Making it worse / making it better

As more of our days are spent in online meetings, many of our bad meeting behaviours haven’t changed: they’ve transferred online... and likely gotten worse.

Meeting tips and advice often focus on the agenda: have an agenda and send it out before the meeting.

But the agenda is only the ‘what’ to be done. And the agenda is not usually the problem with bad meetings. It’s about the process.

Most meetings follow dull default processes:

- One person talks. Another talks. We vote

- Two people talk and assume everyone agrees

- One person talks. Everyone agrees so we can finish.

The problems are many: low engagement/buy in, less contribution, participation and performance, more invisibility, boredom, distraction, exclusion. If the agenda is the what, the process... is the ‘how’.

Meetings are made better when you improve the process of how you run the meeting. A better process that is run by the leader of the meeting.

To facilitate better meetings is a skill. And to facilitate better meetings online, another skill.

Progress, outcomes and people suffer because bad meetings are made worse when we flip them as-is to online. Better meeting experiences are possible. 

This is the era of ease

This is the era of ease.

The world of work has changed. If you're a leader, you need to be more collaborative, able to help a group of individuals play to their strengths and get great work done.

You need to be able to make the workplace safe for them to be themselves. And to be able to bring them together, to remove barriers, roadblocks and obstacles to their progress - not create them.

This is a bigger role than just you and your title, your package, ego or status. You'll need to bring empathy, great listening skills, clever questioning capabilities and the ability to chill the %$#& out - to stop being so driven, anxious and intense.

'Facilitation' means ease, to make easier. Today's world of work needs you to be a leader who makes things easier. That's making progress, meetings, problem-solving, conversations, influence, starting and finishing things - all easier.

Help make it all easier. This is the era of ease.