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Conversations Instead of Meetings
by Jason Hensel

What makes unconferences and the like so popular is that they give attendees a voice in the discussions. No more being talked at or issued orders. It's about conversations and contributions.
Informal conversations, according to Tony Golsby-Smith, may be just what companies need more than meetings.
"The best way to energize thinking is to hold conversations rather than meetings," Golsby-Smith wrote on the Harvard Business Review Blog . "In our personal lives, we are used to talking openly with one another, but most organizations have failed to capitalize on the power of conversation in a business setting."
From my personal experience, I'm happier with conversations than meetings, which can be too formal and hierarchy based. When I'm having a conversation with my boss, I feel like I'm a business owner in the company and not just another Post-it note on a white board.  
"A conversation is democratic," Golsby-Smith wrote. "In a conversation, no single person holds forth while everyone else nods sleepily. Instead, the dialogue bounces around the room as participants design a new idea together."
Golsby-Smith doesn't suggest you throw out meetings altogether; just have more conversations and see how quickly your employees solve problems and how more engaged they are in their work.
"Most employees don't have objectives that inspire them deeply enough or tie them to the organization's purposes," Golsby-Smith wrote in a reply to a commenter. "The organization tells them what to do, and this does not inspire deep commitment. But a conversation which opens space for employees to explore how they can add value will really connect them to the organization. My goal is not to humanize conversations—it is to humanize organisations."

 

 

 

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How to Lead a Good Meeting
We've probably all been in a boring meeting here or there. I suppose it would be appropriate to now reflect on thoughts regarding "How to Lead a Good Meeting". I'm sure this list is not exhaustive, but here are a few starting pointers that come to mind:

How To Lead a Good Meeting

• Begin the meeting on-time. This seems so obvious to most of us, but it is in fact quite difficult to do. People seem to be notorious for being late to meetings and we hate to start without them. Here are a couple of suggestions for doing this effectively. At your next meeting, let the whole team know that you have personally been irresponsible to the team for not honoring all of their time by starting the meeting late. Inform them that beginning today you will be starting all future meetings on-time. You will close the door at the appropriate time and begin the meeting however you have planned it. If someone comes in late, you will give them the benefit of the doubt the first time. After that you will be addressing them following the meeting on the issue of lateness and why it is so important to honor the team by arriving prior to the meeting's start time. Of course, if you tell them you will do all of that, you better do it.

• Prepare. Again, obvious and hard. I can personally attest to the great difficulty in properly preparing for team meetings. We are all so busy and hold so many meetings throughout our day and week that it's so easy to just jump from one meeting to the next without more than a passing thought to what will be happening when you get there. However, ANY preparation you give pior to the meeting will reap great rewards during the meeting. The more you give, the greater impact the meeting will have. In fact, it's quite probably your meetings will have more depth during conversations, be much more interesting, and possibly may even finish early.

• Create a Realistic Agenda. It is very demotivating to team members when there are more agenda items than you actually address. Often they will have prepared for a future agenda item themselves and left frustrated when you don't get to that topic. Also, it can seem like the topic that never got discussed isn't really important to you, especially if you don't get to it several weeks in a row.

• Hold Others and Yourself Accountable. You should regularly review action items that have been assigned to members of the team to ensure they are getting done. If and when they are not, there should be accountability to the team regarding the breach in fulfilling an agreed upon commitment. I will address how to do this in a future blog article. If this is an issue for you and your team, then for now, I recommend you read both of the following books: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and Crucial Confrontations.

• Avoid Rabbit Trails. What a descriptive title to a conversation that goes off track - a rabbit trail. It jumps off quickly and captures everyone's attention without them even knowing it. This is particularly true if the topic at hand is boring or getting drawn out or is a difficult topic of discussion. "Let's talk about something more interesting!" The effective team leader will work very hard at minimizing this activity. Every once in a while you may decide the rabbit trail is important to entertain for a short season. However, it should rarely happen and should end with coming back to the conversation at hand. In our team meetings I have been known to turn to the minute-taker and say something like, "Please add this conversation to the February 8th Tactical Agenda." or some such thing.

• Set Expectations First. It's important at the beginning of certain discussions that you clarify your expectation of the discussion. Is this discussion meant to stimulate creative thinking? Is it to discuss tactical options? Will there be a vote? Or is the direction already decided and you want people to express their opinions and concerns? Are we brainstorming or are we evaluating? What do you want the end of this conversation to look like and sound like?

• Ask Lots of Questions. The point of most meetings is discussion and feedback. This usually doesn't happen by itself. Many (though not all) people need to be encouraged and opinions/ideas drawn out. This will happen with general and specific questions about the topic at hand. Sometimes it is good to put one or more team members on the spot for their input. If the team member has been tracking with the conversation she will have something to say, even if it's just, "everything we've said so far makes total sense to me."

• Ask for Clarification. If you are not sure what a person means during a discussion . . . even a little bit, ask for them to clarify their point or re-ask their question. When necessary, repeat it back to them in your own words and ask for confirmation that this is, in fact, what they are saying. If not, keep exploring until you are all on the same page. 

• Confirm Your Team's Understanding. It is often very good to ask the team if everyone understands what is being discussed or what has just been said. Just because you understand what's going on, doesn't mean others do. Watch out for glassy eyes which could indicate, "I have no idea what was just said but am embarrassed to say so." When in doubt, ask someone else in the room to repeat back what has been said or decided. A question I often use when meeting with individuals and teams is, "Did that make sense to you?"

• Confirm Buy-In. It's important you don't assume everyone agrees with what has been said. Sometimes, when it SEEMS like everyone agrees there are individuals who don't but are afraid to say so because they don't want to rock the boat. Ask a few probing questions to give people a chance to ask an additional question or raise a concern.

• Embrace Silence. Learn to embrace silence. People need time to think and respond. An insecure leader will ask, "Does anyone have anything to add?" or "Does anyone have questions about this idea?" and will allow a scant 5 seconds for responses before moving on. Wait 30 seconds (an eternity). Halfway through you can say, "I'm not afraid of a little silence here. I just want to make sure we are all on the same page."

• Openly Expose Elephants in the Room. I don't know how else to say this. If there's an elephant in the room you need to stop everything and talk about the elephant. You also need to give your team members permission to expose elephants too. It's very possible (probable) it's standing right behind you and you don't even know it. Just be honest and say, "Listen, I could be wrong, but is there something going on right now that we are all not talking about and should? Specifically, . . . . ?

• Say What You Think/Feel. Similar to the elephant exposure idea, you need to be free to honestly express something you think or feel as the meeting facilitator. Of course, your team members should have permission to do that too. If you feel like the meeting is getting boring, why don't you say so? If it seems like people are falling asleep on you - ask if they are. If it seems like everyone seems confused about what you are talking about, say so. It's always possible you are wrong, but what if you aren't? 

• Listen. Listening is really hard to do, especially for the leader of the meeting. Often, the leader has the most at stake in the discussion and wants to make sure the conversation is going where they want it. A good meeting facilitator will force himself to listen, ask for clarification, and ensure everyone has had their say before the discussion ends. He needs to be able to express his viewpoint as well, of course. Often that should happen near the end of the discussion or at the very beginning. Sometimes the meeting leader will need to make comments or reorient the discussion because it's getting off-track, but the primary job of the facilitator is to lead the DISCUSSION, not the DECISION. This is especially important if the meeting leader is the leader of the organization. Usually, people want to just go with the leader and will not express viewpoints if the leader has already said everything he thinks.

• Think Before You Speak. Important. Very important. Did I say important? If you want to say something, go ahead. But make sure you have gathered your thoughts and whenever possible select your words carefully. As the team leader everyone is taking their cues from you. As the organizational leader they are also deciding if it's safe to talk because of you. Learn catch phrases that will facilitate conversations like, "I wonder if . . .", "Is it possible we are forgetting . . .", "I could be wrong but . . .".

• End On Time or Early. I must admit I am still working on this skill. However, whenever it does happen it always seems like people are extra nice to me.

 

 

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 For this blog, we wanted to share a technique that we love called Open Space – a simple way to enable all kinds of people, in any kind of organization, to host inspiring and productive sessions.  In a nutshell, picture the energy, conversation and enthusiasm of a great coffee break combined with the focused deliberation of a think tank.

Before we dive into details, imagine this client scenario and see if it any of it applies to you…

There are some issues we need to address and tough questions we need to tackle. We want to work as a team to solve them, but we all have different points of view that we bring to the table and are not sure how best to harness and focus our energies. We know a lot, but then again, it also feels like we don’t know anything because we have not been able to link all the pieces together. We need to get “unstuck” and are wishing to try a more creative approach than our typical business meetings.  As the organizer, my wish is to create a session where everyone feels empowered to contribute and that we leave feeling excited and aligned to what we have accomplished and are ready to move forward.  And by the way, this is one of ten other key priorities on my to-do list so while it is important, I can’t be  burdened down with nitty-gritty planning details or create lots of stuff to prepare for it.  How can you help?

This is precisely where Open Space comes into play and why we are so excited about using it as a tool to help teams collaborate, connect and create.

What is Open Space and how it is structured?

Open Space Technology was developed by Harrison Owen. It has been used all around the globe across a wide range of industries and organizations with considerable success.

Open Space works best when the work to be done is complex, the people and ideas involved are diverse, the passion for resolution (and potential for conflict) are high, and the time to get it done was yesterday.

The only things you need to plan for are to identify the real business issue…and invite folks who are passionate about it. This is because its success relies on two fundamental tenants: passion and responsibility. As Owen states it, “without passion nobody is interested. Without responsibility, nothing will get done.”

Group size can be 5 to 1000! Large conferences and cozy small teams, it doesn’t matter as long as the people involved chooseto be there and are committed.  How long it takes depends on your intentions.   We suggest at least a full day. With three days .  . . day one might focus on intense discussion, day two might focus on recording results and day three might be about converging, prioritizing and creating an action plan. “After three days, guests and fish leave something to be desired.”

On the day of the session, all those who willingly accept the invitation show up fully present and ready to contribute! 

There is no preset agenda. Instead, you start in a circle and create the agenda together in real time. This comes together as participants share issues or opportunities for which they feel a genuine passion and will take responsibility. These “agenda items” are posted on a blank matrix representing specific time slots for each day and then people self-select where they intend to spend their time. There are no mandates, people can go anywhere they wish to explore and engage on topics of interest in what is described as the “Village Marketplace.”

It’s important to understand that a person who offers up a topic does not need to be an expert. It simply means that he or she will designate the time and place to host the conversation and will own sharing what was covered with the broader group. This is where the technology piece comes into play. Based upon the outcomes desired, computers can be used to capture key insights, recommendations and action steps from each conversation…and shared back with each participant.  If you wish, teams can take this a step further to converge and prioritize. It is all up to you!

Indeed, it seems that the only thing that can get in the way of this self-organizing approach is an attempt to CONTROL it.    So go ahead . . . relax, stop working so hard on planning every detail . . . and see where your passion takes you!

In our next blog, we will share more juicy details…until then… give us a call and give it a try if you’re OPEN!

 

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SWEET INTRODUCTIONS

Pass around the candy and tell each participant to choose anywhere from 1 to 5 pieces of anything that they want.  Instruct them not to eat it yet, though.  After they have chosen their candy, you will tell them what each candy type represents.

If there is a whiteboard or flipchart present, write on the board the following:

• Whopper– Favorite thing to do in free time

• Baby Ruth – Favorite place on earth

• Butterfinger– Favorite memory

• Hersey Bar -Dream job

• Nestle Crunch – Wildcard (tell us anything about yourself!)

Each person takes turns introducing himself or herself, beginning with their name and then saying one fact for each candy type that they have.  This easy introduction game should go relatively quickly (assuming they didn’t take too many pieces of candy!)

   

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Have You Unconferenced Today

Inc Magazine, December 1, 2009 – “On a crisp October morning, more than 400 people have crowded into the café of a conference center in Burlington, Massachusetts. They are here for Innovation 2009, an unconference for tech start-ups sponsored by the Mass Technology Leadership Council. There are no programs: No one knows what the sessions will be about or who will speak. But the topics are guaranteed to be relevant to the attendees, because they are about to come up with those subjects on the spot.”

Looking for ways to engage conference and meeting participants?  The unconference may be your answer.  In an unconference, participants create and manage their own agenda of sessions around a theme or purpose.  While the format has been around since the 80’s, it has enjoyed recent popularity as digital resources have made organizing unconferences easier and as Mitch Joel states in his book, Six Pixels of Separation,  “Something happened in Silicon Valley where people went so far in the direction of technology, they wanted to bring back more of a ’60s communal aspect, with people getting together in the spirit of democracy, instead of conferences organized from the top down, where everything is mapped out and marketed.”

Attendees present their ideas for sessions to the participants at the opening of the unconference and then post their topics on a large centrally located wall.  Location and session times are plotted on the wall.  If no one shows up for a session it doesn’t happen.  If too many participants show up an additional session is added.  As the day progresses new sessions may be posted as new participant ideas may be spawned from previous sessions.

In an effort to sustain energy and spontaneity an unconference is guided by “the law of two feet”; If you are not learning or contributing, it is your responsibility to find someplace where you are.