Revolutionary Meetings

How To Make Your Meetings Better When You're Not In Charge

Rona Roberts

• Publisher: Roberts & Kay
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780983132103
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Meetings & Presentations
• Index: Business

Monday morning meetings make you want to rebel? You should! You’ll spend between four and sixteen years of your life in meetings. You may as well take ownership and make your meetings matter! Revolutionary Meetings offers you 100+ ways to take charge: • 10 ways to set up your meeting for success—in the five minutes before it starts
• 9 practical moves for the first five minutes AFTER your meeting begins
• 9 even more important things to say if leaders miss necessary steps
• 5 follow-up actions anyone can take to keep meetings from covering the same old sad and sorry ground, over and over and over and...
• 50+ precise ways to say, "Here's my idea, " "I see that differently, " and "Let's decide now”
• 7 concise checklists to guide meeting improvement
• 4 powerful meeting features examined in depth
• 5 special meeting formats that keep work fresh

Revolutionary Meetings highlights manageable meeting "moves" in exact language that will work for you. Speak up for change and make the minutes, hours and years you spend in meetings matter.

“This is a book I wish I'd read much earlier in my career, because it would have helped me advance more quickly. Now I'm thrilled to recommend it to everyone who asks my team what they can do about their boss's lousy meetings.”
— Elise Keith, founder, Lucid Meetings

Part 1: The Five Change Points

PART 1 SHOWS you how to bring about useful change at each of five crucial change points in recurring meetings. It includes language you can use or modify to take part effectively. Meeting members, leaders and facilitators will all find Part 1 helpful.

You will find some suggestions that appear straightforward and commonsense. Others will seem revolutionary, by which I mean not “off with your head,” but the kind of dramatic difference from the ordinary reflected in synonyms for revolutionary included in the Oxford Dictionaries online

New, novel, original, unusual, unfamiliar, unconventional, unorthodox, off-centre, different, fresh, imaginative, creative, innovative, innovatory, innovational, inventive, ingenious, modern, ultra-modern, state-of-the-art, advanced, avant-garde, futuristic, pioneering, groundbreaking, trailblazing, disruptive.

The Five Change Points

FIVE DISTINCT MEETING PHASES offer many opportunities for members, leaders or facilitators to make moves—take actions—that will improve results.

Members make moves: that’s the essence of this book.

Part 2 clarifies and expands on each of these five change points.

1.Ready. Five minutes before the meeting: Set up the space and warm up the climate.

2.Set. First five minutes: Extend hospitality and clarify how the work will proceed, including agenda, roles, and meeting agreements*.

3.Go. Core work zone: During the heart of the meeting, use proven methods to address the opportunities and problems on the agenda. Develop and select the best options, propose solutions and reach active agreement.

4.Finish. Final five minutes: Clarify agreements, responsibilities and timelines.

5.Follow through. Between meetings: Follow through with meeting notes, task completion and preparation for the next meeting.

Any member can take actions at any point to improve any meeting.

* First meetings and special meetings require more time in the opening phases, plus an additional pre-work phase. Before taking up the first agenda item, members need to make meeting agreements: what are the ground rules, and how will decisions be made. These decisions shape the “container” or framework for the meeting. Groups that expect to meet together multiple times will benefit from holding a special “Container Meeting” to decide these matters and then rely on them in future meetings.

Change Point 1: Get Ready! Five Minutes Before the Meeting Starts

Fix the Meeting Space and Revolutionize Your Meeting.

SO IT’S 8:54 AM, and here you go, down the hall to the 9:00 AM meeting. You arrive a few minutes early. Right here, right now, in this small sliver of time just before any meeting begins, you can take advantage of opportunities to make this meeting (and life) better and more equitable.

Before a meeting begins, few people give much thought to small actions that may make a big difference in how the meeting unfolds. As a result, you have an ownership opportunity, or, if you prefer, a leadership vacuum. Whether or not you have a special role in the meeting, you can step up and own more of the meeting by taking a few simple actions that will influence the geography (physical space) and the chemistry (human interaction climate.)

Sometimes very little can be done. Often, though, even one little change can help.

Set Up the Meeting Space for Success

Few people give a thought to owning the space where a meeting will take place, so that leaves plenty of room for you to step up, whatever your meeting role. Look around at the meeting room. A stale, tired, messy space supports lifeless meetings. A refreshed, straightened space can please and encourage members.

If you arrive first, set up the space as you think it will work best.

1.Many factors matter: windows, light, glare, vents, arrangement of chairs and tables, sight lines to screens and flipcharts, ease of hearing, and pathways to exits, snacks and restrooms.

•Take advantage of good light, both natural and electrical. Adjust shades and turn lights on or off to create a well-lit space that is as pleasing as possible.

•Arrange tables and chairs to offer outdoor views.

•Position seats to avoid direct sun or glare.

•Working with what’s available, make the best arrangement of seats and tables. For seated meetings, often that is an arrangement of chairs in a closed or open rectangle around tables.

•Make it easy to see screens and flip charts.

2.If the room is messy, tidy up.

•Move unneeded chairs to the walls. Stack or arrange them in neat rows.

•Clear and empty trash.

•Clean table tops.

•Move unnecessary objects out of the way and out of sight, if possible.

3.If the physical temperature in the room seems wrong, fix it.

•If others are present, state your view and ask for theirs: “The room seems too warm (or too cold) to me. How does it seem to the rest of you?”

•If you are alone, make your best guess about what will be comfortable for all who are coming.

4.If early arrivals have already chosen seats scattered around an area that is larger than needed for your meeting, enlist their help in consolidating into a smaller part of the room to help build energy and connection. Try this language: “I see a way we can rearrange the room that might make it more comfortable for our meeting. Would you be interested in trying it out?”

Warm the Climate

Often meeting rooms feel “cold” in the non-physical sense. (Perhaps that’s how “icebreakers” became a thing.) Seating choices and body postures may blare an unmistakable message, “I don’t want to be here.” Maybe no one is talking, or conversation is minimal and limited.

Even the most routine work meetings proceed best when people know their presence is appreciated and they are made welcome. How about stepping forward to make things better before they even get started?

Consider peer hosting, which means making others welcome and extending hospitality, even when you have no special role. Choosing hospitality will help strengthen connections among people present.

For this example, let’s assume others are present before you, but the meeting hasn’t quite started yet.

1.Greet people as a group when you walk through the door.

“Good morning. It’s good to see you. How’s everyone doing?”

2.If you know everyone present, walk around, shake a hand, tou...