Quickly and Simply Transform All Meetings

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If you could only get back the time you gave to boring, ineffective, useless meetings!

Meetings give the impression something’s getting done when usually it isn’t.

There’s too much talking in meeting
because people aren’t focused on doing.

One rule transforms every meeting from ineffective to effective.

Rule one:

Mercilessly cut everything that isn’t connected to action.

Three functions of rule one:

Every agenda item must do at least one of three things:

1. Enhance efficiency – improve action.
2. Generate assignments – create action.
3. Stop ineffectiveness and/or inefficiency – prevent action.

Guidelines for rule one:

1. All “information-giving” must clearly inform action. Always explain the connection to doing.
2. Determine options for action, when you’re problem solving and innovating, then give assignments.
3. Don’t spend so much time improving things you haven’t done yet. Do something; improve as you go.
4. Explore what isn’t working and improve it or end it. Organizations that don’t end ineffectiveness and inefficiency eventually become paralyzed beasts.

General guidelines:

1. Shorten the length of time one person is allowed to talk.
2. All presentations must be clearly relevant to action. If it’s not relevant to action, it’s irrelevant.
3. Create short slots of time for agenda items. “We have ten minutes to find three potential improvements for employee training,” for example.
4. Before ending meetings, always ask, “Who has assignments and what are they? What’s the timeline.?”

One exception to rule one:

Take a few minutes to share what’s going on in life outside work. Give people time to connect if you expect them to connect. Use a portion of your meeting to strengthening relationships within the team.

What would transform the meetings you attend or lead?

10 Steps to Solve Tension Between Team Mates

I tend to hold back too long, when team mates have tension. Let them work it out. Perhaps you intervene quickly. If we aren’t careful, we become the problem.

Tension and diversity:

Tension between team mates is the unrealized potential of diversity. No tension means everyone thinks the same.

Diversity invites volatility.

Successful leaders connect diverse people. Weak teams celebrate uniformity. Strong teams leverage diversity.

Diversity compensates for weaknesses
only if we celebrate the strengths of others.

Intervene when tensions:

1. Distract from priorities.
2. Create tensions in others.
3. Drain energy.
4. Persists. Unsolved tension predicts unsatisfying futures.

Not:

Never begin solving relational tensions with the black-hole question, “Why is this happening?” You just entered the fruitless land of “He did this” and “She said that.”

A bridge building conversation:

1. Invite them to a “work on your work relationship” meeting.
2. Explain your high hopes.
3. Clarify: you aren’t fixing their relationship. (Essential)
4. Question one: How satisfying is your work relationship, 1 to 10?
5. Question two: How important is improving your work relationship, 1-10?
6. Question three: What satisfaction number would make your work relationship fulfilling, 1-10?
7. Question four: How would you describe great work relationships? (Ask each person for three expressions.)
8. Question five: What’s essential to building great work relationships? (Ask for three things from each.)
9. Explore one response from each person. Bob, you said, “Great work relationships are supportive.” What does support look like to you? Search for observable behaviors.
10. Use responses to questions four and five to determine one or two things each person will do to build a great work relationship.

Tip: Monitor emotions during the conversation. Tension means slow down or set that issue aside for a future conversation.

Work relationships deserve more than knee-jerk strategies. It’s always about the people. Consider this conversation a beginning. Plan follow-ups.

When do you intervene?

How can you improve or add to the conversation described above?

Learn how to build trust from the trust expert, Stephen M.R. Covey. Free audio webinar:

12 Ways to Connect and Mobilize People

Young leaders often explain their aspirations in self-centered language. They focus on themselves and neglect others. Individual contributors are great, but leaders always connect and mobilize people. Leadership is about others.

12 ways to connect and mobilize:

1. Highlight need – explain why things can’t go on as they are.
2. Make them know they matter – show how they can help.
3. Include everyone in crafting vision – engage people if you expect them to be engaged.
4. Create channels for service – build organizational structure.
5. Call people to rise up – great work isn’t convenient. Disrupt established patterns.
6. Establish enabling relationships – build confidence by connecting the inexperience with the experience.
7. Honor effort – express gratitude along the way.
8. Rotate tasks and offer training.
9. Track results – tell everyone what’s getting done.
10. Point out more need – more to-do makes people matter more.
11. Celebrate success – dance because you’re making a difference.
12. Identify and leverage forward looking leaders.

Six roadblocks to success:

1. People tensions. Inexperienced leaders wrongly believe good causes and great needs solve interpersonal tensions. Connecting people, not completing projects, is the great challenge of leadership. Good people collide.
2. Power struggles.
3. Confusion. Begin with simple behaviors that express big vision.
4. Underutilized talent. People walk away when you waste their time and talent.
5. Diverse values and motivations. Accept that what’s important to one isn’t important to another.
6. Losing purpose. People lose motivation when they feel their efforts don’t make a difference.

How can leaders mobilize people?
What hinders effective mobilization?

Why Teams Fight and What to Do About It

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Nothing is more frustrating, from a leadership point of view, than a group of individuals circling each other like vultures. In-fighting wastes time, energy, and resources.

Incompetent leaders have teams who turn on each other.

Focus:

Lack of focus invites conflict. Teams who don’t know what’s important can’t focus. Leaders focus teams by showing them what’s important, now. Focus generates energy, unleashes creativity, and fires urgency.

Personal agendas:

Everyone knows Mary wants her way because it makes her look good. She cares more for her career than the team’s success. Immature people think only of themselves. Mature managers manage for the benefit of others.

People, who need control or credit,
fight to get it and refuse to give it.

It’s time for a tough conversation. Reform or remove her. If you can’t remove her, make her insignificant to the team.

Naughty or nice:

Teams flounder when they don’t know how to fight nice. Advocating for ideas isn’t naughty until it becomes personal.

Naughty fighting focuses on people.
Nice fighting focuses on issues.

Naughty fighting is filled with “you.” But, blame and accusation never solve problems.

Past tense conversations never create the future.

Fit:

Those who don’t fit, fight. Give team leaders a voice in forming the team.

Team formation establishes team potential.

High performers, who don’t fit, ruin teams. Creating fit:

1. Identify purpose. Why are we here? Know who you are before identifying those who fit.
2. Authorize teams to choose new members.
3. Interview for team positions like you interview for new hires.
4. Establish your code of conduct. How will you treat each other?

Will we interrupt each other during discussions?
What happens if someone is late or doesn’t follow through?
Will we have fun or be serious?
How will we solve disagreements?
What does candor look like?

Why do teams fight with each other?

How can leaders deal with conflict in the team?

Confronting Toxicity

Average leaders feel successful when they get things done.

Exceptional leaders feel successful when they build exceptional places to work.

Average leaders fix and do. Exceptional leaders build.

You begin thinking leadership is all about results but come to learn it’s about the way we treat each other. Results matter, but how you achieve results matters more. “Results only” is the formula for toxicity.

When all that matters are the numbers,
eventually, people don’t matter.

Great places to work are about the way things get done.

How not what:

Exceptional leaders focus on how.

1. How are we connecting?
2. How do we support each other?
3. How does the team feel?
4. How is respect expressed?

Exceptional leaders define “the way” things get done. Courageous leaders challenge back-stabbing and office politics, for example. They say, “That’s not the way we do things around here.”

Evaluate:

Organizations that neglect how things get done become lousy places to work. Frankly, soft-skills are hard. When was the last time you worked on:

1. Breaking silos. People in other departments aren’t the enemy.
2. Confronting rudeness, anger, or disrespect.
3. Creating cross-functional connections.
4. Good manners.
5. Compassionate interactions.
6. Morale.
7. Happiness. Organizations that don’t work on happiness end up unhappy.

Action:

The next time colleagues put each other down, step in and say, “We don’t do that around here.”

Toxic environments are the result of tolerating toxicity.

What you won’t tolerate is only part of the picture. Define and model what you expect, as well. Courageous leader define the “way we do things around here.”

Finally, act decisively to honor or punish. Terminate unrepentant jerks and reward kindness, for example.

Courageously:

1. Define the way you do things.
2. Hire people who fit.
3. Fire people who don’t fit.
4. Reward desired behaviors even if they don’t deliver results directly.

Success is more than what gets done, it’s how things get done, too.

How can leaders define “the way we do things?”

How would you build a connected organization?

When Teammates Collide

Forward-focused teammates clash with foot-draggers.  But, foot-draggers aren’t the problem.

My approach to an opportunity is grab it and go. Planning isn’t high on my list. I know it’s important but can’t we plan as we go. “Just do something” is my motto. Build the airplane in the air.

“Just do something people” drive planners crazy. But “just do something” isn’t the problem.

Example:

A planner on my team sent me an e-mail that included, “I don’t want to frustrate you.” I was pushing for a next step. He was explaining why we can’t move forward, at this time.

Every team experiences collisions between team members pushing for the next thing and those reluctant to move forward.

*Heidi Grant Halvorson and E. Tory Higgins explain motivational collisions in their new book, “Focus.” They explain how some tend to promote and others prevent.

Promoters play to win.
Preventers play not to lose.

Preventors prefer to say, “No! to an opportunity, rather than end up in hot water.” Halvorson and Higgins.

Over the years, I’ve seen the weakness of my promoter-focus. I don’t protect gains. Mistakes are no big deal. Planning takes too long. I’m willing to lose what I have – to gain what I don’t.

Promoters tend toward big ideas.
Preventers are great with details.

Motivation:

“For a promotion-focused person, what’s really “bad” is a nongain: a chance not taken, a reward unearned, a failure to advance… But for the prevention-focused, the ultimate “bad” is a loss you failed to stop; a mistake made, a punishment received, a danger you failed to avoid.”

Everyone:

Everyone, according to Halvorson and Higgins, has both motivations and, depending on the context, brings them out. The planner, I mentioned, who didn’t want to frustrate me is a fire-ball-promoter once he sees a path to success, for example.

How might leaders navigate tensions between promoters and preventors?

*Heidi Grant Halvorson and E. Tory Higgins lead the Motivational Science Center at Columbia Business School.

Bonus material: Heidi Grant Halvorson in her own words on characteristics of promotion and prevention focus. (4:17)

I Felt Like a Leader But I Wasn’t

Carry-on bags are stowed “below” in small planes where overhead storage is small. After landing, passengers line the jet bridge waiting for their luggage. Most contact friends or chat. People in the back can’t see. Bags pile up. Nobody does anything.

I decided to take matters in hand by holding bags up and calling out last names. Fellow travelers said, “Finally, someone is doing something.” It felt good to help.

Meeting needs makes you valuable.

When my bag arrived, I pulled the handle and walked past the long line of waiting passengers. I felt I’d been useful when I heard someone ask a fellow traveler, “Now what are we going to do?”

I’d done my duty. Besides, my connecting flight was boarding in fifteen minutes. For a moment, I felt like a leader, but I wasn’t.

Leaders mobilize others to meet the needs of others.

Leaders would:

1. Identify fellow passengers with the skill to lift bags and call out names. (talent)
2. Ask, “Do you think we can make this process go quicker?” (mission)
3. Model behavior and then invited capable passengers to help.
4. Affirm helpfulness by thanking helpers.

Successful leaders never hear, “Now what are we going to do?” when they leave.

Leaders enable others to work without them.

I’m glad I did something to help. But, I was mistaken when I felt like a leader. I was an individual contributor.

Individual contributors are essential. They get jobs done. But, individual contributors often think they’re leading when they aren’t. Getting jobs done isn’t leading.

It’s easy to think you’re leading when you’re busy at the center of things. But, enabling and motivating others to perform is leading.

Facebook contributors respond to: “Motivation is the result of _______.”

How can leaders do less so more gets done?

Ten Ways to Gain Initiative by Giving Authority

Image source by Виталий Смолыгин

Ineffective leaders seize and hoard authority; successful leaders give it. Those who cling to authority loose it. Those who give authority gain authority.

Authority is permission to act without permission.

Control freaks never inspire initiative. The more they control the less initiative – acting without permission – others take. Inspire initiative by giving authority.

Benefit:

Giving authority enhances your authority.

Releasing others to act apart from your direct guidance motivates them to seek your guidance. Delegating decisions enhances commitment to you and your organization.

People who believe they matter act like they matter.

Giving authority:

1. Train and equip to handle authority effectively.
2. Begin slowly.
3. Establish structures and systems that guide and limit authority.
4. Give decisions to those impacted by decisions.
5. Create titles. Titles convey authority and they don’t cost anything.
6. Create revised, temporary chains of command based on organizational context and team member competence.
7. Publicly explain new authority.
8. Establish the authority of others by deferring to those with expertise.
9. Share benefits and consequences of mistakes. Teams who hire a poor fit need to deal with replacing or reassigning them, for example.
10. Never neglect your authority.

Example:

Give teams authority to hire co-workers.

Warning:

You lose authority when others believe you are neglecting authority or passing the buck. Giving authority isn’t an excuse to not do your job.

Giving authority – asking people to act without permission – is the leaders job.

Who to trust with authority:

1. Do they clearly understand, embrace, and exemplify values, mission, and vision?
2. Do they understand organizational context and consequences of decisions?
3. Have they demonstrated competence?
4. Do they embrace accountability for choices? How have they dealt with past failures? Blame or responsibility.

Gain authority by giving it.

How can leaders effectively give authority?

Weird Leadership

People who change things become fanatics first. I became obsessed with developing leadership a few years ago. Many friends thought I was weird. Some friends don’t hang with me anymore. I’m more committed to developing leadership than anyone around me.

Radical leaders create radical change.

Ordinary never satisfies. Fitting in doesn’t work.

Becoming weird:

Develop radical leadership by confronting radical problems.

Stop twiddling your thumbs while waiting for golden opportunities to fall from the sky. Address an issue others see but no one confronts.

Get off your butt and find a problem bigger than you. Big problems are big leadership opportunities.

After finding a big problem, find others who are pissed too.

Create a team of angry people
willing to stop talking and start doing.

Help others believe something must be done!

Warning:

Reject:

1. Magic pills
2. Quick fixes
3. Easy solutions.

If small worked, small leaders would have
already solved the challenge.

Difference:

Just do something. Create an underground movement to simplify bureaucracy in your organization, for example.

1. Change one thing at a time.
2. Create momentum.
3. Grow the team.
4. Seek wisdom from others.
5. Affiliate with other change instigators.
6. Press through resistance. Do-nothing people try to stop do-something people.
7. Get permission later.

People who change things look weird to the rest of us but they aren’t trying to look weird.

Radical dedication to mission makes leaders weird
to those who don’t share their mission.

Additionally, naysayers, sluggards, and drifters believe leaders who are dedicated to radical change are unbalanced, misguided; perhaps even delusional.

Secret:

Follow your anger. Things that make you mad reveal your heart. Transform anger into motivation. Get weird. If you aren’t weird, you don’t care enough.

What ticks you off?

What are you weird about?

How to Solve the #1 Problem with Meetings

Bosses need to run meetings because they need to exercise authority and control. That attitude hinders free, honest involvement by participants. Worse yet, controlling-bosses obstruct ownership. Others won’t own what you own.

The problem with meetings is bosses run them.

No one can effectively manage a meeting and participate at the same time. Transform meetings by training new employees to – facilitate – manage meeting. Facilitators don’t participate with content they manage the process.

Meeting facilitators:

Martin Murphy, author of, “No More Pointless Meetings said, “The boss or highest ranking person in the room should not run workflow management sessions.” Martin prefers calling meetings “workflow management sessions.”

Assign junior team members to run – facilitate – meetings. They don’t give input they manage the meeting, nothing more, nothing less, nothing else.

Power and control:

Murphy’s suggestion freaks out leaders who need to sit at the head of the table exercising control. The whole dynamic stinks of inappropriate command and control leadership.

Sit at the foot of the table not the head.

Manipulating:

Stop pretending you’re collaborating when you’re manipulating.

If you know the outcome of the meeting before the meeting, DON’T call a meeting. Meetings with pre-determined outcomes are manipulations. Have the integrity and courage to say, “This is what I want.” Say it and save everyone time.

Keep control if you must. If you need to set the agenda, do it. If not, work with the team to set agendas, for example.

Real collaboration:

If you’re genuinely interested in collaborative processes that produce collaborative results, stop running meetings. Train junior team members to facilitate meetings, instead. They manage processes while everyone else, including you, participates.

How would meetings change if bosses stopped running them?

What skills should meeting facilitators possess or develop?

Note: We had technical difficulties with yesterday’s call with Dr. Henry Cloud. My apologies for any inconvenience this caused you. We’re working to reschedule using another platform. Stay tuned and thank you for your patience.