Angela Robertson
Several years ago I heard an anecdote about meetings I'll never forget.
A company once kept a scoreboard calculating the cost of a meeting by multiplying the number of people in the meeting by the number of minutes in the room—then displayedthe result. The question everyone needed to consider: Was the impact of the meeting worth the cost?
Often branded as unnecessary, poorly led meetings can be a tax on time and distract from core priorities. For that (and many other) reasons, meetings are controversial.
Nevertheless, developing relationships with employees, peers, stakeholders, customers, senior leaders, and others has tremendous value. And we develop these relationships through meaningful interactions. Led well, meetings force us to develop these critical relationships and serve as accountability tools.
So what's the difference between an unnecessary meeting and a valuable one? In this chapter, I'll explain how we can we leverage open principles to experience more of the latter and fewer of the former.
Hosting and leading meetings is a skill. I forget that regularly, usually expecting everyone to be effective at hosting meetings. So let's start with the basics for effective meetings.
Meetings need a clear goal. You can identify a meeting's goal by answering a simple question: Why are we meeting?
After you've articulated the goal of a meeting, you'll need to identify who needs to attend the meeting. Invite those people to attend at a time that fits their schedules. If you're meeting when people are distracted (for example, asking people to call in for a meeting at 7:30 a.m. when they are driving to work), then pick another time. You want attendees engaged because you need people to have a sense of accountability for meeting outcomes and next steps.
Along these same lines, keep a record (minutes) for meetings, so you have a log of what everyone at the meeting discussed, decisions you still need to make, etc.
Again, the first step to leading a successful meeting is deciding the goal of the meeting. In general, meetings fall into one of the following categories: administrative, tactical, strategic, developmental, and personnel. But the specific type of meeting you host depends on the goal of the meeting. In this chapter, I'll briefly discuss each of these meeting types:
- Daily stand-up (administrative)
- Team meeting (tactical)
- Decision-making (strategic)
- Learning (developmental)
- Brainstorming (strategic)
- One-on-ones (tactical)
- Delegations (tactical)
- Performance reviews (personnel)
- Skip level (strategic)
- Off-site (developmental)
- All-hands (administrative)
Articulating a meeting goal helps you determine your meeting type.
Determining your meeting type in turn helps you determine the meetings mechanics (how you'll run it, where you'll run it, who you'll invite, and so on). Some meetings also combine some of these types into a single event. For example, team meetings can combine learning, brainstorming, and decision-making.
After you've identified the type of meeting you're leading, set the agenda, and send it in the meeting invitation. Also state your expectations for participation. If you're hosting a meeting online, for instance, do attendees know if video is required? Will the meeting be recorded? Make sure these expectations are clearly stated in the invitation.
At the end of the meeting, recap the action items people have taken and the time frame (or date for a date) for following up on them. Share expectations both verbally and in writing.
As a leader, you can infuse open principles into every type of meeting you'd like to hold. Let's examine how.
Daily stand-ups are familiar to anyone practicing the Agile development model. They're brief meetings where everyone collaborating on a project reports three facts:
- Work completed since last stand-up
- Work in the queue
- Risks/blockers
The group can also opt to add a post-meeting discussion. Given this meeting's tight scope, the post-meeting discussion is time devoted to questions and answers sparked during the stand-up. For example, in the stand-up, a team member might identify work completed and work in the queue (items 1 and 2) as bugs (defects). Likewise, the risk (item 3) might also be bug-related. The person speaking can request a post-meeting discussion to review the risk and not exceed the scope of the stand-up.
The stand-up meeting is an excellent example of a meeting done well: tightly scoped and reliably brief with accountability for all involved.
These meetings truly drive accountability. With just 10 minutes every day, project leads quickly assemble the team to hear three things from each attendee.
If you're a project lead, these meetings are an indispensable tool for you. They afford a degree of transparency that allows leads to know exactly where team members are spending their time. Everyone is invited to contribute in the same way, so it's an inclusive gathering that gives equal opportunity to contribute and listen. I find that listening leads to collaboration, too, as I can build on the work others outline in a stand-up. I've led stand-ups, and I love that the short meeting focuses the team on achieving the sprint goals so we have impactful work to share in the end-of-sprint demo.
Daily stand-ups are often run by leads. Team meetings are hosted by managers. Managers use team meetings to keep their teams (that is, the people reporting to them) focused on core priorities.
In open organizations, teams need to be committed to shared priorities.
Team meetings are opportunities to reinforce that commitment. They offer regular checkpoints for accountability. Managers with lingering questions or concerns about a team's ability to understand or achieve core priorities after one-on-one meetings can raise those concerns during team meetings.
Team meetings (like all meetings) can be transparent. Unless there's some risk to an employee's privacy or some other legal concern, managers should consider sharing the meeting agenda, meeting minutes, and resultant action items. New team members can learn from these records.
Absent team members can catch up quickly. And you'll have the benefit of the written record available when your memory doesn't recall all of the details.
The most important thing you need to do in a decision-making meeting is to ask for a decision. I state that fact first because it's easy to hold a meeting like this and not ask for a decision.
Decision-making meetings occur in time set aside to share updates on an assignment, and you should always begin the meeting by stating that you wish to arrive at a decision by the end of the meeting. For example, if you've been asked to lead a vendor program, then (beginning with your proposal for work) set aside time for an update and include the fact that you expect a "proceed or pause" decision at the end of the meeting. In advance of the meeting, summarize why a vendor program is necessary, what success looks like, and what you need to proceed. Share this information in a written document, and allow time for a review of the material at the start of the meeting. Always grant enough time for questions and propose that you have enough information to proceed with the task. Then ask if anyone has objections.
If no one objects to your proposals, state your next steps and timeline.
Then follow up after the meeting with a written statement of how you'll proceed. You should also be clear about whether a project isn't going to proceed. I share that observation to remind you that you don't need to be dogmatic in favor of any particular meeting outcome.
In these meetings, be transparent about your point of view and be passionate. If you learn that the organization is not ready to go in a particular direction, let it go. You're leading a community of people.
You don't need consensus, but you do need the team motivated to go in the direction you're leaning with the decision. Adapting so you don't force a change on a group of people when you lack adequate support is wise in situations where you can take what you've learned and assess the best way to move forward.
The idea behind the learning meeting is simple: Someone has information that you want shared with a group of people, so you hold a meeting to facilitate that sharing. People like to hold them over lunch, which is why you'll often hear them called "brown-bag" meetings.
Always begin these meetings by stressing the fact that you don't need a decision to result from the meeting. If you work in an organization with a cultural bias for action, then setting aside time to just learn can be challenge. One way to counter this need to act is to give everyone a reason to act before the meeting.
For example, if you want to focus on why a specific support issue occurred, then ask every team to prepare for a root-cause analysis of their biggest support issue in the past week. Explain that at the start of the meeting you'll randomly select a team to share their analysis.
The other teams in attendance can learn from the selected team's experience. That way, in preparation for the learning-focused meeting, every team has acted to prepare.
When structuring these meetings, think carefully. "Brown bag" meetings are often optional meetings. If you want attendance to be mandatory, use something like "A deep dive into topic name." In the description for the meeting, explain that a presenter will be sharing information for the purposes of learning and that questions are welcomed. You want attendees to learn more about the topic so you're taking the time to organize the session. The meeting leader should introduce the speaker, facilitate the discussion, and ensure someone attending the meeting handles the minutes.
Learning meetings are a great time for people to voice conflicting viewpoints and ask probing questions. If your organization tends to be conflict avoidant, you can ask people who you know have different points of view to share their perspectives. You want to draw out different ideas so your team can be more creative. These meetings can also function as morale boosters for a team. When a leader sets aside time for a team to learn, employees see an investment in their base of knowledge.
Depending on the discussion that occurs during the learning meeting, follow-up work varies. Often several team members find the material something worth pursuing further, as it relates to core priorities, and they take action items. If the discussion yields learning, but additional work is not helpful in meeting core priorities, then team members have the information for future reference.
Whenever possible, record and share all information with the larger organization. Transparency develops trust and allows open organizations to grow.
Sometimes you have a problem to work through, and you need time to catalog options for solutions. Set aside time for a working meeting to review ideas with co-workers.
Ideally, you'll have everyone physically present in the same room when brainstorming. But even if everyone cannot be in the same room, I find that you can still have an effective brainstorming session as long as the team understands the rules for communication. As a leader, you should be clear about questions like:
- Who is leading and facilitating the discussion?
- Who is taking notes?
- How is the team going to share the ideas sketched during the discussion?
Brainstorming meetings require some prework to ensure the meeting time focuses on the work. You can ask people to come prepared with specific prework completed. Depending on the challenge and the time available, you might have people come with specific examples ready to share to get the brainstorming session started. You can limit prework to reading a problem statement.
In most cases, you'll want people to complete some kind of prework to ensure that your attendees are the best group of people to have in the meeting. Encourage questions so everyone has clarity around why the brainstorming session is necessary. When people have clarity, they feel motivated to act, and you want your team to come ready to engage transparently, leaving ego at the door in the service of developing the best ideas.
At the start of the meeting, the lead kicks off the brainstorming session and facilitates the discussion. The lead is responsible for getting all team members involved in the discussion. Remember that people's personalities vary. Extroverts are going to talk; you need to make sure the quieter meeting attendees are invited to participate in a meaningful way. You don't want people thinking, "I'll talk to check the ‘I participated' box." You want everyone to engage for the best outcome in the brainstorming session. Diversity of thoughts and ideas leads to the best outcomes.
Depending on the deadlines associated with the project, after the brainstorming session you can plan next steps. Again, share a summary of the meeting and include who took what action item. Your team will need specific deadlines if it can continue making progress.
One-on-one meetings help open leaders drive strategy, and allow them to receive and deliver candid feedback at quicker intervals—crucial for teams that are always working in "release early, release often" mode.
Employees are always making decisions that impact people who use whatever they're working to deliver. So the one-on-one meeting naturally covers the priorities they're setting, a discussion of the impacts those priorities have, and the risks associated with those priorities. These meetings tend to be tactical, lasting about 30 minutes and occurring roughly once per week.
To ensure transparency during one-on-ones, open leaders ask plenty of questions for clarity. Explain that what helps a manager become a better manager is knowing what's blocking a team's work or what questions are most pressing for them. By asking questions and giving transparent answers as a manager, you're finding space to learn more about your team members—things like:
- What are they working on beyond the work assigned?
- What problems are they solving?
- How are they deciding what work not to do?
- What do they need to have unblocked in order to make faster progress?
In the end, however, in one-on-one meetings leaders should listen more than they talk.
Everyone handles one-on-one meetings differently. But in general, successful one-on-one meetings should address items that fall into two categories:
- Priorities and risks. For managers and team members, it's easy to think that things are going well, but there are often challenges. People want to give off an "I've got it all together" vibe to insulate themselves from risk. The thing is: Work is risky. Most jobs involve work that's ambiguous and uncertain. So make sure you don't forget to discuss risks.
- Roadblocks and learning. Often, certain things prevent us from moving our work forward. Managers need to know about those things in a precise and candid way. And even if they did, we can't always wait until we have everything we think we need in order to proceed with a project. We can work with a growth mindset so we, as a collaborative team, can share what we learn from mistakes and new information.
The more trust and credibility a manager has earned with a team, the quicker team members can adapt to changes that are necessary for the business. For example, while a manager might not be able to answer every question that arises in a meeting, she can encourage curiosity. When dealing with ambiguity, identify people who want to answer similar questions and connect them. As you see people who don't know what success looks like, use the meeting to bring clarity to goals as much as you possibly can.
Delegation meetings occur when leaders need help meeting all their strategic priorities. But open leaders understand something additional: Delegation is also a way to empower those around you—to build, in other words, a culture of shared responsibility.1 Through our adaptability, delegation becomes all the more possible—indeed, almost inherently essential—for the organization to thrive and grow. And the challenge that often makes delegation difficult is trust. If you cannot think of anything to delegate, perhaps you believe that you cannot trust your team members to share your responsibilities.
When delegating work, you'll be helping team members make decisions regarding their priorities and understand how they might delegate work or stop work on a task altogether. When you approach a prioritization discussion with someone on your team, talk about the work the employee doesn't want to stop doing. You want to begin here, because you need to know what your teammate has difficulty letting go of as change occurs during the delegation.
As a leader, you motivate people to change. If you need the employee to stop doing the very thing that he or she loves doing (and finds great value in delivering), you need to speak to this concern. With some discussion, the team member adapts and sees the strategy behind what's motivating you to push for change. You might use these six steps to structure this prioritization exercise:
- State the work being delegating and seek confirmation that the delegation has been accepted.
- Inventory the work that the employee is tasked to complete.
- Ask the employee to give each work item a priority and deadline.
- Using your knowledge of the business strategy and customer commitments, collaborate to establish priorities.
- Put the priorities in writing, identify quality standards, and set deadlines.
- Set expectations regarding status updates, and confirm you both understand how the employee's current workload adapts with the new work and deadlines.
Always understand that your goal in these meetings is empowering another person to do the work. With any act of delegation, you're letting go. In that act of letting go, you have space to pick up whatever work requires your attention.
Most organizations have a regular cadence for performance reviews.
Ideally, managers leading openly are communicating performance feedback as micro-feedback and these meetings contain no surprises.
If performance is poor and an employee is in the wrong role, employees often do not hear the constructive feedback they require to start acting in a way that improves their performance. The performance review (which often includes a discussion of compensation) is a time when employees who have been in denial about poor performance finally hear the "things need to change" message.
Performance reviews are communicated in writing, so a performance review meeting is a discussion about the written feedback. Before the meeting, give employees time to read your written comments. Explain that after the meeting you intend to submit the comments as part of the employee's record so you need the meeting to be a productive discussion. If there's any dispute, the dispute needs to be surfaced succinctly so action can be taken.
Employees need not agree with the performance review feedback (given that the manager is responsible for assessing the employee's performance). But if there's a disagreement about the assessment, use fact-based written documentation to work through the issues. The written documentation makes the exchange more transparent and everyone has the opportunity to provide input.
Skip level meetings occur when an employee meets a manager's manager. In these cases, the more senior manager does not drive the conversation.
Time allotted for the meeting is time for the organization's leader to listen and learn. Employees receive clarity as the senior leader provides context and asks questions to gain perspective.
As an employee meeting with a senior leader, come prepared with some questions or topics for discussion. Send these topics in advance to give the senior leader some idea of what you want to discuss. If you send topics via email in advance, don't assume anyone read them. Everyone has unplanned events that steal time away from planned activities (like preparing for a meeting). Senior leaders can also come prepared with questions.
What type of questions do senior leaders want to hear? First, ask them how you can help them be more successful. Senior leaders are expected to execute on a strategy. Your help is essential for implementing that strategy. Anything you can do to assist with that is valuable, and your curiosity about ways you can help is guaranteed to be impactful.
One final note about skip level meetings: Senior leaders are often curious about "what's really going on" in their organization. If you're concerned that a senior leader needs to know something that they seem unaware of, bring up the topic. If the leader is listening, she'll ask for your candor. Some people have told me that nothing is "off the record." I argue that this really depends on the leader. Personally, I respect off-the-record disclaimers and appreciate the transparency people are willing to bring to a skip-level-type meeting.
Teams benefit when they plan some time "off-site" to identify core priorities. They often occur on a quarterly basis "Off-site" is a term that needn't literally mean "off the premises." For example, if you have a distributed team, meeting "off-site" does not automatically mean traveling. Don't let location issues deter you. Set an agenda and hold the meeting.
The goal of the off-site is to get a fresh perspective on what's really important for your business to succeed and grow. You want to refresh your view of core priorities as the customer's needs and the broader organization's business priorities are likely changing. It's cliché but it's true. We're always learning. Take what you and your team have learned over the previous three months, and agree on the core priorities for the next three months.
The goal of an off-site meeting is not consensus. You are not going to get every person to agree on the same set of priorities. You want the team to collaborate on a set of core priorities that they verbally commit to work toward. Verbal commitment on core priorities is essential.
As an open leader, you need to know that your team is going to support the strategy. If you hear any hesitation or doubt when you ask for a verbal commitment, ask for clarification. Your goal is not to force commitment. Your goal is to get people to the point where they commit to the team's statement of core priorities, leave the meeting to explain the priorities, and start implementation work.
Off-site meetings are successful when attendees are vulnerable with each other about their concerns and engage in conflict-heavy discussions. A team might not share all details as transparently as they share details from other types of meetings. But I encourage transparency here, because it gives the larger team perspective about the thought and candor that went into the discussion. That said, however, airing dirty laundry isn't helpful when you want the larger team focused on asking clarifying questions about the strategy and working out tactical details for implementation.
All-hands meetings are an opportunity for the organization's leader to gather other leaders in conversation. It's also a perfect opportunity to practice transparency.
If you're the leader planning the meeting, talk with people in the organization to find out what questions are at the top of everyone's minds. Think about other topics senior leaders in the organization have shared and how you can add detail that helps people understand why the team needs to act on behalf of whatever strategy the team is being implemented.
Open leaders bring others into the conversation. Get a range of people involved. Invite people who are in the organization to speak and ask partners of the organization to speak on relevant topics. Facilitate a question-and-answer session after each main topic.
Also take time to recognize great work by individuals and small teams.
Ask the larger organization to nominate people on the team who are delivering high caliber work on behalf of customers. When you receive submissions, if one part of the organization seems heavily weighted, seek balance. Perhaps the imbalance comes from one team feeling unengaged or overwhelmed. The leader can ask why one part of the team is well represented while other parts of the team seem non-existent.
After you have a representative sample of the great work the team is recognizing, decide what is the best example to highlight. Again, seek to balance representation in the public recognition. You want the team to understand that they have something to learn from each other.
As you're used to reading by now, record and share.
Some people are going to push back against meetings, calling them "time sucks" (or worse). Ignore these assertions and prove the worth of the meeting by making it useful for the attendees. If you don't find the meeting to be a good use of time, cancel it and evaluate how you can restart the effort to reach your desired outcome. You'll find people appreciate your willingness to execute on the strategy despite challenges.