6 Leadership Skills for Effective Meetings | Power Theory 008 (Revisit)

Hello. Welcome to power theory. My name is Russ Willett. I'm an executive coach. I focus on creating successful organizations, successful teams, successful cultures, and successful leaders. My purpose is to help more people find their own power, their own agency for success. We're going to talk about how to be powerful and effective in meetings as a leader. We're going to talk a little bit about preparation. We're going to talk about notes and how do you analyze and organize information. We're going to talk about listening to others with empathy. We're going to talk about not being afraid to find your voice and speak up. How to be challenging, if challenging at all, and how to really create safety for the team that you're working with. This is going to improve your brand, and it's going to improve your effectiveness. A powerful part of your brand as a leader is really having good meeting control, either leading them or being in them. I had a friend, a close associate, that was amazing in meetings. This guy was very gregarious. He was great to be with. He was funny. But when we got in a meeting, he just shifted into a different mindset. He would go into the meeting and sit there and listen intently and be totally interested and be so engaged, engaging in a listening posture. And then in the end, he would summarize what people said in a very simple way, and it was like, powerful. And people would, you know, we got to the point, we ended with a conclusion and a result, and we knew we were going. And it's also important that your meeting behavior is really part of your brand as a leader. So it's really important that you really run effective meetings and be in effective meetings in a total present mind. So what do you do? First of all, you need to be present all the time. Always be present, always be engaged, making eye contact, totally leaning into those meetings, always being present. I also don't think you should be taking notes now. Certainly, you know, if information is coming at you and it's really important and you need to calculate something or you need to make a note to yourself to go back to something later, certainly do that. But you're not there as an assistant or an analyst. You're there as an executive, someone who's trying to engage in the conversation. And you can't be president if you're looking down at your notes the whole time. You need to be really kind of in the meeting. You don't need to be looking down at your notes. You need to be making eye contact and being fully engaged with what's going on. People are going to feel that they're going to know that, and they're also going to know that you're taking that in. You might say, well, jeez, I'm not good at remembering this stuff. It's good practice. You need to be remembering this stuff also, if you're in your head about, you know, maybe your confidence is down or maybe you're not sure what's going on with the content. Yeah, that'll get in the way. And certainly there should be some preparation before you go there. What I do for my own preparation is I make sure that I read notes from any notes that were provided in a memo, or I kind of, like, get the lay of the land of things that are going on before I, before I go into the meeting. And usually I should, I've been up to date on things, so it's not like I need to memorize everything that's going on. So I usually prep a little bit for the meeting. You know, if it's a board meeting, I will read the minutes from the last session. If it's a meeting about strategy, I'll kind of review any thoughts that I had or any memos that went out, or just sit there and contemplate what I, what I think I want to get across. So my preparation is really kind of internal. It's not really an external, it's not an analyst position. It's really internal. I listen to others before talking. So, in other words, when I'm in the meeting, I don't, you know, you can go out there and spill your ideas, and it's very, it's very kind of hard for us not to do that. I mean, I'm a guy that has a lot of ideas. I want to get the ideas out of my head. And I feel like sometimes I kind of engage in that too quickly because I'm so excited about what's going on, and I really want to get my ideas out. But it's so powerful to sit there and listen to other people. If you listen to everybody's perspective, there'll be a chance for you to. To say something. If, for example, what you have on your, in your ideas doesn't come out in the dialogue, then that's when you bring it up. If it's already come out in the dialogue, there's no need to posture or present the idea in a different way. You just sit there and listen. Now, I might repeat the answer. Something that's specific, I might say, well, that's a really great idea. That's something we should think about. And that's all I'll say right after everybody else has talked and I've really intensely listened. And I listen by paying attention to them, really listening to the words, really kind of contemplating what they're saying and putting into my own perspective and leaning in. Then at the end, it's going to come to me. At some point, someone's going to ask a question or they're going to ask for ideas or something like that. And I'm going to, I'm going to give my ideas at that point. And I like to do what my friend did, which is summarize what people said very briefly in a simple language, not in the complex language. You might have just heard the information. Good leaders put things down very simply and very effectively and to just make things very plain for people to understand. And it's like a nice summary of what we just said. The other thing I try to do is I try to really make people feel safe. So, for example, there might be some people in the room that maybe don't have the confidence of being in that meeting. There might be some people that are tweaked by something and they might be aggravated. They might be people that are, you know, that make a comment that's really irrelevant to what we're talking about, or you might think it's irrelevant. Never dismiss people. Never make them feel badly about it. It's always like, wow, say more about that, or that's an interesting perspective. You know, I might, I might dig into that perspective a little bit. And by the way, the best ideas come from those, from those crazy discussions, so you want to kind of engage in that. But if someone says something that's inappropriate or maybe demeaning to someone else or is throwing someone under the bus, I just do not engage in that whatsoever. And I might say something like, hey, let's, let's see if we can get back on topic. Everybody else in the room knows it was inappropriate. You don't need to call it out, you know, to embarrass somebody. One of the best things I saw in a meeting was there was a very, it was a bunch of really senior executives, and they were all very competent, and someone made a comment that was really just taking us down the wrong track. And it was really almost, it was, it was obvious, and it really, you know, wasn't resonating with the rest of the group. And after he said that, she said, that's a fantastic thought, we really need to think about that. That's something that I think we can probably talk about when we. When we review this other piece. And then she redirected it back to someone else. So it was, you know, every idea is a good idea. Nothing's bad. You don't want to make people feel badly about it. And what happens is people see you as a safe place. As soon as she did that, in that meeting, I looked to her all the time. For someone who's going to be relevant, who's going to keep us on track and help facilitate, and someone that's going to be really powerful to summarize the ideas, don't be afraid to speak up when needed. It's pretty common to, you know, it's like when I teach university, when I go into the classroom the first day, no one speaks, no one says a word. I just did an off site yesterday with an executive team, and everybody's in their best behavior, and even though they know each other, they don't know me. So they're kind of hanging back a little bit, and everybody's being very measured and very careful, and they're trying to find their voice. In this context, it's pretty normal to happen, but once things get rolling, people start articulating and the true selves come out and their real styles come out, and it's really kind of cool to watch. And when they're totally engaged, people can interrupt, talk over each other. You don't want to do that a lot, but people get into it. It can be a lot of fun. But initially, people are very careful. I know that when I'm with a group for the first time, I've learned to work through it, but I get very nervous. I was on a. I was. I was involved in a team once where I was. I sat in the meeting with people, and I was very nervous about, you know, what I brought to the table. I wasn't sure that I was. My ideas were going to be any good. I didn't know a lot of these people really well. So for the first six months, I was pretty quiet. I was very measured. I was very careful about what I said. I paid attention, I listened. I kind of got the lay of the land. And then at some point, my voice started to come out, and I started to kind of articulate my ideas. The mistake I made was I waited six months. I probably should have practiced that earlier and kind of responded in a simple way. If someone doesn't like my idea, fine, go on to the next one. It's like, it doesn't. It's not a reflection of me. It's just a reflection of me trying to get my legs underneath me as I go through this process. Never be challenging to people. As I mentioned before, always be conciliatory. You always want to be polite. You always want to be creating the good vibe in the room. You always want to be measured and careful. You always want to have empathy for other people that might be challenged with the idea. And you want to make sure that if someone does go off track that you want to have compassion for that track. And again, you want to follow those threads sometimes because sometimes those threads are the most powerful. In summary, you want to show up, lean in, be engaged, listen intently, summarize, simply create safety and share your voice. If you have any questions about this, you can email [email protected]. Also, if you're interested in the newsletter that we produce, give me a shout. We'll get you on the newsletter list. Follow along as we continue this journey to create personal power. 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