How my employees keep me in check to create more inclusive meetings

I tend to get carried away. As the CEO of a product consulting company, I get to discuss incredible ideas every single day. These ideas make me excited about my job (and my own personal contributions to a meeting's conversation). Sometimes, I admit, I steamroll over other people’s contributions trying to share all the things I think we can do.

Part of that’s the job. When a thorny problem comes up, as a leader I feel pressure to have a vision and steer everyone toward it. Part of it though, is my personality. I took the quiz that executive advisor Liz Wiseman created to accompany her leadership book, Multipliers. The results showed what many on my team already knew: I’m an off-the-charts accidental diminisher, so eager to share my own ideas that I don’t always hear everyone else’s.

Inclusive meetings lead to better outcomes

My team and I know firsthand that more diverse ideas create better products. And I wanted to foster a culture where all good ideas were heard - not just mine. So I asked my team to reign me in. And when challenging the boss directly was hard to do, we turned it into a card game instead. Just like throwing a yellow card in soccer, everyone in the meeting gets cards they can flash to keep me in line. One card called me out for beating a dead horse, another for interrupting. It helped me learn more about my conversational style - often times things I wasn't aware of consciously in the moment.

For my part, I only got three cards to play in a meeting— one for each opinion I was allowed to voice during a meeting. Only 3 times could I shout out my opinions (and burn a card each time). And once I played my three cards, all I could do was listen, ask questions and encourage other people to share their ideas for the rest of the session. It worked. My team became more comfortable checking me, I was able to contribute without dominating and more ideas were able to be heard. Then we realized that I alone wasn’t keeping our meetings from being great.

Helping speakers find their audience (and helping the audience show respect)

While my enthusiasm and desire to talk may be immense, it wasn't the only thing stopping people from contributing during meetings. We make an enormous effort to create an inclusive workplace that lets diverse people and voices be heard, but we’re all passionate people, and everyone communicates differently. When we saw how well the cards worked for me, we tried to think of what other behaviors we wanted to minimize and which ones we wanted to grow.

There were the other bad behaviors — things like going off on a tangent or down a rabbit hole. Those were relatively easy to identify, and each of those got a card. When someone was wandering off topic, or losing their audience, we could nonverbally steer them back to center with a quick (and hopefully amusing) visual queue that wouldn't draw offense.

In other cases, people were being distracted by using their devices, or distracting others by having side conversations (both were rather disrespectful to the speaker).

Handling power dynamics in a meeting

On our team, we have our apprentices and junior team members — people who might not feel comfortable pushing back on someone with a decade more experience. For them, we created a devil’s advocate card. When assigned this role during the meeting, and it means they have to challenge someone, even if it’s their boss. It gives them explicit permission to call out mistakes or faulty reasoning without fear of retribution or push back. They can just blame it on the game! (Ex: "Hey - no offense - I am just playing Devil's Advocate here. But I am concerned this might not be the best solution"). By explicitly giving them this role to play at the outset of ameeting- it helps to correct a potential power imbalance in the room.

For the people on the other side of that equation, there are always experienced folks who tend to think their ideas are the best and nothing else will work. These people can be quick to shoot down an idea out of hand or be dismissive — quickly squashing innovative ideas by citing limitations or constraints that will prevent it from working. For these minds, we created an angel’s advocate card. When assigned to a person, they have to spend the next 30 minutes using only “Yes, and” statements to build on other people’s contributions and find ways for them to navigate such constraints.

Turning a game into a better way of working

We didn’t create these cards just to add playtime to our meetings. We created them because when you add levity and humor, it’s easier for people to give real-time feedback without awkwardness. Honestly, it is VERY hard to tell someone their communication style needs to change - it is a deeply personal piece of feedback. So people tend to do one of two things:

• Not give anyone that kind of feedback. The culture never changes and people rarely realize the impact they are having on others in meetings
• Write up a ton of frustration in a performance review 6 months later - long after an act was committed and the person has no context anymore for that issue. If they didn't realize a challenge in their communication style in the moment - they certainly won't understand 6 months later

Telling someone they’re interrupting in the moment makes them much more conscious of their actions. It allows people to call each other out in a silly, analog way - addressing difficult topics without creating tension. It also lets you get to the best ideas quicker, which is critical when you’re creating a product, and it's useful every single day.

When the cards stop getting thrown, that’s when you really see them working. For example, the interrupting card gets thrown a lot at first. Then, the culture starts to change. People become more conscious about their interaction and communication patterns. And slowly - that card isn't as required anymore. If some cards lose their frequency because people are more mindful - that’s a phenomenal outcome.

Learning from the community

After play testing this game with a few companies, we finally decided to put it on Kickstarter. And it closed really fast! In that process - we got great input from the community on new cards that would be useful and new ways of playing the game (including a suggestion for the Parking Lot role and the "Hepeating" card - credit to Prof. Gugliucci!)

With all the feedback and encouragement from the community, we went back and illustrated a bunch of new cards, improved the game play, and just sent off to the printers last week! Very soon, we'll have an analog, slightly silly game that people can play in crucial conversations at work to make meetings more effective and more inclusive - so everyone gets a voice (not just the CEO).

If you'd like to try this game out and would like a deck of cards, let us know!

Sign up form: https://www.meetingsdoneright.co/