. I think that for me personally, taking notes sometimes helps me stay present and not multitask. And so I would say, trust yourself. Even if you have a note-taker, it might still be worth taking notes about what's important to guide how you're showing up. And then I think it's really important that someone's still accountable for checking the output of that note-taker and circulating it and making sure that it's accurate and making sure that it didn't capture 10 things that need to get done when really there's only two and those two things must happen.
(29:06):
So I think it's a little bit of both and. Yeah.
Matt Poepsel (29:09):
Oh, good. And I'm sure it will continue to evolve as well.
Jess Britt (29:11):
Yeah.
Matt Poepsel (29:12):
AI is a tool. And so just like anything else, it's not going to make up for the fact that you set up the meeting poorly, you didn't have an agenda, you didn't do all the things Jess, that you're teaching us. It's not going to save you.
Jess Britt (29:23):
Yeah, that's one way that it can actually be helpful too, is if you're like, "Oh, I want a strategic warmup question for this meeting and I have no idea what to do, " you can say, "I want people to be in this head space. We have 30 minutes, we have 10 people. What's a one-word answer question I can ask to help?" And that's something that it's good brainstorming for.
Matt Poepsel (29:39):
Yeah. And I do have coworkers, I'm trying to do this a little bit myself, which is to take some of the meeting transcripts or playback and to try to get some coaching almost from the AI to say, "What could I have done differently in this meeting? How did I show up in the meeting?" I think it's really up to our curiosity and our creativity. So I'm encouraged by it, but I think there's probably a lot more AI just recording stuff and sending transcripts to people who don't read them. If we don't use it intentionally, it's not necessarily going to help.
Jess Britt (30:02):
Absolutely. Well,
Matt Poepsel (30:03):
I'll tell you something that's absolutely not going to help and that's this trivia game I like to play. So you and I are going to be a team. We're going to get a question. I always like to pull it from something related to my guest. And I saw a piece that was from I think Bowdoin College where it talked about your alternative spring break and you ended up in Guatemala. You did some amazing work with nonprofit and doing all kinds of stuff. You found a new passion in your life. And so I had a choice.Do I want to take this most meaningful avenue or do I want to have fun with spring break? And I'm sorry, but I chose spring break. So we're going to get a question about spring break and we'll have to say your thoughtful story for another day. But here's the question for us, Jess.
(30:39):
Which beach city is widely considered the birthplace of spring break after hosting collegiate swimmers in the '30s and later inspiring the famous 1960 movie Where the Boys Are? Oh my gosh. Oh my goodness.
Jess Britt (30:49):
These are
Matt Poepsel (30:49):
Three Florida cities. Is it A, Miami Beach, B, Fort Lauderdale, or C, Daytona Beach? I have absolutely no idea, so we're going to be guessing on my side of this. What do you think?
Jess Britt (31:00):
We're guessing for me as well. The first idea that popped into my head was Daytona. And I have no idea why, but that's what I vote for. Let's do that.
Matt Poepsel (31:07):
Let's do it. Daytona. I've been to all these beaches, but never for spring break, thankfully. All right. So audience, if you're playing long at home, what is the birthplace of spring break? Is it A Miami Beach, B, Fort Lauderdale, C, Daytona Beach? It actually turns out that it's Fort Lauderdale. Fort
Jess Britt (31:21):
Lauderdale. All right. Learn something new.
Matt Poepsel (31:23):
1938 when a swimming coach at Colgate brought his team down there to practice at an Olympic-sized pool in Florida. So there you go. But Jess, we've learned a lot about spring break. We've learned even more about meetings, and now I want to know where can my audience go to learn more about you?
Jess Britt (31:38):
I write a weekly newsletter called Set the Agenda, all about leading through meetings, not despite them. You can subscribe at settheagenda.com and also learn more about my work at jessbritt.com. That's my website.
Matt Poepsel (31:51):
I love it. Leaders, I'm going to have those links for you in the show notes. You're only one click away from getting in touch with Jess, getting signed up for her amazing newsletter and taking your meetings to the next level. Jess, thanks so much for being with us today. I've really learned a lot and I've really enjoyed a conversation.
Jess Britt (32:03):
Thanks so much for having me.
Matt Poepsel (32:10):
Here are my top three takeaways from the conversation I just had with Jess. So the first is around meeting culture. Jess mentioned that in the first role that she had coming out of nonprofit, they got really good at having meetings. And when she was in that meeting culture, it made that sort of execution of meetings that much more effective for everybody. So I think that if we're going to have a lot of meetings, we should really get good at it and put it into our culture so that we do it really, really well. The second is I love the four building blocks that Jess shared with us around housekeeping, then the warmup, then the content, and then the close and being intentional about it. And I really like the idea of sharing that with the rest of the organization and saying, "This is the way we do our meetings.
(32:47):
And so let's go through that. " So it's not a surprise to anybody. It's not privately held for the meeting leader. They're the only ones who know the framework or hold us accountable to doing the framework. I think everything gets a lot easier if we all do it together. And then the last is leadership development. Knowing that we can use our meetings to develop ourselves, to develop our team and really advance the organization. That's an opportunity that's available to us if we take advantage of it. And so I love this idea of doing both. Since we're going to be in the meeting anyway, if we can develop those people around us and strengthen them and the organization, then it's almost like extra value right there. So I love that suggestion. So thanks so much to Jess for joining us and giving us her tips on how to run more effective meetings.
(33:30):
So thanks for listening to our show today. And as always, remember, don't just manage the business when you can Lead the People.