Lessons

Lesson Info

Map Out Better Meetings

We've all said a lot of meetings we wanted to get better, let's start the czar assumption, so we're gonna give you a couple little tips to make means better couple of medium once and in one big one, and I want everyone in the online community to start putting your top tips and as well, what do you think makes meetings better? Big things, little things, personal group, anything you've seen and let's start sharing them after we've gone through, a few of them will do a demo. I'm gonna walk you through an actual meeting on an actual topic to give you an example of how it can work, and then if we have time, we'll do a little more practice on top of that, the first little thing you could do is called summarize everybody take your hands and go like this say summarize one more time summer array online do with us summarise so when you're the facilitated the median someone's going a little bit long, you just say, hey, I love what you're saying, but can you bring it to a point? You summarise it n...

ow? Does that feel a little bit rude if you do that in a real business mean, so if they feel like you're rude, good. This isn't kindergarten we got things to do if you're gonna go on and on and on and the rest of us are tuning out were not helping you and you're not helping yourself so when you're the facilitators sometimes what you do is just say summarize so let's say I introduced the meeting with that guys I'm going to start my meeting and if you go a little bit longer it'll carry away no problem but I'm gonna ask you to summarize for bringing to the point doesn't mean shut up just means what would you say is your main point let's say I say that and halfway through the meeting gary is being his normal brilliant self but going off on a tangent hey gary can you summarize oh yeah my my main point is x a little bit later than shauna is being her normal amazing self going on and on about a theory on something and I just go like this nobody saw me about her what is she now know two d'oh summarized oh yeah yeah my main point is x now if you're not the one running the meeting can you tell people to summarize yes just take they have the courage to do it I'm sorry richard you lost me who what's your main point if he feels like it's a little bit inappropriate yes you should have just let me go on and on on I don't care I like richard but I'm not here all day just to hear richard's theories or for you to hear mine so it's if you've lost the group it's better if somebody tells you you've lost the group doesn't mean we don't like you doesn't mean I don't like what you're saying we just want to know what you're saying so first tip is simple just ask people to summarize when they go along if you're feeling it everybody else is feeling it too if I'm if I'm in that category I'd rather somebody call me on it and bring me back it's your job to get carried away it's your job to be passionate but the rest of groups job to bring him back makes sense second one side barb I say this with me say sidebar one more time sidebar online come on you guys go do it to sidebar so am I knows legally what sidebar ming you may know what the term means legally so you go to the side of the bar where the judge is very good for us you were gonna say something else I think is when the judge says to the two lawyers or the lawyer can ask for one and they come up to the side of the bar and they talk sato voice they talk in confidence every bells doesn't need to hear this because it's a point of law or point of order so it you call a sidebar whenever two or three people are having a conversation that doesn't require the whole group, so if we're having a meeting about the red sox and somebody's debating what was the year that they last made the divisional playoffs and two people are arguing back and forth it was bargain back forth the rest let's say can you guys sidebar that come back and tell us when you find the answer? We don't need everybody to sit around to hear that you're having a meeting with your team and it was what should we have for dinner? I think we should have filipino food I think we should get thai food well, everybody doesn't need to be a part of that decision I don't really care. Can you guys sidebar that whatever you decide let us know I understand the idea of sidebar is the facilitator the only person who can call for a sidebar no anybody can do it just have the courage to jump and say this is great guys but can you sidebar that do it on the brake or come back and let us know what to do? Very simple ever I understand those first two second one's a medium ones we've all learned these this's where audience involvement techniques are going to be even more powerful in meetings than presentations so what audience involvement e technique could you start a meeting with body pulls body polls are a great way what else around the room around the room is a good way to get everybody talking or pair up doesn't matter which one you start with just start with something immediately it's your first telephone pole and it's going to get everybody engaged second you use one every five, ten minutes you decide when you need it but the more practice you are say ok, the energies to start the lag we need something to gauge everybody it doesn't have to be a quick one who has a second hand on their watch protection tell time how long this takes two d'oh so everybody including I'm gonna have the guys in the studio share a word now we haven't embarrassed them enough yet think about this training that we've been doing this seminar that we've been doing what one word comes to your mind about how you feel about this seminar what one word captures how you feel about this seminar we're gonna go around the room, we'll start with john ross and just very quickly share the words out loud, including all of our camera crew ready john all right now I wasn't apologies russell russ effective, effective growth enlightening, amazing, extremely valuable plan of action grable empowered great brian adrian what one word comes to mind I will mess with you guys later whoa whoa whoa technical word that we use it's very rare that anyone actually liked speaks to the kame apps it's very exciting I love it all right, so we have it we do have a lot of people joining in online we have questing stimulating cabe a engaging michelle are michael h inspiring great? And I know that actually I'm sorry that I wasn't engaged earlier tactful and what would how long that take the part which was here it was one minute five seconds including online was one twenty great so what technique was that around the room it's just a quick telephone pole in the middle of a meeting that gets everybody reengaged in the subject and you decide how long should be one word two words half sentence sentence it will control the energy depending on the length of the response so close the rooms can be and also finish with us you saw in the last group you can do pair ups you can do around the rooms you could do some kind of body pulled to get everybody indicate closings is a good way to do it. Show me with your fingers how like how committed you are to do this action? Show me with your thumb show me with your gesture if you're going to do this so if you're in front of a live audience and everybody seated so I want everybody to stand up for this cause if you're really going to stand up, I want you to slowly stand not yet I want you to really stand and don't stand unless you really mean it and then you'll see a powers people begin to stand so I won't over those again but ever understand these techniques were gonna make your meeting is better and better the more you practice him it feels like it takes time to do them but they double the efficiency triple the efficiency of a span of time so it's going to work last one what's the big thing what's this red box you wanna have a product goal? Not a process goal in your meetings a process goal is what we all inherited a meeting agenda is a list of things to talk about until time runs out if we're very goal oriented creatures almost to a fault will climb a mountain we will put a person on the moon will put a rover on mars almost nothing can stop us from any goal we become irrationally committed too, but if we don't have a goal that almost nothing stops us from not achieving it. If your goal is to have a sixty minute meeting the tacit goal off sixty minutes nothing stops you from feeling that sixty minutes with some kind of conversation and efficiencies go very low so instead of a process gold want to create a product goal quick example let's say we are all part of a big team on organization company, a nonprofit faith community, whatever it is and you say we have to plan are we just finished our retreat from last year and we have to plan the retreat for this year so the purpose of this meeting here today, guys is tio come up with the retreat decisions for next year and I'm gonna need the red marker there and we're gonna make three decisions today we're gonna pick a theme a place and a date and when we fill in these three red boxes, the meeting is over. So we have this meeting. The purpose of this meeting is to make decisions for next year's retreat we have to pick a theme, pick a place and pick a date. The red box is the goal of this meeting when we make these decisions and all of us feel good about the decisions the meeting is over we put sixty minutes on the calendar but it may take us less if we make these decisions in two minutes. We're done and we can leave and go to lunch now in a normal meeting if I don't have a product goal if I just say let's talk about next year's retreat for sixty minutes, we may or may not make decisions and nothing will stop us from filling the sixty minutes but by switching to a product goal, say, assumes we make these decisions were done, and we'll have a committee of people toe run with it and figure out the details now instead of sixty minutes. How long do you think the meeting will last making us adults twenty or thirty at the most? It won't be two minutes, because you're getting in the conversation. Everybody will have a lot of opinions, but it won't be sixty minutes, so it will usually be in the twenty to thirty range. Why? Because I've doubled the power of facilitation now, there's two people running the meeting, me and the product goal now why the red box? I don't know we were doing some friend from facebook told me that when you put an ad on facebook and you put a red box around it does fifteen percent better. They don't know why. So it's a little tip on red box so power of the red box. So now we have our conversation now, let's say, I go off base a little bit, and I start telling general another relevant bill story. What will the group dio somewhere? I'll summarize me and they'll pull me back to where the goal you now I've given the alligators three big hunks of red meat, you cannot rest until these air done. You feel compelled to fill the locked as you feel compelled to make those decisions crew who created a problem that needs to be solved. I understand the idea of the theory of the red box, so your trick is to come up with a product goal, not a process course, not as easy as it sounds, so let's do let's throw it out to you guys, including the online community. Think of your normal meetings that you run or that you're in what would be an example of a product goal, a decision, a product, a process, something that you could make a decision on that, you know, when you're done, come up with three talking points, come up with a strategy, think of your normal meetings and give me an example of what would be a real product goal in any of those meetings, anybody have one, come to mind? Hire the corrects candidate, so hire the correct candidate. So putting up in visual terms a red box of the candidate and when that name is filled in your done because half the brain does nothing more than process visual image is the idea of an empty box is compelling to us, we feel the need to fill it in other ideas will vote to approve a policy, a vote to approve a policy so the product would be what uh yea or nay on the policy very good so we have to fill in the box with either aaron a we have to make a decision as a group and assumes the boxes filled in. We're done and we can leave that's a powerful motivator for people to be done and if you put sixty minutes and we can finish in thirty five that's great that's another twenty five minutes I could be doing something else and still the product needs to be good. The decision needs to be good for the candidate needs to be good and and and thoughts from you guys in the audience. What else can we do to make a product goal of your real meeting? Choosing a partner choosing a partner so we need to select a partner here's our candidates here's our things but assumes we fill in the box we're done for the whole meeting just the time we need thio finish this by thirty minutes. From now on we need to cover these three things and and that's the ceo strategy. Sometimes you sit in a meeting and they have consultants pitching them on things and ready to start the meeting their secretary admin walks in and gives him a note guys, I'm so sorry I only have thirty minutes instead of sixty that's not what the note said it's just a trick it's a wayto push you guys I'm not going to sit here for more than thirty minutes now if it's super interesting of course I'll stay longer but I'm giving myself the option creating pressure for you to get it done in less time so you can use time as a way to shrink the box or how much time we have to fill the box what would you think so with john john kennedy and myself I last sunday did a kind of crash course training course with him as as a new host uh what would the product goldsby for that? I mean I'm thinking just getting him familiar with the processes on creative live and the specific intros outro sze is that how you would structure that do and one one way you could think about that is one hundred percent means he's ready to run it by himself and zero percent means he has no idea what that is so you could say I want him to be eighty percent ready before that so you keep going you're box okay, what are we up to? I'm feeling fifty percent ready sixty percent seventy as soon as you get to a t good enough let's get there more specific right specificity bred scum breeds credibility so instead of I want to familiarise him himself these are the five or ten steps we do every time we started production I like it just really listing out what are the goals of this meeting where the calls are probably want you I want you to understand and be able to do step one step two step three thanks a lot of times we weigh do updates armenians really updates updates are not goals and if you can't come up with a product goal, the first question is do you really need the meeting if you don't cut out half your meetings, wait we do updates every week we just do him well if you don't really have enough to make a gold and make me doing every other week or you might want to do them or often but it should be based on what needs to get done versus just talking to fill time well, I mean we shouldn't have fun joke around goof off no that's all part of the goal it's all part of coming together but the more you focus on the goal the more you come together think how much all of you guys have worked together because you've created a goal of getting better and the pressure all the scenarios, the exercises even though we try to make him as fun as we can it is a product each time you have to do a hero speech, you have to do this, you have to create a commercial each time the product increased the learning we could have talked about commercials for hours we could have told you more theories about props but by creating a product you guys have ten minutes to create a commercial you learn even faster and you have even more fun makes sense in theory all right, we'll do a quick exercise uh I'm going to ask jennifer and jeana to come on up here and help me with something essential reading random lets you do the red box I want you to make a red boxes straight as you can around the whole thing. All right? I want you to write the power of recognition at the top, okay? We're gonna demo or real live meeting I'm gonna run a meeting for all of you here and everybody on the internet will pause first first to see if we have other tips on meetings that are coming in and then we'll run a demo meeting with the product goal and everybody will participate in that and we'll make it a live meeting on a real topic which I think is an interesting one the power of recognition as we create our red box and create our title let's pause there there any thoughts or tips from our online community on making meetings better just actually throwing that out there so let's get some feedback from there? Unfortunately I'm getting distracted now because russia's previous comment instead of a completely different discussion about me let's, keep it on topic. Fantastic surely does have a question. If the goal is the product and there's no process, can it just end up becoming a free for all great questions from me? Think, visually, the next step coming. Once you've got the product goals to create a process that leads to the goal, what I want you think about, the top of the goal is firm. The strategy up the mountain is flexible.