Five Ways to Unboss Your Meetings

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Unboss your meeting.? I learned that phrase from my recent conversation with Gary Bolles during our recent Virtual LeaderCon. To unboss your meeting means to take the rank and positional power out of the room enough to create high participation meetings. If you ever find that people (or you) are afraid to talk in meetings, due to the presence of other people with higher positions, then your meeting may need to be “unbossed.”? Here are five ways to do that.

Set Clear Expectations and Ground Rules

If you want more input and ideas from everyone in your meeting you must make that a stated goal and create “rules of engagement” to set a platform for increased participation. Make it explicit that a collaborative discussion where everyone’s input is valued is the goal. Tell leaders about this goal ahead of time to help them curb their own behavior or natural tendencies. Create a clear agenda for the discussion, sent in advance, so people can come prepared. (Otherwise, the leaders may have an unintended advantage of having thought about the topic more upfront.)

Have a Facilitator

Assign someone to manage the process and flow of the meeting as a facilitator.? If possible, make that person someone who doesn’t have positional power.? If the meeting topic is significant enough, consider having a neutral facilitator from another group or from outside the organization who can manage the participation levels of all involved.

Frame the Situation Clearly

Too often the conversation begins with a topic, rather than a properly framed question or situation. Frame the conversation around the problem, situation or desired outcome. And, as I said above, let people know that before they arrive.? If people are clear on what they will be talking about, they will come up with ideas that they will be more confident in sharing.? If people don’t know until the moment of the conversation they will less prepared and the anxiety of being “put on the spot” – especially if their boss’ boss is in the room can be overwhelming.

Use the Round Robin Technique

One approach to getting input from everyone is to go around the room, allowing everyone to share their thoughts, without interruption, one after another.? When starting the round robin, don’t start with a leader, and if possible, have two or three non-leaders (or folks lower organizationally) go first. This will work best if the no interruptions rule is strictly enforced.

Don’t Allow Leaders To Talk at All (For the First Half of the Conversation)

If you make it a ground rule that leaders can’t speak in the first half of the conversation, or only allow them questions to clarify, you will get more ideas from the group.? Lest leaders be worried their ideas and perspectives won’t be heard, remind them that the group will come up with some of the same ideas on their own (and now those ideas will likely have broader support). Plus by sharing later, the leader’s ideas will be better received as well. Leaders often unintentionally influence the outcome of conversation based on their positional power, and this approach can help regulate that situation.

These are five things you can do, starting today, to create high participation meetings – meetings where people feel comfortable and even invited to share their ideas.? But these five things alone and done once, won’t be enough.? Continue to apply these ideas, and train leaders on these behaviors and you will begin to change the culture and expectations of your meetings for the better.? As you do this, you will create more effective meetings with more input and improved outcomes.

It’s Your Turn

Which of these five ideas will most quickly help you unboss your next meeting?

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A version of this article first appeared in our blog.

Looking Back

As we celebrate our 30th year in business, I am looking back at some of what I have learned.? Here’s one of those things…

Moving Beyond the “Learning”

Most often our first thoughts about the idea of learning are connected in some way to school – for most of us 12 or more years, 180 days/year are probably the reason. And with no disrespect to school or its goals, because of connection of learning=school, too often we then extrapolate to learning=knowledge.? That's not completely true, or always helpful.

When I say “moving beyond the learning”, what I really mean is translating that school or knowledge learning into action. After all, knowledge alone isn’t enough in the real world of work, projects, people – and the messiness of life. Knowledge accumulation might help you win Jeopardy, but not the game of life.

• Set a learning goal.? Know what you want to be getting better on at any given time.? Let’s say you want to be a better listener.? Then make that your focus for the next 30/60/90 days.? By focusing on that one skill you have a far better chance of improving than moving from skill to skill based on the random events of life.
• Manage information intake. We have so much information available to us.? We must get better at what info we take in before we can talk about how to use it.? When you lay your learning goal over our information diet, you have a way to limit or focus your intake in ways that serve your learning goals and results.
• Keep trying.? We know we don’t master anything the first time, yet we can too easily get discouraged when we try a skill and it doesn’t go perfectly the first time. Put on your positive pants and keep your head up and keep trying. Use the experience to help you step forward and step up on your path to applying knowledge to reach your goals.

There is plenty I have learned about how we translate knowledge into action – in some ways it has been my life’s work. These are three ideas that will help you make that translation.

Each of these things will work, but only if you go to work doing them – which is perhaps the big point of this article in just a few words.

Go ahead, get started.

Knowledge Unleashed

Check out my recent conversation with Jeff Brown about ignition action through learning.