Mar
24
Context, Purpose, Drama and Conflict: The secret sauce of great meetings
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Patrick Lencioni author of the numerous books including "Death by Meeting" wrote an interesting article "Avoid ‘Death by Meeting’" which provides some great insights on creating an effective meetings. Patrick describes the two primary reasons meeting are ineffective as..
- Meetings lack drama. Which means they are boring.
- Most meetings lack context and purpose.
Drama and Conflict
Great meetings need what Patrick calls drama he says that "The key to making meetings more engaging - and less boring - lies in identifying and nurturing the natural level of conflict that should exist." Conflict keeps us engaged and interested, encouraging us to participate and contribute to the discussion. A leader’s role is to ask questions that matter so as to encourage engagement around the key issues.
Context and Purpose
In addition to drama meetings need context and purpose, "Unfortunately, no amount of drama will matter if leaders don’t create the right context for their meetings and make it clear to team members why the meeting is taking place, and what is expected of them. To create context, leaders must differentiate between different types of meetings. Too often, however, they throw every possible conversation into one long staff meeting. This creates confusion and frustration among team members who struggle to shift back and forth between tactical and strategic conversations, with little or no resolution of issues."
Effective leaders take a four pronged approach to effectively address context and purpose, they create and sustain the following four meetings.
- The Daily Check-in: is a schedule-oriented, administrative meeting that should last no more than five or 10 minutes. The purpose is simply to keep team members aligned and to provide a daily forum for activity updates and scheduling.
- The Weekly Tactical: is what most people have come to know as staff meetings. These should be approximately an hour in length, give or take 20 minutes, and should focus on the discussion and resolution of issues which effect near term objectives. Ironically, these work best if there is no pre-set agenda. Instead, the team should quickly review one another’s priorities and the team’s overall scorecard, and then decide on what to discuss during the remainder of the meeting.
- The Monthly Strategic: is the most interesting kind of meeting for leaders, and the most important indicator of a company’s strategic aptitude. It is the appropriate place for big topics, those that will have a long-term impact on the business.
- The Quarterly Off-Site Review: is an opportunity for team members to step away from the business, literally and figuratively, to reassess a variety of issues: the interpersonal performance of the team, the company’s strategy, the performance of top-tier and bottom-tier employees, morale, competitive threats and industry trends. These can last anywhere from the better part of a day to two full days each quarter.
Creating the right meeting eco-system or "social architecture" is critical to effective leadership. Ensuring that we have the appropriate levels of conflict and that each meeting has the right focus, the right conflict and purpose, is essential for great performance. How are your meetings? Do they have the right amount of conflict and drama? Do you have an eco-system where you have daily check-ins, tactical and strategic meetings?
Technorati Tags: Meetings, Social Architecture, Management, Business, Leadership, Purpose, Context, Conflict, Drama, Communication
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[...] Context, Purpose, Drama and Conflict: The secret sauce of great meetings Context, Purpose, Drama and Conflict: The secret sauce of great meetingsPhoto by c2k2e Patrick Lencioni author of the numerous books including "Death by Meeting" wrote an interesting article "Avoid ‘Death by Meeting’" which provides some great insights on creating an effective meetings. Patrick describes the two primary reasons mee…Read the full post from The Practice of LeadershipTags: collaboration, conflict, Communication, Meetings, Getting Things Done via Blogdigger blog search for management. [...]
Great post, I love Lencioni’s books. They are simple solutions to complex problems. They take some work to make the changes but he really provides good guidance in his stories on how to do that.
Meetings have a bad reputation, which is changeable in any organization, it just needs some people to drive that culture and begin the shift. Thanks for the post!
[...] architecture, meetings and their structure (drama, purpose and conflict) keep people engaged in the organisations vision. Regular meetings ensure effective communication [...]