Note: This articule is not my perpertive, this is my take over about Feedback in the Making the manager capter 6.
Amazing meetings
Meetings are a huge part of manager's work. 1:1, small group and larger group meetings and also audiences of hundreds of thousands. They are parodied as wasteful, burocratic and boring. As a manager your time is precious and finite. Life's too short to be wasted in subpar meetings. Aim to make every single one you are part of usefull, awesome and energizing so that your team can achieve more together.
Good meetings are
Talking with someone face-to-face is still one of the best ways to communicate and get the work done. You success the meeting if people leave thinking:
The meeting was great use of my time.
I learned something new.
I left my clearer sense of what we are doing and why.
Everyone was engaged.
I felt welcomed.
Invite the right people
You're more likely to have a great meeting if everyone necessary and nobody extraneous is there. How do you know whom you should invite? Go back to your answer for what are a great outcome looks like for your meeting. Ask yourself: Which people are necesary to make this meeting a success?
Give people a change to come prepared. Ask the organizers to send out any presentations or documents the day before so everyone had change to process the information. Sending out the agenda in advance is also a good idea. Get an habit to asking people before leaving "So before we break, let's make sure we agree on next steps ...". Your part is to send out the specific action items and who's responsable for each.
Make it safe for people to contribute
If you are a meeting organizer, you will get better results if the entire group contribute. Be explicit about the norms you want to set. If you want people intectate say directly, that's the best way to do it.
I'm here to do a Q&A because it's really important for me that we can have a real talk about all things happening on our team. Hard questions are good and welcome, I promise to be as transparent as I can.
Use a post-it note tactic, before discussing a complex topic, give everyone a pad of Post-its and ask them to write opinions.
Manage Equal airtime.
If your meetings tends to be dominated by a few individuals, try mediating the amoung of airtime everyone gets. Don't allow interuptions. It's not always comfortable to interrupt others and manage their flow of conversations in this manner, but it sends a strong signal that you believe better outcomes come from diversity.
Give a feedback about the meeting
Make an habit to ask for feedback about the meeting.
Types of meetings
Making a decision
Clear decision and everyone leaving with a a sense of trust in the process. More over, the decision was made with an efficient use of time and fairness.
A great decision making meeting does the following:
- Gets a decision made.
- Includes the people most directly affected by the decision, includes a decision maker.
- Presents all credible options objectively and with relevant background information.
- Includes team recomendations
- Gives equal airtime to all options and all voices.
What not to do
- If people think decision their side wasn't presented well, they don't trust.
- Decisions that take long time to make, if it's a small decision don't waste time, if it's undoable.
- Too much time is spend trying to get a group to consensus rather than escalating quickly a decision-maker.
- Time is wasted on rehashing same arguments.
Sharing information
Nowadays with emails and chat right out finger tips, it's less necesarry for in person get togethers focus on transfer knodledge. There are big benefits of informational meetings over other channels like board meetings, mailing lists or group posts. A well-prepared information meeting is usually intesting than a bunch of words on a page. Eye contact, body language and visible passion all help to make a message come alive.
A great informational meetings accomplish:
- Enables the group to feel like they learned something new.
- Conveys key messages clearly and memorably.
- Keeps the audience's attention.
- Evokes an intented emotion.
Providing feedback
A great feedback meeting provides:
- Gets everyone on the same page.
- Honestly represents the current status of the work.
- Clearly frames open questions, key decisions or known concerns.
- Ends with agreed-upon next steps.
Brainstorming
- Generates a lot of ideas. Diverse, non-obvious, creative ideas.
- Considers a totally of ideas from everyone.
- Helps ideas to evolve.
- Ends with a clear next steps.
Strengthing relationships
- Creathers better understanding and trust between participants
- Encourages people to be open and authentic.
- Makes people feel cared of.
References: