PPI #12: How to Make Your Meetings Awesome

If you're like me, you've probably sat in meetings before and thought, oh my gosh, I just want to absolutely get out of this meeting. Or, this meeting is boring as heck and I'm going to fall asleep, or, why am I even here? Or do we have the right people in the room? Or maybe you're just thinking, I don't want to be here at all. Those thoughts are normal. And today I want to talk about how do we actually make meetings awesome? How do we make them more productive? How do we get more out of them so that they can't be. So that they won't be something that you dread, but instead are something that you can actually look forward to because of the benefits that they provide and because of the structures that we can put in place to make them more enjoyable, less draining, and have higher energy. So the first thing that I like to do is just recognize that it starts here in the head. It's to recognize that meetings aren't actually a bad thing. A meeting is a perfect opportunity for people to take off their functional hats, to think creatively about a problem, to engage in some productive conflict around a particular topic, some healthy debate. It's only by people getting the chance to lay in with different perspectives that they're going to be more likely to buy into whatever the outcome is, is at the end of the meeting. You think of it as people are more likely to want to proceed with decision in a meeting if they feel like they. Their voice was heard, not necessarily if the final outcome of the meeting matches exactly what each participant wants, but they feel like they had the chance to at least state what was on their mind. And we get that in the form of a meeting where there's some healthy debate where people are encouraged to speak their mind. And very importantly, when you perhaps as the meeting facilitator or whoever is facilitating the meeting, takes the role of being super conscious, super aware of where is there conflict? You know, where might people not be agreeing here? Is everything really being said? Sometimes just in the body language, you can recognize that. Wait a second, you know, Jen over here, she doesn't actually agree with what Robert just said. And it's easy to let that moment go by, but it's much more powerful if in that moment you were to say something like, jen, I got the impression that you actually didn't agree with everything that Robert just said. What is that? Why don't we get that out on the table and discuss that again? Because if we treat a meeting as a place to engage in Healthy debate, have a lot of healthy, productive conflict around whatever that meeting's topic is. We can come up with new ideas, consider all perspectives, and very, very importantly, the meeting will have much higher energy tone to it. And people are more likely to eventually buy into whatever the final outcome is because they feel like all sides were heard, including theirs. So that's the first way that we can make a meeting awesome is just by reframing meetings as they're not a bad thing, they're a good thing, provided we create the right environment, you know, within the meeting. The other thing that makes meetings far more useful, a way to make your meetings awesome. And this might sound a bit counterintuitive, but it's to ask yourself, do I need to be at the meeting? Right. So a lot of times we feel compelled to join every single meeting and perhaps not provide autonomy to others to run that meeting to deliver their answer about whatever they think we should be doing next or their solution to a problem. And we end up filling up our schedule with meeting after meeting after meeting. Instead, we could be trusting others on the team to go ahead and run a meeting on a particular topic, to arrive at a solution, to consider all points of view. And we can do this by taking an 8020 look at our meeting. So what are the 20% of the meetings in your calendar, which could create 80% of the results that you're looking for, 80% of the momentum in your business or your life rather than join them all? The other beauty of this is that when you do this, you give a lot more autonomy to others on your team to take decisions without you as a manager, as a leader, or as an entrepreneur. And usually what you'll see is that their energy and their work will fly. So take an 8020 approach to your meetings. You really need to be at every single meeting that you're currently at.

The third thing that we can do to make meetings awesome is to make sure that we're combating meeting fatigue. Whether we're doing physical meetings, especially when we're doing virtual meetings, I highly recommend, and there's actually a setting in your calendar where you can do this. Don't, don't schedule 30 minute or 60 minute meetings. Schedule only 25 minute or 50 minute meetings. Because those five minutes or those 10 minutes give you a break, give you a chance to get up, recharge, process everything that you've just heard.

Maybe not even do that, maybe not process or do anything. Maybe just, just relax, you know, just have a pause. Because if we go from one topic to the next with no break whatsoever. It can just. It feels like you're being put to the wringer, right? I mean, I'm sure, I'm sure you've had days where it just, it's just exhausting, right? You just go, go from one meeting to the next. You get to the end of the day and you don't even know half the things that you can't even remember half the things that were discussed. You have trouble thinking about all the actions that you should be taking from all the various things discussed, all the meetings, and it just becomes a big blur. And that's because you're stacking these meetings one on top of the other, and it just becomes physically exhausting. Think of it this way. Think if you're at the gym and instead of it just being, you know, a short workout, the person said, no, you're going to work out for six straight hours and there's going to be no rest between sets. You'd be, you'd collapse, you'd be exhausted. And it's the same thing with meetings. Meetings are work. They're mental work. And so we need, we need recovery. We can't just be doing the stress part of the equation. We need stress plus rest equals growth, right? The other thing that you could do to really make your meetings awesome. Fourth thing is to ask yourself, how do I show up with excellence in this meeting? How would the best version of me walk into that room? What does active participation in the meeting look like versus passive? Have you ever noticed when you're in a meeting and if you're not really talking, for example, you suddenly get a little bit drowsy? I mean, I've done this. I've had times where I'm sitting there and I'm like blinking my eyes. I'm thinking to myself, geez, I'm going to fall asleep. The simplest solution when that happens is to start speaking, to start being more actively engaged in whatever that meeting is. But you can also bring a lot more intentionality to the meeting by once again asking yourself beforehand, how do I show up with excellence in this meeting today? Now, where do you do that? Well, you could do it right before the meeting. But actually when I prefer to do this is right at the start of the day. I look at all the meetings that I have in the course of a day, and I ask myself, how would the best version of me show up? How would that version of me interact with each of those people? I think about the people in the meeting. I think about their strengths, their weaknesses. What the outcome of the meeting is, what the potential pitfalls in the meeting are. And I picture how would I navigate all of that again, how would the best version of me show up and, like, rock that session with the other people, not just for the benefit of the meeting, but for the benefit of all the attendees? You're a role model in those meetings. You're demonstrating to others what they should be doing in the meetings. Remember the 8020 thing? You don't want to be present in all the meetings. You're demonstrating to others what they should be doing in the meetings that you're not going to be involved with. So really think, what does excellence mean for you in that meeting? How does that mean you participate actively versus passively? The last and final thing, and this was a real game changer for me. Have you been in this situation where it feels like.

You get to the end of the day and you just had literally no time to work on what mattered most or the things that you thought were going to be most important to you? So I had this all the time. And I realized because I didn't really have any structure to when my meetings were being scheduled. So, for example, if I had white space in my day, the whole day would just get filled with meetings. Eric, can you meet here? Eric, can you meet there? Yep, yep, I'm free then. I'm free there, no problem. And suddenly you have eight hours of just solid meetings. But then I made a key decision to separate my days into maker versus manager time. Maker time is in the morning, when my energy is highest. I don't need the energy of others. You know, if I was a light bulb, I'm 100% power, right? Whereas in the afternoon, manager time, my energy is a little bit lower, so is the energy of others. And it's almost like coming together, meeting with another person. Maybe you're both at 50% now, you got 100% energy again. But in the mornings, I keep them free. And so when somebody says, can I schedule a meeting with you in the morning? Rarely, unless it's an absolute emergency, will I say yes. I simply say, I'm sorry, I have another appointment at that time. Now that appointment is with myself to work on whatever's creative in that moment in that day. And then my meetings, I block together in the afternoons. So that's when I'm meeting with others, whether internally or externally.

So really try this. And I think you're going to absolutely transform both how you feel about meetings, what they can do for you, and just elevate them to a totally new level. So I hope you enjoyed that. And if you'd like more insights about how to close that gap between who you are, who you're capable of being, maybe take your company or your team up to a higher level as well, then please visit my website@ericpartaker.com where you can subscribe to my weekly newsletter.