Here are some suggestions for meetings.
Yes, often they waste people’s time, but it does not have to be that way. Try these when you are calling a meeting or attending one.
Here are my top tips for meetings: several for each category of running meetings, attending meetings, and organizing remote meetings.
So, if you’re running a meeting, my personal favorite top tips are…
- Provide an agenda, in advance, so all will be on the same page and be prepared if they need to bring something, get clarity, or just feel like this might work.
- Know the type of meeting and adjust accordingly. Is it communication, a team meeting, progress checking, or problem-solving?
- Reduce the number of people who you are inviting, if you possibly can.
- Declare an exciting objective at the start of the meeting: “We can do it!”
- Don’t tolerate lateness. Consider using treats before the start, which are taken away once the meeting starts.
- Allocate someone to wear the invisible black hat, which gives that person permission to take a pessimistic or cautious view during the discussions. The group needs this!
- Record any actions as you go along, probably on a laptop or tablet, and send the list out as soon as the meeting ends.
- Before we pile out the door or disconnect from Zoom, summarize the key points and make sure that if follow up is needed on action items that person will know what to do and when to get back to you.
If you’re attending someone else’s meeting, my top tips would be . . .
- Consider not going! You don’t have to go. Is it the best use of your time?
- Decide what you want to get from the meeting before you get there.
- It’s OK to suggest improvements like an agenda, a finish time, a better process, etc.
- Suggest the use of a visual aid to make everything clearer–and take the pen yourself.
- Avoid the red herring game to keep the meeting on track. Don’t let other’s delay by saying, “we need more data”, “we need so and so here so we need to meet again”, “we don’t have the resources”.
- Make sure you are heard, even if that means repeating yourself occasionally.
And if you’re organizing a remote meeting, please do at least the following six things.
- Use video instead of just a telephone conference if you can.
- Use screen sharing to show diagrams and spreadsheets, etc.
- Allow a lot of time to get the technology ready before the meeting starts.
- Make sure you get really good sound quality, whether you’re using only sound or video as well.
- Go around asking for everyone’s opinion so nobody gets neglected, or even feels neglected.
- No emailing during the meeting–that’s you or anyone else. Force yourself to keep concentrating. If the meeting is too slow, speed it up.
If you need to see how NOT to do a meeting, you’ll get a chuckle from this. I’m sure we’ve all seen these characters in our meetings. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7agjXFFQJU
More thoughts on distractions –
A logical fallacy is an incorrect argument in logic and rhetoric that contains a fatal flaw which undermines its soundness, thereby leading to an erroneous, and potentially damaging, conclusion.
How can logical fallacies harm your decision-making process? In myriad ways, but for the sake of brevity we’ll examine seven examples of logical fallacies that should be avoided.
Hasty Generalization: In short, a hasty generalization is when you neglect to perform your due diligence. It’s making a decision without all the facts having first been gathered and understood in context of the decision you’re making. Don’t decide until you have a deep, rich pool of information. Reporting tools and surveys can help you collect the necessary data to avoid hasty generalizations.
Ad Hominem: When the listener attacks the person who is advancing the argument and ignores what they’re actually saying. There are going to be team members who you personally don’t connect with, even though they excel at their job. If this person is arguing, say, why a project must be aware of a certain risk, and you dismiss them because they’re always complaining, you’re making a logical fallacy. It’s okay not to like somebody but give their argument its due.
Appeal to Ignorance: Appealing to ignorance is used more often than you’d think. Be on the lookout for it. But that doesn’t mean we throw up our hands and give up. It means we do the research and learn before making a decision. Plus, being innovative requires taking risks and being aggressive.
Argument from Authority: It’s important to only trust a person in authority if they’ve earned that trust because they’re knowledgeable, experienced and skilled. But even in such cases it never hurts to run their argument through the ringer to make sure everything makes sense before you agree.
Appeal to Tradition: This, like all logical fallacies, is when we get lazy and turn off our minds. Only, things change, and if you’re not flexible you’re going to end up broken. Often an adherence to tradition means a reluctance to try new things. That means a retreat from innovation, which is bad business.
Red Herring: A red herring is something irrelevant that is raised to deflect attention. It’s used all the time in lazy filmmaking to mislead the audience, and it’s often found in an argument to distract one from making a good decision.
Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc: In other words, one action following another does not mean there is a causal link. Correlation can offer insight, but without running controlled experiments, it doesn’t prove causation. Relying totally on correlation, without establishing causation, is a logical fallacy that can harm your business.