Amplifying Ingenuity in Meetings

Amplifying Ingenuity in Meetings

Thank you for the overwhelming, thought-provoking and pleasant comments and responses Mette Yde and I have received regarding our posts. We are still reflecting on how to amplify ingenuity and accelerate value across our professional work life. It is an ongoing conversation and reflection that we both enjoy.

During our latest conversations, we discussed the most common professional way of working: the meeting.

We have reflected on how personalities and leadership influence the energy and the outcome of meetings.

We started this discussion with a number of questions, hoping to stimulate your thoughts and arrive at some more valuable outcomes.

How could we define a meeting?

Meetings are constructive when two or more people within a professional community share experience and knowledge, coordinate their efforts, ensure mutual understanding, and promote future outcomes.

We invite participants to events (meetings) of no less than 15 minutes to facilitate a mutual case.

Do you lose focus when meetings are not serving your intended purpose? Is it easier to get distracted during a virtual meeting?

Why is the meeting event as an ‘activity’ so tricky for some personalities – and so easy for others?

At what point do meetings become inefficient? Can the format of meetings serve a purpose even when we are not exchanging knowledge or co-creating during the event? How can periodic reflection amplify the positive outcome of a meeting? Are there particular ways of facilitating meetings that could amplify value and ingenuity?

Soundless leadership – Can we Occasionally Achieve More by talking less?

In most organisations, the spoken word is the driver of all meetings.

There is a space between the words where we can meet and relate. We call this the ‘quiet mind’. In a People and Change meeting, we used a 30-second ‘quiet mind’ break to facilitate the transition from one part of the meeting to the other. It is beneficial to start meetings with a brief silence space to prepare the brain for a new activity. The response to this little silence space can be very positive.

We often waste valuable time on “empty” talk. The silence space creates a sort of interplay between talking and silence. When we work with silence as a driver for restitution up to value brain activity, we allow the brain a healthy possibility to reset. This space between silence and talk makes us more present and reflective. Some organisations have trained their way to make it a part of their culture to rest in silence together in very brief glimpses. These organisations have developed a forward-thinking mindset that this silence is, in fact, a professional trait, where transient ideation subconsciously occurs, which generates added value thinking and outcomes.

Let us use a metaphor. The larger the masterpiece in a museum is, the larger space on the wall it is given. We must allow silence to reset and recalibrate the brain if we want to do great work and drive ingenuity and innovation during meetings.

How do we avoid ”meeting fatigue”? A leader from a large enterprise once said: Our meetings are like a spin-dryer with 1,600 revolutions per minute. 'Silence spaces' provide the reset and calmness that lowers the pulse. Silence spaces do not mean we are not talking a lot, but the brain needs quiet time to process new information. When we want to create ingenuity, our brain needs space to reflect.

Add Silence to Your Core Culture Values

How about trailing short silence spaces in your ways of working, which may help your organisation pivot to a new core culture and improved value mindset? Could this be used to facilitate more brain (ingenuity) healthy meetings?

Make it a prerequisite to facilitate the silence spaces so that they are not awkward but a natural ingredient in any meeting.

A meeting without silence spaces is like a keyboard with no spacebar. We can use a defective typewriter and decipher the words, but after one hour’s reading, your cognitive system will be exhausted.

When we introduce silence spaces in our ways of working, our brain feels like taking off our shoes when we enter the living room of a dear friend - nicely, calmly and respectfully.

What Does It Take to Make Silence Spaces a Part of your Culture?

Make an explorative test period of 30 days or 60 days. During this explorative period, all meetings should have 10% reserved for silence. The silence in the meetings must have active sponsors with management as role models. In many organisations, the outcome of silence spaces has led to better and more effective decisions at all levels of the organisation.

Very importantly, a power levelling between introverts and extroverts was one of the positive outcomes. The most talkative extroverts, who speak a constant monologue, were regulated. Everyone had more calmness in their head and more presence when they arrived home after a day of many meetings. Posters hung on the organisational walls during the explorative period, advocating less talk and more value. When these silence spaces cut out some noise from our ways of working, it allows us to listen more deeply.

The most positive outcome is when the meetings with successful silence spaces amplify the value of our work and client solutions.

Nigel Lowe, Partner, PA Consulting UK

Mette Yde, Assistant Professor, PA Consulting DK

We appreciate and reference two sources of inspiration for this post:

Ib Ravn, Associate Professor, DPU, Aarhus University and Bastian Overgaard.

#amplifyingenuity #meetings #waysofworking “silencespaces #culture #brainreset