The one thing leaders forget to address at the start of a meeting.
The one thing leaders forget to address at the start of a meeting.
Over the past four months, I observed 47 client meetings to learn their leadership behavior.
What struck me most was not so much what happened but what did not happen. Not once did a leader clarify what they expected from participants to achieve the meeting's goal. This lack of clarity left participants feeling unsure and disengaged, which could have been avoided with clear expectation-setting at the start of the meeting.
To illustrate, a leader presented a product prototype to a diverse group of employees in one meeting. He started the meeting by saying, "I'm so proud and happy to present to you our prototype, made possible by the relentless work of our team, and I'm really curious to hear what you think of it." Afterward, the leader complained to me that he only received praise for the prototype; everyone seemed happy, while, in fact, he was looking for "all the stuff that's still wrong about this prototype so we can significantly improve the next iteration."
Meeting participants also complained to me, often feeling unsure about how to behave during a meeting. "Should I listen to understand?" "Is it okay if I withhold and ask my questions at the end?" "Am I allowed to interrupt and share an argument that goes against our strategy?" were some feedback statements I received from meeting participants who lacked clarity about how they could contribute to the meeting objective.
Observing these 47 meetings helped me realize that leaders can increase meeting productivity by doing one thing at the start of a meeting.
After you present the meeting objective, clearly indicate (and my suggestion: as behaviorally-focused as possible) what you need from participants to optimize everyone's return on time investment.
Here are a few prompts that can hopefully guide your journey as a leader toward increasing meeting productivity and participant well-being:
1) [Meeting objective] + To reach today's meeting goal, I invite you to listen for 10 minutes to the prototype pitch and then share your concerns, which will help us improve the prototype. Please don't hold back; I specifically invited you because your skills are relevant to improving our work.
2) [Meeting objective] + To achieve this objective, what could be very helpful is if we take turns so that everyone here can share a two-minute status update to ensure we are all aligned on where we stand in this project.
3) [Meeting objective] + So, for this meeting, I want to ask if Ben wants to take notes, and Sarah, I could benefit from you keeping track of time and interrupting me if we go off-topic.