The Secrets To Make Meetings Less
Awful
A day full of
meetings will leave a bad taste in your mouth. Unless you follow these steps.
Some companies have abandoned
the whole idea of a meeting. But if your schedule is still saturated with them, here's
how to greet your meets much more skillfully.
When placed into a group situation like
a meeting, people rely on "messy proxies
for expertise." Rather than deferring to competency, people take confidence,
loudness, or even race as signals that a person is to be listened to.
To defuse that distraction, don't brainstorm,
brainwrite.
People who sat around circular tables were found to
be more group-oriented than those arrayed around square tables.
Meetings don't just last 15, 30, or 60
minutes. If the work is done in eight, bail: that's what Sheryl Sandberg does.
At Square, having the decision
maker in the room leads to quicker decisions—and more original products.
5. TURN YOUR AGENDA INTO
INQUIRIES
Organizational psychologist and Smart
Leaders, Smarter Teams author Roger Schwarz dropped some knowledge
on Harvard Business Review that we're still adjusting to.
Instead of listing out the agenda with limp, open-ended declaratives, turn them
into answerable questions. For example:
·
Don't write: "Discuss video schedule"
·
Do write: "When will videos be completed?"
Suddenly, everybody knows what outcome is to be looked for—and
you'll all know when it's been found.
Before you change from one question on
the agenda to the next, Schwarz says make sure everyone who wants to have a say on the topic
can make their input. Why? Because otherwise they might be asking that question
15 minutes from now—which gives everybody in the room the heavy cognitive costs of
task switching.
DRAKE BAER
http://www.fastcompany.com/3024271/leadership-now/the-7-secrets-to-make-meetings-less-awful
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