You Have to Start Meeting Like This!

Different Meetings Need Different Conversations

One of my main roles is to create useful linguistic distinctions for people. Organizations call meetings for lots of different reasons. And it turns out that different kinds of meetings require different kinds of conversations. If you're not clear about the kind of conversation that you should be having, then your meeting probably won't achieve a clear outcome.

For example, some meetings are built around a "conversation for possibility." The group acknowledges that it has come together to generate ideas, not to make decisions. The goal is to maximize creativity. Other meetings are built around a "conversation for opportunity." The goal is not to reach a final decision but to narrow down a field of ideas or options. You gather lots of information; you do some analysis; people take positions. Finally, there are meetings that are built around a "conversation for action." The goal is to decide, to commit: "We want to leave this room with our three investment priorities for 2000."

Unless everyone understands these distinctions, you run into certain familiar problems. You convene a brainstorming session (a "conversation for possibility"), and people are afraid to speak up because someone might shoot down their idea -- or worse, someone might say, "Let's do it." Or you convene a budgeting session (a "conversation for action"), and someone loops back to an idea that was rejected earlier -- which drives everyone else crazy. If you call a meeting, make it clear to people what kind of conversation they're going to have, and then impose a certain amount of discipline on them. Remember: Meetings don't go off topic. People do.

Always Play by the Rules (of Engagement)

Most participants come to a meeting with clear expectations about how other people should act. And if the meeting lives up to such expectations, the participants will feel like they've had a really good experience. If the meeting violates those expectations, then people will become upset or withdrawn. So the key is to translate implicit expectations into explicit agreements -- into what I call "rules of engagement." Do people feel strongly about starting and ending on time? Then make an explicit commitment to doing that. Are people concerned that a meeting doesn't have a clear enough objective? Then make an explicit promise: "If we can't agree on a clear objective within the first 10 minutes, then the meeting is over. We'll schedule another meeting when the objective becomes clear."

You can even create rules of engagement about individual behavior. For example: Before anyone makes a point, that person has to find merit in the point made by the previous speaker. Or, the senior people in the meeting can speak only after the junior people have had a chance to express themselves.

It's a pretty simple idea, really. All you are trying to do is to make the invisible visible, to make the automatic deliberate. These rules of engagement take the bad behaviors that groups stumble into, shine a light on those behaviors, and then address basic questions: How can we change all of this? How do we want to act? Such rules of engagement give people a chance to design how they treat one another in meetings.

One last point about rules of engagement: You should be clear that not all successful meetings end with a decision -- which goes back to why I love that scene in Dances with Wolves. Decisions are the Valium of meetings. They offer relief from the tension of what lies ahead, from the uncertainty of the world. They tend to create an illusion of progress: "We've finally made a decision. Now we don't have to worry about that issue anymore." Often it takes courage for a group to end a meeting without making a decision.

Small Talk is a Big Deal

There is a legitimate social component to meetings. Sure, we'd all rather be efficient than sloppy in our work. Sure, we'd all rather spend our time on "real work" than on "idle chitchat." But you should never overlook the social side of work rituals -- even in meetings that are "all business." In many of the meetings that I run -- especially in meetings that take place early in the day -- I schedule 5 or 10 minutes of open time, just to encourage people to relate to one another. If you plan for such time, if you put it on your agenda, then you won't feel as if you're not doing what you ought to be doing. Instead, you can enjoy going around the room and asking people what they did last night, or over the weekend.

For some meetings, I book a certain amount of time at the beginning to ask, "Is there anything that people need to say in order to be 'present' at this meeting?" Remember, just because people walk into a conference room doesn't mean that their mind is on your meeting. They may be thinking about an argument that they just had with a colleague, or about a computer glitch that they've been struggling with all day. If you let people express their frustrations before you get down to business, you allow them to clear their mind and to focus on your meeting.