Under control/Beyond small talk/Dismissed for learning/Money meetings/Art exhibition/Don't throw lollies/Pile o' books/The Practice Day
Monday, December 2, 2024 at 5:34PM 
So you’re the one that’s going to keep us under control 🤣
Said with a bit of a laugh, this is one of those statements I hear frequently before facilitating a workshop, strategic planning or team day.
It perhaps harks back to their teacher or principal at school who was the senior and most authoritative person in the situation, keeping things under control!
And the assumption can be that is what the facilitator of their meeting/workshop/gathering will be … the controller.
I’ll usually laugh back with ‘it’s almost the opposite in that I’ll be trying to let you go wild and not control you!!’
That is, wild within the constraints of the topic, goal and environment set for the day; because constraints and boundaries can be a wildly comforting thing for workshop participants.
They know where the fences to the playground are and they can wildly go wild within that. It’s why demonstrating some boundaries is so important yet many people facilitating fail to do it.
Creativity and innovation in constraint can bring out some of the most wonderful thinking, risk taking and ideation. That’s in contrast to us thinking that if the topic is wide open then anything goes.
But many people won’t … go. They don’t know how far might be too far and so they tend to simply … stay. Safe.
Constraints go beyond agendas. They’re defined via conversation, behaviour, visual tools, questions, responses, laughter, stories, examples and a bit of time and space.
And when they do go wild they’re still safe.
We can always let the boundaries out wider and wider. ‘Anything goes’ usually doesn’t. Rethink how you frame, set up and facilitate with flexible boundaries in sight, but not too close.
Talking about what you talk about
It’s mildly amusing that the prompt LinkedIn asks you at the start of a post here is ‘what do you want to talk about?’, because I’d like to talk about talking!
Not speaking or voice but the practice of connecting through talking.
Many leaders and teams comment about how connection is lacking in their workplace, team and how they work. Simply asking ‘how are you going’ or ‘what did you do on the weekend’ can bring small talk into the realm of what a health practitioner will ask right before they … well … they’re trying to relax you and build that connection of course.
But there’s a place beyond the clumsy and repeatable clichéd small talk — and it’s not so far as the deeper big talk in touchy topics like religion and taxes — and that’s ’medium talk’.
Not so light as that first layer of small talk and not so deep that you’ve over-shared, trauma dumped or frightened a new starter away from your team in their first week.
How we strike the balance as humans between deliberately connecting with people, and letting a conversation flow, can be an art and thankfully, a skill. We can learn it.
And it’s a skill for these times of multigenerational and diverse workforces, well-being and burnout, hybrid work, and the disconnection, loneliness, exclusion and isolation many people experience.
Have a read of this piece by Lauren Ironmonger about medium talk, and while it might talk a little more to making friends in life generally, there’s much to apply to the delicate navigation of conversation, connection and talk at work.
For leaders, this skill is a must-have and a ‘do better’. It’s a joy to speak with a leader who has that ease of conversation, when they go further than chat about the weather, but don’t go to the depths of us needing to debrief with someone afterwards!
There’s an opportunity here for us all to move beyond the smaller stuff when talking and explore the medium stuff … without diving into the depths of the deep stuff.
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Desperate for learning — or hacking the systems of control
The recent story of team members attending two online learning programs at once — which led to their dismissal — makes you wonder.
What was the true problem here?
▫️Is it that they were desperate for development and tackled two programs at once? What a mess of multitasking, thinking two programs are better than one.
▫️ Were they short on time and wanted in on clashing sessions? Who hasn’t struggled for choice at a conference or development event when the best things are all on at the same time!
▫️ Or were they hacking their compliance training? Who hasn’t sped through dull online content just to get to the end and finish the droning pain?
And maybe it’s something else.
Multitasking in meetings and training is common with attendees frequently working on other tasks, emails and back channel chats while the dullness continues.
And we’ve possibly seen people be physically present in one meeting, while wearing an ear pod, trying to listen in to another meeting somewhere else!
Maybe the naughtiness is a combination of:
▫️ ‘give us plenty development please’ and
▫️ ‘we don’t really have time for this’ plus a bit of
▫️ ‘if I have to do this dullness, I’ll do it as rapidly as I can.’
Clever people will find hacks and shortcuts to tick boxes and jump hoops.
And that it was part of a learning festival makes me wonder just how festive it was.
Development can be thin on the ground in these tight budget times and ingenuity will win out. What do you think was happening here?
Meetings make money
And yes they also waste money and time, can be dull and disengaging too. They are one of the most dominant ways that many industries spend time and money and earn time and money.
Meetings are part of sales and pitching processes, marketing and communication systems, influence and engagement strategies, leadership and management behaviours and command and control cultures. ‘
Let’s get in front of people’.
‘Go! Get out and see more people.’
‘It’s time we got everyone together to ensure they understand.’
I’ll call a meeting to get an update on things.’
All of these ‘default to meeting’ responses show how addicted we are to the time and energy suck of potentially more meetings than we really need.
And this is the systemic thing that’s not really going to change: no matter the number of tips for better meetings, agenda ideas and ice breaker activities. That’s just theatre.
It’s a big deal to change an entire organisation’s meeting culture — as much as the boring meetings and low levels of participation frustrate us, they are still seen as a fundamental part of doing the work… or the work about the work.
Meetings are called, set up and run by powerful systems and structures in organisations. Many people don’t really have an interest to improve, reduce or get rid of meetings. Their work is all about the meeting. It’s ‘easy work’.
But that doesn’t mean you have to attend every meeting you’re invited to.
Some of my previous advice, articles and books on increasing the amount of asynchronous work you do (the opposite of meeting at the same time, synchronous work) is working on tasks in ways that are more flexible or suitable for you.
So do this:
😮 CANCEL or DECLINE 1 in 3 meeting invites.
This will reduce the pressure on your time, and lift your mood from being in depressing one-way presentations of information, rather than participative experiences of co-creation at work. But to change your organisation’s meeting culture this year? It’s probably not going to happen.
Rather, start with yourself.
Don’t attend 1 in 3 meetings you’re invited to. You choose which 1 in 3 gets the chop. You’ll know which one you can let slide.
Instead :
😃 scan read the transcript.
😃 watch the video on 2x speed.
😃 chat with a colleague about what happened.
😃 wait to be informed via meeting notes or actions that you’ve got some work to follow up on.
😃 and just go to the next one. You’ll be able to catch up in less time and energy than the original meeting sucked from you.
Rarely does anything so vitally important happen at a work meeting that we can’t catch up on sooner or later.
Resist the urge to change the entire culture and instead change how you are, how you be.
You are a system that’s more flexible, responsive, adaptive and more easily able to learn.Your behaviour will be leadership for others.
Exhibition...
When you visited the main theatre foyer at Gasworks Arts Park during October you'd have been surrounded by my artworks made for the exhibition ‘Being in the Moment’.
Melbourne Fringe was on and there was an abundance of art, performance and theatre on at Gasworks which is a Fringe hub venue.
It was both a thrill and a moment of nervous pride to see pieces made in my home office/studio be exhibited in public. ☺️
Being in the Moment might be done now but there's still information about it here.
And I'm continuing to make and accept commissioned artworks and opportunities for the exhibit to be installed in other galleries.
Please don't throw lollies 🍬
*Cringe* I was in a training session last week – or perhaps that should read, ‘boring presentation’ by a presenter who introduced the topic by saying ‘Now I hope you all don’t ‘fall asleep’ during this!’
So there we were, looking forward to a boring presentation and the opportunity of falling asleep. Before the presenter spoke, they held up a large bargain bulk bag of lollies and sang in Mary Poppins style “I have lolllliiiieeeeeesssss!”
“I’ve got bribes!’ they further explained! “This will keep you awake!”
As if a bag of lollies is going to make my interest levels peak through mind-numbing one-way no participation presentations in darkened rooms. What did peak was my blood sugar level, just looking at the pink and yellow shapes inside the bag.
Why aren't they trying to make that presentation more interesting, engaging and helpful? Why isn’t it more palatable than cheap lollies?
They delivered the presentation. They never needed the lollies. Anyway, it cheapened the presentation; it lowered the professionalism and it made us feel like we needed to listen ...or we’d be very naughty.
Some people I work with argue that you need good coffee and pastries to get people to some presentations. But surely you don’t need to throw lolllies at us when we look bored (but perhaps aren't bored at all; we might be ... thinking!)
‘Oh but it’s FUN!’ shouted Amy from one of the organising teams. ‘Lighten up! It’s fun! You’re too serious!
’It wasn’t fun for Gavin from Accounts who sat in the accident and emergency department waiting room with his eye bleeding out of its socket. No, Gavin wasn’t laughing when a bullet hard sugar lolly with kiddy wrap went flying through his left eye. The Safety Team said ‘No more throwing lollies. You may hand them around.'
If you want your session, meeting, presentation or training to be fun you don’t need to throw lollies. What you do need to do is design the session with engaging activities, designed for the purpose, designed for the people in the room. They’re called an audience, aaah better when you think of them as ‘participants’.
What are you doing to make your meetings, conversations, workshops and learning experiences creative, collaborative, engaging and transformative?Pass me a lolly why I ponder... 🍬
So you’ve got a booklist …
The 10 best of this; the most useful for that; the recommended by them.
Now what will you do? Work your way through it, book by book, reading the knowledge and dutifully applying it to your skillset?
We’ve all got a little “Tsundoku (積ん読)” in our life. (It’s the “phenomenon of acquiring reading materials but letting them pile up in one's home without reading them. The term is also used to refer to books ready for reading later when they are on a bookshelf. The term originated in the Meiji era of 1868–1912 as Japanese slang.” Thanks Wikipedia)
We know that owning the book doesn’t make it read. But perhaps intention is the thing here.
We intend to develop our knowledge, skills and abilities on those topics, experiences, and ways of being.
We intend to widen our view, to be awakened and to learn.
We’d love to be a little more this, and a little less that.
As the calendar year begins to see its end, I have a book shuffle, clean up and out, delete and refresh.
I’m recognising the eras of thinking and skill that I’d like to move on from … and some other areas I’d like to embark on. There’s no guilt or shame about not reading.
And I don’t need clever hacks to make me read more or faster. There is regifting, donating, sharing and a resolving. All the knowledge in all the books is available to me when I’m ready to select that book, read it and finish it if I wish. That goes for the partially-read too. No unread-book shame or guilt. More of a redirection to the topics and themes that interest me; to feel less obliged to ‘get through’ the recommended list or the titles mentioned in conversations.
We can tend to have higher expectations for our future selves, and can be a little ‘perfectionist’ about our performance when we don’t meet those inner expectations.
Why, I wrote a book about that! Maybe I need to read it. Again.
And so now to the re-read. There are some titles that become part of our selves and we simply need to do a regular top-up and refresh on the content — to refuel or reset and remind us who and how we want to be. These firm friends and wise counsels who carry us along through each era, somehow their messages still resounding no matter what goes on in the world. Of course!
This is your private library after all. May it contain all that you need to nourish you … and not taunt, tease or take you down for that which you are yet to read.
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