Inside JLC: The Impact of Engaging with JLC

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming and being with us again at a JLC podcast. This is JLC Media. It's on Zip. It's a podcast environment as well as YouTube. And we had one idea in mind for our meeting today. And as a result of our conversation, I decided to shift it slightly. And the reason I decided was because of some provocations from Joe, my colleague and JLC associate, and Colleen, my colleague and associate. And she has been with me on this journey for a long time learning about this work. So the reason why I wanted to do this one today is so that I could talk a little bit with my colleagues about why bother with this JLC stuff, how does it really impact us? And we're going to come through a couple of ideas for understanding about. You need to understand why this stuff seems to matter to people in private sector, public sector, government, education, and even nonprofits, NGOs, things like that that we have worked with in the past. And at the end of this, each of you will have an opportunity to think about what could I do differently? One of them would be to give us a ring. We're always available for an absolutely free discovery call. But I would like each of you to be thinking a little bit about a couple of topics that I think will impact your bottom line or impact your expected outcomes. So I'm looking forward to this today. So, Colleen, what did you hear me say we're going to work on?

So I heard you say that today's topic is really about why bother engaging with jlc? What are some of the key reasons other people have in a variety of different market areas, including government and public sector and private sector? So what are some of the reasons why you engage with us and how might perhaps our services enhance and impact your bottom line and your organization?

Whatever the bottom line is, it could be student learning, it could be employee retention. It could be a lot of things. But there are bottom lines for every organization. Joe, what are you hearing? Anything more different than what Colleen heard?

Yeah, I think it's really at the heart of our work, the subject you're bringing up, Ray, which is, why is it meaningful? Because there are many things in life or in business, perhaps even that seem like good ideas. And I think the businesses that are successful focus on what is essential for us to accomplish what we want to accomplish. I think those of us who work in this field and talk about how to make your organization more effective very much see the applicability of these tools immediately to your business and to your marketplace. And so it's not something that you have to study for a long time. I think it is relatively straightforward, but it requires disciplined practice and support from leadership. And if you do that, then you will see improvements in your bottom line and in your outcomes.

I think you've said that beautifully. I totally agree. So I'm going to start with the heart of the work that we do. If somebody stopped me in an elevator and said, so what's your elevator pitch? You know, I'd say, well, would you like to have a better meeting and would you like to have less meetings? And that's where I begin. It's like, how can I have less meetings? I have so much information to share and my meetings are great. They love me, you know, everything's going great, you know, and when we go and observe, because that's the first thing we do at jlc, we observe people in meeting settings. Sometimes it's a one on one meeting, sometimes it's a one on many, sometimes it's an entire convention. We go and watch, observe, and then we provide feedback. And sometimes people don't love feedback because they think it's just about judgment and criticism. And there's some judgment in there. There's probably some criticism in there. The truth is, we do our best to let people know. This particular meeting we observed seemed to have this kind of impact. And if we can enhance the quality of your meeting, you'll have less meetings and more impactful meetings. So I would like you each to tell me an example of that where you've seen a meeting like, oh my God, and let's not name names. We don't want to throw anybody under the bus here. But the key part of this is if your meetings are more effective, they are then also more efficient and they dramatically affect your bottom line. Colleen, would you like to start with a little story, one you've seen where your support and help has reduced the frequency but also improved the quality and definitely had an impact on bottom line.

Sure. I had been providing executive coaching with this one gentleman for a year, over a year. He recently transitioned to a new role as a senior leader where he was facilitating these meetings. He had been there approximately two weeks. I was invited to listen into his meeting. I have got to tell you, he was exceedingly focused on every agenda item. Began with, why are we talking about this? Making connections to the priorities he focused on. What did he want people to know and be able to do with every agenda item. Second major thing he did, he held the team until they could identify what is the result. We're trying to achieve. And then he held them till. If they're talking about a matrix, right, or there's a spreadsheet, they're talking about numbers. Okay, well, help me understand. Where does this number lie? What are we trying to achieve? Is this a stretch number? Is this our goal? Where is this? He consistently closed the loop and developed a common understanding about the slide, about the data sets, and about just really the information that was being shared. The final thing this gentleman did was he held the conversation until a time frame and specific outcomes were identified and written down and captured. And I've got to tell you, I closed the loop with kind of his senior officer that invited me to this conversation. And he goes, already this senior leader who's been there for two weeks, you can feel the impact that he's having. Everyone's clear on what they need to do. Everyone has an opportunity to put their voice in. In the meetings, and they already feel a shift in the way that the culture. The culture is really being established since his short term of two weeks.

I love that, and I love the fact that they're working on a project or an initiative, and that's where you see the culture unfolding. Joe, what did you hear her say? How did that resonate? And give us a story when you're done?

Well, I appreciate what Colleen's story focuses on, which is how you can begin these practices, and it can have pointed outcomes that support what it is that your organization is trying to do. And I think that is certainly true across the board. It is also true that people can hear about the tactics, the processes, understand a little bit more about the science, and do absolutely nothing and choose to stay in their comfort zone and not move to a better process. I think there is an awkwardness sometimes when you talk about closing the loop, so occasionally stopping the conversation to say, what did you hear me say? And how does that land on you? So that you invite the party you're talking with into the space to tell you what they heard and what their concerns might be? Because we as people, as human beings, talk through our. Our biases and our filters. Also. Human beings listen through those same biases. Well, not the same, but through their own biases and through their own filters. The opportunity for you to have said something and have it received exactly as you intended is, you know, it's a probability. I don't know exactly what the probability is, but I submit that the probability is a lot lower than whatever you think it is. And so this becomes the need to say to someone, what did you hear me say what are you thinking about? And so this invariably becomes so what I have as an example, as a story is some people that I worked with recently who, where they had to have uncomfortable conversations with people about their performance, they were quite concerned about this. They spent a lot of time thinking about it. They spent a lot of time ordering what had happened in their mind and preparing for this discussion. They then called the individual in. And I'm generalizing a little bit because it was actually two different cases that I have experience with recently. They call the individual in, they said what they had to say, and then they sent the individual away. And there was no closing the loop for people who work in government. I say, okay, well I guess you must have a lot of time to spend answering congressional interest or equal opportunity complaints because this is how this starts is people feel undervalued, underappreciated, and they feel like they have no voice in the process when simply by closing the loop, okay, I'm concerned about your performance. My observation is that these are the things that have occurred, you know, and let them have an opportunity to respond to that and let them have an opportunity to tell you what they heard, which may very well have been different from what you intended. That is a hugely valuable process that has the effect of shortening the difficult conversation, focusing it on the points that are the most necessary and providing opportunities for that person to change or for the fit question to be fully surfaced.

And decided, okay, that's beautiful. And I'm going to pick on Joe. Joe years ago asked me to come and work with him and his team. And I remember over a cup of coffee in between sessions, a little break was happening. This gentleman said to me, this is so right on. Because the way he treats us is if I make a statement to him in his office that I'm going to do X by Y, he doesn't forget that. And he comes back and says, how's X going? And we're getting near. Why are we going to meet the timeline that you promised? And at one point I think that person was attempting to make believe he was doing something non leader like. And my response to that human being was that's exactly what a great leader does. Accountability has to do with promises that we make. We make them in meetings and then that's the deal is the leader will come back and say, how you doing on X? And is it going to be accomplished by Y? A colleague of Joe's similar complaint about him, don't go and talk to him because he's going to give you something to do, and then he's going to expect you to do it. I'm like, really? Okay, that sounds reasonable to me. And he would hold meetings with senior leaders in his organization. And at the end of every agenda item, he asked each leader to make their personal commitment to action. What are you going to do about this? What are you personally going to do? Well, this gentleman was like a severe note taker, and he would write them all down. And the next time that group met again, he went through each of the promises to just see how did it go. You had to feel the creative tension in the room. And the first time that he did it, people were stunned. It was like that meeting was a month ago or six weeks ago. I don't know why we're talking about that now. It's almost as that. The meetings live in isolation. And once the meeting is over, it kind of dies. This particular leader and Joe's, one of them would not let it die. I want to know how you did on what you promised. If you make a promise, expect you to complete it. That is one of the, believe it or not, in the literature about trust, that's one of the high markers for great trust, is that people accomplish the things that they promise. It is the definition of a professional that is behaving in a trustful or trustworthy manner. I make a promise and I keep it in the best interest of my colleague or clients. This work that we do is about taking a long laundry list of stuff, narrowing it down. What are the priorities? How do they match our tactical goals for this year, our breakthrough goals for this year, and how do they connect to the strategic imperatives that we've constructed? That's what we do. That's what all of us do. The three of us do this every day that we're working with somebody. How to reduce the noise, how to reduce the fillers, the places where meetings are just like, God, I hated that. And the literature on the meetings is 70 stuff to almost. Some have 85%. I don't think it's that high. Some have over 70%. That's the. If you're having 70% of your meetings as meaningless, not worthwhile, how could that in any way, in any way improve the bottom line that you're trying to accomplish? This is really powerful stuff. And you can change. They already gave you stuff. Every agenda item should have a very clear big why? What's the context? Why are we talking about this? And it also includes, what do I expect each of you to do, not one of you, each of you, to do at the end of this agenda item, when we do this on a regular basis, and the people that we love and support, and we do unconditionally love our client base, help them do this on a very regular basis, Things changed dramatically in the outputs and in reaching the expected desired state, the desired future state. Colleen, what are you thinking right now? Oh, Joe, you had your hand up. What are you thinking right now?

I wanted to talk a little bit about the how because I think many times people are very much into the how. So I think so let's just talk about some kind of classic meetings. So let's say that the leader comes to the meeting. It's an hour long meeting. There's no agenda. There's perhaps a couple of briefing slides or maybe information papers that are going to be discussed. And so maybe those are priorities for the leader, maybe they're not. So the group will. The leader will come in and sit down and we'll start the meeting. Maybe the topics that are on the leader's mind only touch a few people around the room and then they will discuss some of those topics. Maybe they will discuss the briefings and the papers. Maybe not. The leader will be stirred, if you will, to talk about several things that have occurred to him or encounters that he has had that are not positive, he or she. Then in about the last five minutes of the meeting, it'll be, anybody have anything else or anybody have any questions? Most of the room is like, no, let us just get out of here. And then the meeting's over. I think this describes typically, Certainly in my 44 years in government, this would describe close to 95%. I think of the meetings. Another, another form of this meeting would be that there has been some meeting planning done ahead of time so that the leader has really thought about, okay, I'm paying a lot of money for all these people to sit around this table and talk. And while they are sitting here talking, which is not a bad thing, but while they are sitting here talking, they are not solving problems or making my company more profitable or getting this organization closer to its mission. You focus by having an agenda. Perhaps it's only two or three items. You clearly make it plain to people before they come to the meeting that these are the things we are going to talk about today. When the meeting starts, the leader recognizes that the group is all scattered mentally and they are thinking about other things. The leader does what we call a check in to bring all the voices and the focus and the attention into the room. You immediately gain 10 minutes in the meeting by focusing people. Otherwise they will wander around and only come into the conversation later. If ever you check them in, you say, this is what we're here to do today. You talk about the agenda items. Maybe you have some things as the leader that you want to talk about. Then you have the opportunity to go around the room and engage people into the agenda items. And it has the opportunity to be very focused. And at the end of the hour, you can say, all right, these are the things we've talked about. These are the commitments we have made on the things we are going to do by name, by date, questions about that, other things we haven't thought of, okay? And then you can conclude the meeting. Another way to accomplish that meeting would be again, to have an agenda, to have thought carefully about what's going to happen for the leader, perhaps to talk about those items for 20 minutes or maybe 10 minutes each, you know, whatever, for the leader. Then to have the group break down into small sessions and have them talk peer to peer about what they think is of concern and what is a problem. And of course, breaking it down into a small group. This is something that many people are not comfortable doing, but it requires no infrastructure. It requires only the mindset of the leader to implement it effectively. And you create a huge safe space because you allow people to talk to their peers as opposed to running the risk of asking leadership a direct question. You provide this safe space where they can talk peer to peer about, okay, how crazy is this idea? What do you think we should do? What about this? What about that? Again, you get three or four of these groups talking, you allow them to talk for however long is productive, typically three minutes, maybe five minutes, but a few minutes of discussion. Then again, because you've only used up 20 minutes of your hour, you then pull the group back into a larger session and say, okay, tell me what you talked about. And so you're providing a lot of, a lot of safe space for them to now ask questions about what is occurring in this space. And on the change you're talking about. Then from that, they have the ability to ask questions again as a group as opposed to being singled out and running the risk. Again, you open the group up to greater conversation and greater opportunity, and you can then summarize with a list of action items, as in the earlier meeting. So if you were given, if you were in charge of a company, if you had an incredible amount of money and you had your own company and you were the head of it. And you could choose between these three models. Why would you ever choose the first one? Well, ego, because you like to talk and you don't like answering questions. There are probably other reasons, but there's really not much of a business model that says the first model should be something you would practice. Nevertheless, it is, I think, the main model for how much many meetings are held. And it does not contribute to the bottom line and it contributes to our culture of meetings are not effective. Meetings are to be despised and are not useful. There are alternatives available. There are tools that are available. You can change these habits today.

Today. Today can change them today. Colleen, how do you react to that?

Yeah, well, I like that you shared. What I heard Joe share were some good non examples of how to run a meeting and some very tactical ways that if people choose to change their behavior in how they facilitate a meeting can have immediate impact. And I agree. I mean, I think all of us have been in one of those meetings. In fact, I was observing a meeting with a client. Lot of senior leaders around the table. There are about a dozen of them. And at the end of the meeting they said, okay, meeting adjourned. They got up to walk away and the one leader said, wait a minute, what did we just agree to do? Crickets. Nobody could articulate that piece. So I find it very interesting to Joe's point, we spend so many resources, so much energy, so much time. How can we make our meetings the most efficient meeting we can hold? So we reduce the number of meetings, keep people busy at their spots doing the work out of unnecessary meetings, and really align all of the meetings throughout the organization to those strategic priorities. So we're focused on moving the entire organization towards the desired results.

That's beautiful. Both of you have brought forward all of the key conditions to make a meeting work. Well, let me just kind of summarize quickly those of you that are listening. You can always check people in. You can always ask them what's top of mind for you and how are you going to get rid of that for the next hour? How are you going to just kind of put it aside? They can talk to the person next to them and they don't have to divulge that. They could be worried about a parent or a kid or something happened at work. It takes about 90 seconds. It's like really fast. And the leader doesn't have to hear that, just has to do it. Get the voices in the room first thing, thing check in second. Every agenda item should have a clear context, purpose, and outcome, and it should be connected to the mission or the annual objective that they're trying to accomplish. When you're trying to build an understanding, make sure that you deal with any roadblocks that. Are there anything troubling you about this agenda item? Let's get it. Let's get it out. Let's get it over with. You can do that in pairs again. You then move to what do we need to understand in order to take action? Action comes from understanding. These are not hard things to do. And after every agenda item, you can stop and say, what's your big takeaway? And what is your personal commitment to action? Those are simple things to do. They will change your life and they'll change your bottom line today, because people will go out of that office out of understanding. I have made commitments and promises to do the following things to increase my ability to make this particular mission objective come true. Ladies and gentlemen, this is not a hard thing to do, but it is something that can be done immediately. I think Joe and Colleen laid this up beautifully for you, and I'm going to ask them for a real quick. We always do this. If your best friend is online right now and they're a leader or an aspiring leader, what's one thing you would say to them about a step they could take today to change the way they meet with people? Colleen, what's one thing you would tell them?

I would just say it's as simple as being intentional. The things that we laid out. First off, you know, I need to be very intentional and deliberate in them instead of rolling into a meeting and starting it just like the last one that I had last week. All right, let's go. So my invitation is to be intentional and to be very deliberate with every and each meeting.

That's beautiful. It needs to get into your core. And I love the thing that Joe brought out to. It may feel awkward to say, what did you hear me say? And what does that mean to you? That may feel awkward. So what you can do as leader is you can say, hey, what I heard you say is this. And this is what it meant to me. Did I get that right? Oh, my God. You just start doing that at something. Something shifts in the room. And everybody wants me to work on diversity, inclusion. What Joe and Colleen have laid out is how diversity and inclusion play out in a meeting. We get all the voices in the room. We get everybody's thinking in the room. We get really mixed up on this whole DEI thing. I think, Joe, what would something you tell you somebody you know, well, yeah.

So I would, I would offer two things. One, I think some people frequently say, well, we're having a meeting, but it's just an information meeting. And so to those people I would say you're on the wrong path. I want to come to you wherever you are and give you a big hug. But you're on the wrong path. Because having meetings to share information, I call those Lamborghini meetings. It is incredibly expensive way to distribute information. And in the 21st century a shortage of information is not our problem. That was a problem I would submit in the 1960s, 70s and 80s. We no longer live in that timeframe. And if you are trying to use your meetings to share information, you are my friend, living in the past. And so if what you are trying to do is spread information around, you can do that by email. You can construct reading list. Again, there are many, many best practices on how to spread information. You should not be having meetings to share information. Now there is a 1% exception to that which are very high level strategic meetings. Those are different. We're talking about most of the run of the mill meetings. The other thing that I would like to say is that occasionally we have all had the experience of working someplace and then having a colleague who gets hired by perhaps a firm that is known to be high tech, forward thinking, forward leaning, Google comes to mind or Microsoft or other companies, not just it, but across the board. And many times you're like, wow, that's how did you do that? How did you get noticed? Or how did you become discovered in that space? And are you looking forward to the challenge when you go to those places and you investigate how they run their meetings? It's what we're talking about. It is what we are talking about. This is why they are forward leaning and this is why they have an ability to come to grips with serious problems, serious issues in their business. So the gosh gee, I wonder how I could ever get hired by X or Y. Well part of you being hired by X or y forward leaning company would be you would have to go through this transition. So I would invite you to think about how much more attractive you could be as a worker, as an executive, at whatever level if you were to bring some of these skills to the table.

All of these things are learnable. Everything we're offering to you are things you can learn and apply immediately in your own voice in the wrong way, but you can apply them immediately. One of those forward thinking companies has two kind of like mantras. The aspiration of this company is to win in this space, whatever it is that they produce or sell or we need to win in this space. And they ask everybody in the system to explain, accept the role that my job in whatever I'm working on right now is to help the team win. Everybody help the team win. It is truly a foreign notion in so many places. I think you you heard great stuff from my gang today. They are just on fire about this particular one. I stay that way all the time. This is probably what keeps me up at night. I think you understand this stuff. Why don't you just do it? And to Joe's point and Colleen's point, you can do it today. You can make that change today. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed this one. It was a pleasure for me to listen to my two colleagues talk about how much they've internalized the work and how they use the work in their coaching, in their team development and then helping systems with change. Those are things we do. Hope you enjoyed it. Take care. We'll see you again soon. Sincerest thanks for listening to this episode.

Of the Everyday Leadership Conversations podcast.

The Jorgensen Learning center offers a variety.

Of programs for individuals and organizations to.

Enhance their communication and leadership skills. To find out more about programs and upcoming webinars, check out our events page@gojlc.com.