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Leadership Communication – The Vital Skills for Meeting with Success | Conference Speakers
Man: Welcome to this year’s Annual Shareholder’s meeting. We’ll be going over the agenda you have in front of you but first, I’d like to introduce our chairman for his comments. He’s been the major force behind our tremendous growth and expansion.
Woman: Have a seat Jim. I want you to meet with me because I can see something’s affecting your job performance. As your supervisor, I’d like to find out what’s bothering you. Then we’ll see what we can do to improve things. First, I’d like to outline my concerns: I see you coming in late to work and leaving early…
Man: This year’s award’s banquet will honor some of the most creative and valuable people in our company. As your emcee, I’d like to invite you to come up and meet our guest of honor. But first, we’re going to hear from of their old friends and co-workers for some background information about their past. First, here’s someone who’s going to tell us about our favorite vice president…
Jim Cathcart, Conference Speakers
Jim: Hello, I’m Jim Cathcart. Mastering the art of conducting and participating in meetings could well be the most valuable and powerful executive skill you can develop. Now you might say that’s quite a statement, considering all the important skills required of a successful executive. Skills like leadership, delegation, management and communication to name a few. But think about it a second. All of these other skills are actually elements of one comprehensive skill: meeting with people. Meeting successfully and productively with people requires the mastery of human interaction. And human interaction is the essence of leadership and communication. Meetings are central to everything we do. They are the primary source of information exchange in our society. There are absolutely trillions of meetings of every type going on every single minute of every single day.
Narrator: Welcome to Meeting with Success – How to make every meeting count. You’ll be hearing from one of the most experienced meeting planners in the business world. Jim Cathcart is a consultant, public speaker, author, producer and president of his own sales and management firm. He’s found specific strategies to adjourn any meeting with firm results and he shares them with you in Meeting with Success. Much of what you’ll hear in this exciting program comes from Jim’s practical experience. He’s one of the most sought after speakers in the training and development profession. His clients include businesses and organizations all over the world. Among them, American Airlines, Walmart stores, AT&T and General Electric. The National Speaker’s association elected him its president for 1988-89 as well as awarding him its highest honor, the Council of Peers Award for Excellence, the Speaker Hall of Fame. Jim has appeared in scores of video programs, written 16 books and recorded more than a dozen audio albums. His latest effort will have you meeting with success every time you’re involved in a group effort, whether the group includes two or 200. In this specific no nonsense approach, you’ll learn how to conduct meetings like a professional by mastering the six vital elements of every gathering. You’ll hear how to time each meeting so that it’s most effective. And you’ll discover the best way to use technology to get your point across. Jim tells how to say no to nervousness with specific exercises to do before you take the podium. He’ll show you how to deal with audiences of all kinds, hostile or friendly. It’s information we can all use because we’re all involved in meetings everyday. The difference is whether we’ll be meeting with success or mediocrity. Jim starts us down road to achievement by outlining the four basic assumptions involved in mastering meetings.
Jim: Not too long ago, I was in Chicago attending a convention. I had some free time so I went up to my hotel room on the umpteenth floor to relax for a while. I opened the curtains, moved a comfortable chair over to the window and leaned back to gaze out the window. I had an excellent view of about 20 floors of the office building next door. I saw at least a hundred offices. It was cloudy and overcast outside and the lights in the offices made it clear enough so I could see what was going on inside each one. And what was going on in all those offices was meeting after meeting after meeting. There was a formal meeting in a board room, a casual social meeting in a cafeteria. In many private offices, I saw group discussions going on. In other offices, there were obvious reprimands taking place. What I was actually looking at was a microcosm of what goes on daily in every office building, in cities and towns all over the world. Trillions of meetings. And they’re happening constantly. It occurred to me then, meetings are so pervasive and so vital that if you can master the skill of meeting with people, you can get what you want in your career and your life. It is in a very real sense, meeting with success. And once you learned how to do it, and how to make every meeting count, you’ll find that not only will it become almost second nature to you, but it will also boost your career to an amazing degree. So, let’s get started right away.
The first thing to be aware of is that there are four basic assumptions involved in mastering meetings. Let me give them to you now. One, every meeting, regardless of its size is a one-on-one meeting. That’s the most important of the four assumptions. Because for each individual participating, it is in fact, a one-on-one meeting, between him or her and you. No matter how your ideas impact on other people, that person’s reaction is based on his or her own feelings, experiences and understanding of this situation. Each person participates alone even though they are influenced by the others present.
The second assumption is that when the purpose is clear, decision-making is easier. We’ll talk about that assumption later. Third, as my friend Joel Weldon says, “Being prepared compensates for a lack of talent.” It doesn’t matter how smart you are, if you prepared well enough, you’ll probably going to be okay. The fourth and final assumption is that people tend to support those things that they help to create. The more you encourage participation, the more cooperation you’ll get. Remember some of the meetings that you’ve been to? Have you ever had a meeting that everything seemed to be in order but one person reacted in a disruptive way? Sometimes the way one individual is experiencing a meeting can be so distracting that it changes the nature of the entire meeting for the other people. Have you ever been to a meeting where you couldn’t determine exactly why the meeting was being held? If the purpose of the meeting isn’t clear, not only is decision making difficult, it’s also hard for people to recognize how they should be reacting to the information that’s being presented, whether it’s important and should be written down or whether it should be studied in depth or whether it should be just listened to passively. These are common scenarios that we experience as often as once a week. The time and effort that is spent in attending and conducting this kinds of meetings represents a tremendous waste of productivity. So, how do you learn to meet with success? How do you make sure that every meeting counts? What is it that you need to know to succeed in meeting with people and to consistently achieve positive, productive results from your meetings.
Well, first of all, you need to know the vital elements of every meeting. There are six of them. They apply to any and all meetings and the nice thing about it, is they’re all under your control. All six are universal and they interact with one another on either a positive or a negative basis. These six elements are: the purpose of the meeting, the people who attend it, the complexity of the meeting, the place where you meet, the time when you meet and the meeting’s format. The synergy among these six elements can produce successful meetings that are both positive and productive. Or they can produce disasters. The six elements, once again are: purpose, people, complexity, place, time and format.
Let’s take a closer look at these six vital elements so we can understand why each of them have to be carefully planned for in any important meeting, whether it’s one you’re planning to hold or one you’re planning to attend. We’ll start with purpose. Each meeting absolutely must have a clear purpose. People have to know why they’re going to meet. You may need to get information from people. You may want to share information with people. You might want help in problem solving. Others may have asked you to set up a meeting. You may want to establish a project, delegate responsibilities and set up the parameters of the project. Or a group of people with whom you work may have some concerns that need to be discussed and resolved. There are literally hundreds of purposes for a meeting.
The critical point here is that the purpose of any meeting must be defined to help in planning the meeting so that it gets positive results. It’s impossible for a meeting to be well-planned when its purpose hasn’t been defined. One person said, if you don’t have a concrete reason to meet, hold your meeting alone. [laughs]
Knowing the purpose of your meeting will have a direct impact on the quality of the outcome. It’s like the old story of the two fellas who were laying bricks. One was doing a fine job placing each brick meticulously. The other was doing an adequate job, just placing bricks where they needed to be. Upon being interviewed about what they were doing, the one doing the adequate job said, “Well, I’m laying bricks and I’m earning a salary.” The other one said, “I’m building a cathedral that will stand for decades and serve the needs of thousands of people.” Purpose affects the quality of the outcome. I heard an interesting twist on that story a few years ago. They said the cathedral guy got fired because he was supposed to be building a service station. [laughs]
Now, for our second vital element in meeting with success, people. The three important questions to ask yourself when considering the people are who, why and what. Who are the people and why are they being invited? And what are the participants going to do? In other words, how will they contribute to the meeting? It’s who, why and what. Let’s say you are planning a board of director’s meeting. Who will the people be? Well, the directors of the organization will be at the top of the list. Plus, perhaps someone who’s giving a special report. A secretary may be invited to record the minutes and possibly a visiting dignitary will be invited as well. Why are they being invited? Well, the directors are invited because they are members of the board of directors. They have a responsibility to contribute to the meeting and they must be kept informed. Oh, why the visiting dignitary? Well, maybe it’s an honor to attend and it’s your way of submitting the relationship with the VIPs’ organization. Why the secretary? Well, he’s being invited because all the other people need to be active participants and someone has to take down the minutes of the meeting. Why is the person giving the report invited? Maybe because no one else can explain the project quite as well and some of the board members might have some questions, which this person can answer. Now some of these seems pretty obvious. But if you don’t at least think through the attendees briefly, you can end up with people present who don’t really need to be here and may even slow down or disrupt your meeting.
Next, what are these people going to do at the meeting? Well, the board members are probably read their briefing manuals before the meeting then they’ll provide feedback and take notes and challenge ideas brought up in the meeting and so forth. What’s the visiting dignitary going to do? Well, nothing. [laughs]. Probably just greet the group and thank them for the invitation. What is the person giving the report going to do? Does that person know the time frame and the format for the meeting? Does that person know specifically what is expected of him or her? Will he or she attend all or just a part of the meeting? Unless you can see, there’s a lot to it. When selecting who will be invited to the meeting, you must have good answers as to why each of them need to be there. Perhaps, it’s their ability to contribute or its their need to know. Their thinking might be vital or the questions challenging. Be specific. Why do you want each one there? You may want them because of their impact on other people or just because their presence implies an endorsement of your ideas. Perhaps they need to hear the discussion because it will affect their work on a daily basis. Perhaps the decisions from the meeting will affect other decisions they are about to make. Maybe they’re new executive and it’s important for them to get oriented to the organization and find out how the other board members think. The reason who you invite matters so much is that it influences the outcome of the meeting as well as the process of the meeting.
Let me put it this way. You don’t want the atheists to outnumber the believers if you’re holding a church meeting. As a matter of fact, you might not want them there at all. You don’t invite your opponents to the political rally when the purpose of the rally is to support your candidate. You don’t invite old boyfriends or girlfriends to your wedding. Get the point? If they can’t make the meeting better or more productive by being there, don’t include them. Ask yourself, will this person make a valuable contribution? Does this person need to know about what we’re discussing? Will this person distract from the meeting in any way? Is there another way to keep him or her informed and not invite them to the meeting? Hey, if so, go for it. Alright.
So much for the topic of people. Now let’s look at vital element number three in meeting with success. It’s the complexity of a meeting. There are many variables involved in the complexity of any meeting. All of which fall into three categories: quantity, quality and compatibility. Quantity refers to such things as the number of people, the number of topics to be discussed, the number of bits of information and so on. Quality means the quality of the information or topics. Is the topic an important one or an unimportant one? Is the topic complex or simple? What about the participant’s confidence levels? Are they beginners? Or are they sophisticated about the subject to be discussed? It’s not how smart the participants are or how qualified they are that determines complexity. It’s how qualified they are on the subject to be addressed at that meeting. That’s what counts. Compatibility. The third part of complexity refers to the compatibility of the six vital elements within the meeting. For example, you have to be sure that the people in the room interact with each other in such a way as to encourage the desired outcome. Even if it’s a tough negotiation or a meeting where you expect controversy. The people themselves must still be mostly compatible. However, this does not mean they have to totally get along. It just means that their interaction, their combined presence must work with the purpose of the meeting rather than against it. There must be compatibility of subject matter as well. It might be that one topic concerns something very sensitive like corporate drug abuse. And another topic covers the public relations campaign for a new office in Poughkeepsie. Well, those aren’t compatible topics. One should be discussed in a private meeting and the other one maybe in a larger, more public meeting. There should also be compatibility between the subject matter and the players in the room. So you have to be certain that the subjects to be addressed in a meeting either are of concern or directly involve each person who is present. Otherwise, those who are not affected by it will be wasting valuable time and they won’t contribute to the meeting’s desired results.
So those three vital elements are: purpose, people and complexity. The fourth vital element is place. The important question to ask yourself when considering place are: where, why and when. Let’s look at an example. If you are planning a meeting to sell your product to a new prospect and it’s a rather complex sale, let’s assume you want to meet in their office in Chicago even though you’re located in Des Moines. But the representatives of the prospect company won’t be in their office in Chicago for several weeks because they’re making their annual rounds at the regional sales offices. However, you discovered that they will all be making connecting flights on a certain day in Dallas. So, you arrange to meet with them at the airline club at the Dallas Fort Worth airport. You reserve a meeting room, you set a time frame, inform each person and find out when their flights arrive. You do all the preparations necessary so that the “where” of the meeting is determined.
The next question is why are you meeting there? Well, because you can meet with your prospect without interrupting their schedules. They’re going to spend two uneventful hours in Dallas between flights anyway. When should you meet? Well, in this case, you should meet at least 20 minutes after their flight is scheduled to arrive and adjourn at least 20 minutes before their next flight departs. Why? Because you don’t want them sitting there preoccupied or worried that they’re going to miss their next flight. How can you prepare in advance for a meeting like that? Well, if you are meeting in an airport, you know some of the variables. You make sure, for example that your prospect have their boarding passes for the outgoing flight before the meeting begins. All they have to do at the end of the meeting then, is get on their plane and go to their next city.
So the three questions you ask yourself when considering a place for your meeting are where, why and when. The where could be a meeting on a street corner, meeting in a lunch room, meeting as you walk down the hallway or even meeting over the telephone. There are limitless numbers of places where a positive, productive meeting could take place. But when selecting your place for the meeting, the why must be clear. It must support the all important purpose of the meeting. You may choose one place because it’s intimate or another because its open. You may choose a particular place because its convenient or because its more remote, out of the way. No distractions. The question of when as it refers to place is important because it concerns the availability of the place you’ve selected.
If you’re planning a large meeting and you selected the ideal place, well-located, suit your purposes perfectly, yet it isn’t available for the date you needed, obviously you need to choose another place.
Now, let’s look at the fifth vital element of meetings – Time. There are three dimensions to this element as well and these should support your purpose. One is the timing, two is the time frame, and three are the time constraints. Timing will have a great deal of impact. Are you going to meet early in the morning to get a fresh start or are you going to meet late in the day to prepare for the next morning? Are you going to meet on and off all day for status reports on a project? If you’re a sales person, you want to meet whenever it’s convenient for your prospect. If you’re a department head, submitting a request that represents a substantial expenditure from next year’s budget. You want to meet prior to the department’s annual budget meeting. So you adjust the timing of a meeting to fit the circumstances and the reason for meeting. When mapping out the time frame of a meeting, you should realize that two factors come into play. A participant’s expectation of the meeting’s time frame and the reality of the time frame. In other words, there’s the person’s expectations of whether this meeting will be a long one or a short one and there’s the reality of whether it’s actually long or short. If the participants expect it to be one, and it turns out to be another, you got a problem. If you were in an afternoon meeting that began at four o’clock, and you expected it to conclude by normal quitting time at 5:00 pm, how active would participation be as the time dragged on past five o’clock. How attentive would people be? I’d say that active participation would dwindle considerably once five o’clock had passed. Attention would be focused more on the clock than on what was being discussed as people started thinking, “When is this thing going to end?” And they’ll even start reacting to some of the subjects as if rather than being an important subject, they were disturbing their day by interrupting the time frame they have expected. That’s not fair to you, them or the meeting itself.
Time frame in planning a meeting really refers to two considerations: the time frame of the meeting itself such as, “we’ll meet at 8am for an hour and a half and the time frame allotted within the meeting to the various parts of it such as, “Jayson’s 15-minute presentation and the hour that Ellen wants for a brain storming session on how to improve employee morale.” When determining how much time to allot to a given subject, look at the purpose of the meeting itself and the overall time frame for the meeting, then allow each item only the amount of time that is justified by it. As a general rule, it’s a good idea to have a stretch break about every 50 minutes. People need five to ten minutes every hour or so just to move around and improve the circulation in their body. This helps them be more alert and contribute more effectively to the balance of the meeting. Sometimes a break is not necessary as long as you get the people to move around and stretch a little bit. In other words, you can continue with the meeting. Just get them to move around while you’re meeting. At other times, a break is absolutely necessary because there maybe some other pressing business and you need full undivided attention. As for time constraints, there are a lot of things that come into play here. For example, time constraints may involve the limited time that a meeting room is available to you. And several of the participants might need to return to their offices before finishing the day. So that would put a limit on the time. The last of the six vital elements in meetings is the meeting format. And again there are three things involved. In format, you consider the process with which the meeting takes place, the placement of the participants and objects in the meeting room, and the formality of the meeting, both the physical formality of it as to how it is set up as well as the psychological formality with which you conduct the meeting. Let’s look at process first, though. What are the elements of process in a meeting? Well, there’s the agenda. The agenda determines the order in which topics will be discussed. To establish an agenda, just make a written list of all the things that need to be covered during the meeting and then rank them in order of priority. Allocate the amount of time that each one requires in order to be handled appropriately. If some of the items don’t fit on the agenda or they take up too much time, save them for later or handle them through a memo or a phone call. Planning the process can involve deciding whether to begin a meeting with announcements and then begin some heavy decision making. Or to begin with reports from various individuals to ensure that they feel more a part of the group or whatever. Another way to choose how to sequence the items in the meeting would be to consider whether the people are fully prepared. If everyone comes to the meeting well prepared to fully participate, it may take a very little warm up. If they are not particularly well prepared, you may need to spend a few moments allowing them to adjust to the meeting situation, to put them at ease and get them in the right frame of mind for the task at hand. You may also have to add some information to those opening moments to orient them to the subject matter.
Another important part of the meeting format is placement. This includes the placement of the participants within the meeting and the placement of objects within the rooms such as the chairs, the furniture, equipment, materials and so forth. For example, if you want a social, close knit feeling, you’d use a round table rather than a rectangular one. Not only does this encourage a closer feeling but titles and positions tend to blur when every one is placed equally in a physical sense. The closer the group sits together around the table, the more of an “in” feeling develops. If on the other hand, you use a rectangular table, remember that face-to-face sitting can encourage opposition. Take care in selecting who would sit across from the chairman of the meeting. Because it could encourage confrontation on sensitive topics. Also, rather than siting a chairman at either end of the table, it’s sometimes a good idea to sit them in the middle because this way, they’re closer to the rest of the people. And their position might not be quite so imposing. If the meeting involves negotiation, it’s best to mix participants of the opposing sides to minimize the hostile feelings of two armies ready to destroy each other. Several years ago, I worked as a consultant to an insurance firm in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The general agent in charge of that insurance firm is a very tall fellow, 6 feet, 7 inches tall. Friendly, but very large. He found that during his staff meetings each week, most of the staff members were not participating. They would just simply sit there and listen to what he had to say and not react very much. He wanted to encourage more participation and he asked me what I would suggest. I said to him, “Joe, you’re a tall guy. You’re also the man in charge. It tends to intimidate the other people when you sit at the head of the table. So what you might do in beginning your staff meetings, is take off your jacket, relax a little bit and sit in one of the chairs on the side of the table and see how it affects the interaction. He found that just by making that minor adjustment, all the people and the staff willingly and actively participated. And the intimidation they had felt before was completely dissolved. Side by side sitting makes disagreement difficult. Sitting a supportive member next to an antagonistic member can help avoid later confrontation. The placement of furniture can also decide the tone of the meeting. If all the chairs are facing toward the platform or a lectern, participation isn’t as likely. If equipment blocks the view of some of the participants, they will lose attention and soon become frustrated. As for the physical and psychological formality of a meeting, the physical formality refers to the actual meeting room set up. For example, if the meeting is to be particularly formal, there may be place cards to specify sitting. There may be a lectern or a podium and the dress may be formal, too. The level of psychological formality refers to the feelings the participants get because of the actions of those in charge and the level of physical formality as well. And the levels of both these physical and psychological formality really do depend on the purpose of the meeting itself.
Here’s an illustration. Let’s say the purpose of this particular meeting is to award Lyn, a 15-year veteran of your company with a medallion for superior service. You can call a meeting together by saying, “Hey everyone, come here a second.” Most of the employees in the outer office walk in to your office, some are a bit disgruntled because they were deeply involved in some work and you have interrupted them. You pull a medallion out of your pocket and say, “Here, Lyn, here’s the medallion. This is for being the best employee in the corporation for the last five years. Congratulations. By the way, there’d be newspapers and stuff making announcements of this, so anyway, good job. Okay, you can all go back to work now.” Now that kind of a lack of formality for such a special occasion. Absolutely kills the whole intent.
Now on the other hand, let’s assume that you take it this way. You say, “Folks, on Tuesday afternoon at four o’clock, we’re going to have a very special meeting. I’d like you to come to my office at that time.” Then on Tuesday, everyone puts on their jacket, straighten their ties, otherwise they get themselves ready for a special event. They come to the room selected for the meeting and you’d have it laid out in such a way that it draws attention to what’s going to take place there. It’s a little bit more formal. You get everybody seated. You greet them and then you say, “Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to thank you for coming this afternoon. And as I said, this is a very special event. We’re here because we have someone in our midst who’s done something that I believe is fantastic. Lyn here, has been working with us for 15 years. And as you know for the last five years, there’s been an ongoing review to determine who has made the most valuable player type of contribution. Well, I’m honored to tell you that our own Lyn Anderson is that person. I got a message from our home office last week. And they sent me this box that contains something that I think Lyn will find very valuable. Lyn, would you please come forward?” And you lead the applause and Lyn comes forward basking in the glow. And then you say, “Lyn, on behalf of our organization, and on behalf of John Schaeffer, our chairman, I would like to present you with the outstanding employee of the ages award. Thank you very much for your fantastic contributions to our company.” Lyn opens the box, lights up like a Christmas tree and you finish by saying, “Folks, let’s adjourn this meeting and take the next 15 minutes or so to give Lyn our own congratulations and then I’ll see you all tomorrow.” Now the meeting in that second example was held in an appointed time so everyone was ready to attend. It was held at the end of the day, not the beginning so the employees could take their time and congratulate Lyn and not have to go right back to work. The formality of the meeting made it seem so special that Lyn would probably never forget that meeting as long as she lives. Meetings are really kind of like gifts in wrapping paper. There’s psychological wrapping paper and there’s physical wrapping paper. You can wrap up an ordinary event so that it is really special. Or you can wrap up a special event, like in a plain brown wrapper and it won’t seem special at all. So it really does matter how you treat the formality of the meeting itself. I once received a little plastic box with some cotton in it. And on that cotton was a tiny beautifully-cut emerald. It was valuable but it just looked like piece of crystal. Yet I’ve seen fake emeralds mounted in cheap gold tone settings, placed in deep velvet ring boxes and they looked like they cost a fortune. So the sparkle doesn’t necessarily have to be in the item or in the meeting’s agenda. It’s often just in the packaging, the way you put it together. That’s a good thought to keep in the back of your mind whenever you are planning a meeting. And remember this, all too often, people don’t give much thought to planning their meetings. Their lack of results demonstrate that fact. So if you find yourself falling into that situation, don’t forget, you can change it for the better.
Always keep in mind the four fundamental assumptions about meetings. Every meeting is one-on-one meeting. When the purpose of the meeting is clear, decision making is easier. Preparation compensates for a lack of talent. And people are more likely to support the things that they helped to create. And be sure to plan your meetings by utilizing these six vital elements of purpose, people, complexity, place, time and format. All of these elements are within your control. And once you learn how to master them, you’ll be the person who meets with success.
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For more information contact Jim Cathcart or Cathcart Institute, Inc. at http://Cathcart.com