Communicate in Meetings
If you struggle to communicate effectively in meetings, you need to watch this entire video. We got the chance to interview for the second time Chris Fening. He’s a communications expert. He’s trained over 135,000 people on communicating effectively. He’s sold more than a 100,000 books on communications. I have read all of them.
They’re highly, highly practical and I highly recommend you check them out. He’s also won 11 awards for his communication training ability and he has a new book on effective meetings. So, we’re going to dive deep into this video to help you understand three things. Number one, how to run effective meetings, whether you’re a manager or somebody who’s even sitting in a meeting at a junior level.
How do you communicate effectively in meetings? And what it takes to have productive meetings. I really hope you like this entire video. Let’s get into it. Hello. Hello, and welcome. I am here with somebody who some of you might have already seen before because we’ve made a ton of videos with him as well as on his book.
One of his books is has become the hallmark of my communications learnings as well as teachings. It’s called the first minute. But this time we’re not here to talk about the first minute. In fact, the person that I’m talking about has written a new book also around effective communications specifically focused around effective meetings.
And I have a ton of questions to ask because they’re not only in my mind, but these are questions that I get asked all the time from working professionals that how do you really have productive meetings? And before I dive into the techniques and the practicality and all the juice of of what we’re about to get into, I just want to ask you Chris, what made you want to write this book? I believe it’s your fourth book if I’m not mistaken. Correct me if I’m wrong.
It’s my uh it’s actually my sixth book, but some of the others are not as well known, but yeah, four in the business communication series. >> The business communication. Okay, perfect. >> Gotcha. >> And uh why why did I write it? Well, it was a one of the questions I got asked most often.
If I would go into a client or work with someone one-to-one and we’d be working on a communication topic, I could guarantee at some point meetings would come up and then somebody would talk about they sort of come into a session and say, “Oh, I’ve just had this terrible meeting or I’m dreading the next meeting that I’m going to.
“ Or more often than not, I’m trying to find time, but I can’t because there are so many darn meetings. Um, so it was just such a ubiquitous topic that uh I realized there there had to be better ways to do it. And there there are loads of great books out there, but none of them quite delivered what I wanted.
So as an author, it seemed like a good idea to write the book that I wanted. >> Fantastic. And I I believe that you have attended about 15 approximately 15,000 meetings so far. Am I correct? So, so, so I think I think you would be the right person to ask regardless of your book that what what makes what is it firstly tell me what makes an unproductive meeting and what are the some small things that managers can start to do to shift them towards a more productive lens.
So, let’s start I know those are two loaded questions. So, let’s start with the first part which is that what really makes a meeting unproductive? Yes. And there is there is one root cause one one defining characteristics of unproductive meetings and there’s only one. The meeting doesn’t produce what it’s meant to in the time and that is and if I was to expand it a little bit I’d say it doesn’t get closer to the thing it’s meant to produce and that underpins all the kinds of bad meetings we have.
And there are lots of reasons for this happening. people dominating conversations, poor planning, an alarming number of meetings that start without a clear idea of what’s going to be produced. I mean, that in and of itself is going to cause a complete failure. If you don’t know where you’re going, how on earth are you going to get there? So, that is the real basis for bad meetings is not knowing what that time and those people are meant to try and produce as an output for the meeting.
That makes sense. A follow up on this though is that I have been part of meetings that do get us closer to the end result but after the meeting is done and I look back at it and I think that you know this 90minute meeting could have happened in 30 minutes and still got us equally as close to the result that we were hoping for.
So So what do you have to say to that? that that a meeting does qualify in terms of what you’re saying that it got us closer to our aim, >> but it it still felt like it took a lot of productive time out of our hands. So, what would you say to that? How do we spot because I think that becomes the tiger in the grass, right? So, how do how do we really spot that? >> It does.
So there there’s a there’s a a phrase and I forget where it came from now, which which bothers me because I should have these things committed to memory, but uh sort of an activity will expand to fill the time that’s available. And you can have a 10-minute conversation fill an hour if you lot an hour for that conversation. And so why did that 90 minutes take 90 minutes rather than 30? Probably a little bit of lack of preparation.
That would be the main thing. not recognizing that it was possible to achieve that thing in in much less time. And the second reason would be an unwillingness to recognize, oh, we can do this thing in a shorter amount of time, so let’s do that and then move on. So, it’s just allowing that conversation and those activities to expand into into the time that’s available.
>> Got it. That makes sense. And for people to have a a good so so people love checklists, right? so that they have some something to to go by and and and a lot of the times we we say that oh you know that meeting could have been an email or it could have been a text message. Do you have any sort of checklist that you can give us which can help us determine whether this thing needs to be a meeting an email or just a text message? >> Yes. Yeah.
There are there are sort of three questions we can ask ourselves. One is do I know what I want to achieve in this meeting? And if the answer is no, please stop. Like don’t do anything else until you work out actually what the purpose and output of that meeting are going to be. So do you know what you’re going to try and achieve? The second thing is amazingly does it need other people’s input? Because quite often we invite people to meetings or we get meetings together that don’t require input or collaboration.
They’re just a delivery of information. those info only style meetings where it’s just one way with no opportunity for questions, no interaction at all. That could have been an email. So, do I know what I want? Does it require um other people’s input? And then the third thing is does it need a realtime conversation or interaction? And to to make this real, I’ll give an example.
It’s if you’re reviewing a list to to prioritize a list of items or tasks, does that need a conversation or can somebody review the list in their own time and provide their input? So, you can do it by email or on a Slack channel or sort of asynchronously not do it at the same time. And if the answer to all three or any of those is no, I don’t know what I want.
I don’t need other people and it doesn’t need to be real time. you’ve really got a question. Does it need to be a meeting? And usually the answer is going to be no. >> Got it. So, so, so that that’s a good checklist to have that I I think this is a great point that many times we think of announcements and we think of them as being meetings, but but those those can actually become an email blast or it can become something to put on Slack and >> they they can yeah, >> but they don’t need to be it.
This is the area where I get the most push back on when when I say something like info only meetings and I always it’s a very bold statement but I you know nine out of 10 times I get people coming back and saying oh but what about company town halls or what about telling my team about something and I’ll challenge that by saying that isn’t an info only meeting.
It’s not a onedirection delivery of information because there’s usually an opportunity for questions or discussion or people need to do something with that information and have an opportunity to challenge it, question it, enhance it. That is a valuable use of time. There is a purpose. There are activities. But if the whole meeting could be replaced with, hey, I’m I’m reading from this thing. Nobody interrupt me.
I’m not taking any questions. Send your questions by email afterwards. That’s again, that’s not a meeting. Just record a video and send that out instead. >> And when it comes down to So, this checklist is handy, right? And are there any It gives me an understanding of of what to avoid in terms of when I’m thinking of organizing a meeting.
Is there anything else that you that you have to say in terms of any types of meetings that should be avoided at all costs you know that keep happening and and we should be like okay you know this is not really a meeting am I am I and if the answer is the same as what you said in terms of that hey if it if it doesn’t get past the checklist then it should be avoided then that’s fine but is there something else or something beyond that that I should know of? There is, but I’m intrigued if you have something in mind.
Is there something you you’re thinking of where a certain experience you’re having that shouldn’t be a meeting? >> Yeah. So, [laughter] I I love that you read my my body language. So, the when I was working in in advertising, a lot of the meetings that we had were around brainstorms. We had to I I used to work in the presentation team.
So, we had to pitch ideas to clients all the time. and those so one problem we face which I already asked you right that in a brainstorm we would sit and we would we would come up with the ideas that were required but they would take 3 hours uh in in the meeting and the ideas were done in 90 minutes itself. >> So we we covered that.
The second part is that a lot of the times the person who was in charge of the creative department or the sales team whoever was in charge of that particular project would call a meeting to simply talk about certain factors that for example X Y and Z needs to be covered in this pitch or here’s the brief that we need to follow let’s read it together and I so on one level it did help to the fact that okay you know yeah we all can see each other and we us we are all aligned on what’s to be done But but did this did this really have to be a meeting as
such? >> Yeah. Does it have to be scheduled time? [laughter] >> I want everybody to sit and read together. >> Yeah. >> Yes. Yes. >> There there are a couple of a couple of things in response to that. And the the second one I’ll talk about is the the Jeff Bezos meeting which gets a lot of meeting format which gets a lot of headlines.
But you started off by saying like a brainstorming meeting and that is if anyone’s watching this on video I I had a very very big reaction to that word. I do not like brainstorming. I think as a concept brainstorming from uh from all businesses because as an activity it is one of the least efficient ways to come up with ideas. It’s a terrible method.
There are many other writing another book and doing a card deck of meeting activities which came out of the effective meetings book was what are the activities we do in a meeting to achieve the purpose and produce an outcome or produce a particular output and brainstorming is one of the things that gets thrown around a lot and it’s terrible.
It gets dominated by the loudest voices or sometimes just one voice. Um once an idea is thrown out, it introduces bias. So everybody focuses on that idea at the exclusion of others. It’s verbal rather than written. So the first thing that gets shouted out affects everything that comes afterwards. It’s so rather than railing and bashing on it, which I could do for some time, here’s a change.
Do something called brainwriting instead. And brainwriting is ask the question because the purpose is to come up with ideas. So get the group of people together and give them two 3 minutes to write down all of their own ideas and then and you can do this on paper, you can do this on a a digital whiteboard, you can do it in a shared space, but then you’ve got everything written down and you’ve got a lot of independently produced ideas.
Then you can have the discussion about h how deep do we want to go in them? How do we prioritize them? How do we decide between them? Those are all other good activities to do in the meeting, but get away from brainstorming and having one person doing it. Get people to write it down and then you’ve got your your basis of ideas to have a discussion from.
So that was the that was the first bit. I’ll pause for a moment before going into the the Amazon Bezos story. >> No, no, no. That’s fantastic. I I think I I don’t have any follow-up questions on that. Please, I would love to hear the the Jeff Bezos thing as well. >> Okay. So, we we were saying like the those this came from your experience of let’s all get together and read the brief together.
Uh let’s read this document together, which is a little bit like story time in in school. It doesn’t seem very effective. And one of the one of the really unfortunate things when somebody gets famous and creates a big company is their method becomes the gold standard. It worked for Amazon, so we should all try and do it.
And Jeff Bezos has repeated many times in interviews on stages around the world, the Amazon meeting methodology. That’s what he calls it. That’s what it gets called. And the methodology is this. When the executives come to a meeting with a topic, they must write a sixpage brief about that topic. Then the first 15 minutes everybody sits in silence reading the brief making [snorts] their notes and the rest of the meeting is about discussing that idea and so on.
Now there are a lot of problems with this as a method. I’m going to start with something good. It works for them in that situation and it’s brilliant. But that situation is unlike 99.99% of the work that the rest of us do. The reason this method works for them is you’ve got Bezos and the executives of one of the largest organizations in the world probably thinking about a strategic decision, not talking about whether we change from red to blue in a design brief.
And so when they’re looking at strategic decisions, of course, a six-page memo on what it is, what the market impact would be, growth opportunities, all that stuff needs to be in there and execs are busy, so they should read it. Makes a lot of sense for that group and that purpose. For the rest of us, could you imagine writing a six-page brief for every meeting you attend? That would be just such a waste of time, and it’s the wrong tool for the job.
So bad advice comes from sort of good outcomes. So if anyone is in a company where there there’s this big drive to do the Bezos way to do the Amazon meeting format just just suggest that perhaps you’re not in an executive board meeting from a massive multinational and that might not be the right activity to achieve what you need.
>> Fantastic. Just by the way for people listening there is an entire podcast we had done with uh with a lady called Bhavya who is from Amazon who went very deep into this entire aspect that Chris is talking about and what I got away from the meeting is that yes it does work very well for Amazon and they tend to spend a lot of time writing these documents like every employee spending sometimes their whole workday is dedicated to prepare for a meeting because of these documents.
So if you’re in a company that’s that’s not Amazon, there is a debate that whether this will work for you or not and it’s important to understand the distinction that uh what as Chris mentioned what the outcome of your meeting is supposed to be and does it warrant that amount of time and effort to follow the bas method.
>> Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, hopefully I wasn’t rude to to your prior guest. >> No, no, no, not at all. >> And lots of different ways to do things. That’s the right tool for the job. And that’s that is where like my methods, I wouldn’t suggest they are used for board meetings.
There’s elements in there that would definitely help, but it’s not the right tool set. This stuff in the book, Effective Meetings, is for the meetings that fill our calendars day in and day out each week with the goal of trying to have fewer of them. >> Fantastic. You know Chris, one of the from I’m I’m referencing your I know this is this podcast is not for that book but but I will reference it one more time.
In your book the first minute there are two frameworks which I use and I teach. Yes. Yeah. It’s right right behind him on the the right book. And I there there are two frameworks which I implement and I also tend to teach which are the CIK framework and the GPS framework. And I’m not going to get into what those are at the moment.
We’ve made multiple videos on those already, but there is a framework in this book as well, which I’m really excited to talk about. And now this will get into the I I know a lot of you are trying to listen for the technical and the practical uh tools that that Chris can give us. So So let’s dive into them and let’s discuss the framework TPO.
I hope I got that correct. And please tell what it is and why is it such a gamecher for meetings. TPO. Three letters, three words that make every part of a meeting better. If there is one thing for people to take away from this podcast, from this conversation, it’s topic, purpose, and output. These three things enable you to plan a meeting, introduce a meeting, keep a meeting on track, end it clearly, and makes the follow-up afterwards clearer and easier.
Every part of of a meeting from like concept through to like you finished the meeting and you’re doing stuff with the output, all of it is made better if you have those three things. topic, purpose and output. >> Fantastic. So, so let’s dive into it. Could you could you give us an example of of any uh one meeting where this can be? So, let’s take any an example of any particular meeting, right? You can you can paint out any particular situation or scenario and if I am the executive or the manager who’s supposed to plan the meeting, how can TPO help me decide a
whether I should have the meeting or not and b if I do have to have it then how can this framework help make it more productive? >> Yeah. Okay. So let’s say that you’re you’re as you say the manager of a team and you want to talk about changes to the budget. Fairly common thing that happens.
So the meeting topic could be team budget for the fourth quarter. The purpose is to review budget changes and update our plan and the output is an updated plan. So they connect but you have to produce the actual plan not just talk about it. So you very clearly say here’s the topic. So you’re drawing a line around what we are going to talk about and what we’re not.
we’re talking about and it could be we’re going to talk about this project timeline. We’re going to talk about the team budget. We’re going to talk about a particular issue that’s affecting a client. Whatever your topic is, that’s the first thing. Here’s the space we’re we’re focusing on in this meeting. The purpose of the meeting is to and then you’re looking to produce something, update something, decide something. Be very clear.
We’re going to do this activity and at the end we will have an output. We will have a list of ideas. If you’ve been brainwiting instead of brainstorming, a list of ideas, a prioritized list, a response plan to a risk or an issue that’s occurring, an updated budget, a decision, that’s an output in and of itself. If you can write it down or print it out, that is an output.
And so whatever you’re working on, it can be defined in whatever you’re doing in a meeting can be defined as the topic of the meeting, the purpose of the meeting, and then that output. >> Fantastic. So I think DPA is a is a good way to it it also kind of gives us a checklist in and of itself, right? That that as long as it’s uh especially the outcome part of it that if if it’s not going to get us, as you said in the beginning, closer to that particular outcome, then it probably does not need to be a meeting. And this can give us a
good structure to get into and other >> and I I want to clarify just one bit there. It’s and I make this slip as well which is an unfortunate uh slip when when I’m teaching it. It’s output not outcome because the outcome can have consequences beyond the meeting. The outcome can be something that affects individuals or a team or a business or a project.
The output is the very specific thing that you leave the meeting having created. The output is something that you create. And it’s a a very small difference, but it makes it much easier to do things like keep on track, find out if your meeting’s going to produce what it needs because you can say, do I have that output that I need? So, just a clarification.
Um, but if anyone’s using these terms, make sure you think output instead of outcome. >> Fantastic. Yes, I think those small words do make a massive difference in terms of how we perceive them and hence how we act on them. So, so thanks for clarifying that >> and and other thing that I want to talk about is you also have mentioned in the book about the five stages.
So, can you talk a little more about what those five stages are because I think that will help us. I if if I am someone who’s organizing a particular meeting then while TPO can help me and give me a framework on uh in terms of how do I structure the meeting in my mind and have the end goal in mind I think the five stages will also help me to moderate the meeting more effectively.
So can you tell me a little more about that? >> Yes. So the five stages and and I chuckle a little bit because they are so simple. The five stages the first and the last are before and after the meeting. So you’ve got before the meeting and then after. And in the middle you’ve got the start, during, and end of the meeting.
Now, it might sound a little oversimplified or you might think, well, why do I need those five stages? Well, here’s why. And here’s how TPO fits into each of them. Before you have the meeting, do you know your topic, your purpose, and the output? And if you don’t, it goes back to that earlier set of checklist criteria of do I know what I want to produce in the meeting.
If you don’t have TPO, you don’t know what you want to do in the meeting. So, you’re not ready to have it. But also in that sort of before the meeting stage, stage one of five, you need to think about who am I inviting? What are the activities? How much time do I need? What tools or environment do I need to do this? Have I got people in one place physically or are they all in different locations? If you have a clear topic, purpose, and output, you can then evaluate every person you invite.
Are they necessary? And can they contribute to that purpose? If your meeting purpose is to make a decision, do you have the decision maker on the list of attendees? So, TPO helps you validate your attendees. It helps you choose the right activities because often we’ll go into a meeting and it’ll be we need to prioritize which of these two or three things we’re going to do.
But then there’s no structure for how do you prioritize. You need to make sure everyone knows what the things are. You need to have criteria to make a decision against. And then you need some kind of decision-making criteria. Pretty deep. Is it just you making the decision by yourself or are we voting? Are we doing it as a collective? Are there different weights? So, all of those things, you can only make an informed choice about the way you’re going to do what you need to in the meeting if you’ve got a clear purpose and a desired output. And all of
this happens up front before the meeting starts. How much time is it going to take? If you want to do a very physically active sort of stuff on on post-it notes around the room as a decision-making process, that’s not usually going to be a 20-minute meeting. That needs more time. So, all of these things happen in the before stage and you can make informed choices if you’ve got that clear topic, purpose, output.
Then, when you get into the meeting, you’ve got that start, during, and end. And when it comes to the start of the meeting, question for you on this. Have you ever run from one meeting to another, jumped off a call to get into another call, and you’ve started a meeting and and had to get your head around like what the new meeting is about? >> All the day.
>> All the time. Right? So, you get into that meeting and whether you’re leading it or you’re in it, you need everybody to start focusing. Well, the introduction to the meeting could be topic, purpose, output. And if you’ve written those in the invitation, which we should have done prior, you can jump off one call, jump into another, read those three lines on a page and go, I know what I’m here to do and I know what what I’m going to do and how what I’m going to produce at the end.
And you tell everybody in three lines what that meeting is about. So they are all focused and on the same page. So you’ve got a very clear introduction that sets the tone for what you’re going to do in the meeting. And then and this is the last bit of explanation I’ll do be before I pause is during the meeting you can only measure progress towards the output if you know what that output is going to be.
If you need to come up with 10 ideas and you’ve clearly stated that as my output for this meeting our output for the meeting is 10 ideas. Well, halfway through the meeting, if you’ve only produced two, you know, you’re going to have to change something in the second half or you’re going to have to change what that output is and recognize you’re only going to come up with five.
So, you can do all of that when you have TPO in each of those five stages. >> Fantastic. And and what about the I’m sorry if you’ve already covered this, but I at least I’m not clear on the after part. Can you expand a little on >> on the last? >> Oh, yeah. >> Yeah. >> So, in your in your meetings, how much time is spent after a meeting like writing notes or try or just trying to work out what you should send out after the meeting? [laughter] >> Zero. Zero minutes.
>> Okay. So, none. Like sometimes I get people going, “Oh, it takes me ages. I got to try to type up everything that happened.” >> Yeah. >> The other end of the scale is nothing. we just yeah we’re so focused on the meeting that after it’s done it’s like oh okay now I’m going to I’m going to grab some water I’m going to get on my other work right so you you feel like you’ve done the work >> but but I I know firsthand that it makes a difference in terms of organizing your thoughts after the meeting as well but I
just don’t know what exactly to do so I would I would love to hear >> ah so what do you do it depends on that purpose and output so if the purpose was to make a decision and that decision is going to impact people. You got to share the decision. You’ve got to share the output of that meeting with whomever is impacted.
In some cases, meetings don’t need minutes. And in all cases, unless it’s unless you are in court, you don’t need a transcript of the conversation. So, we have we have two ends of the spectrum. One end is no minutes or notes and the other is a complete record of everything that was was said which happens a lot now with recorded inter recorded interviews recorded meetings online.
Who watches 60 minutes of people talking about stuff in a meeting? No one. Um but AI tools are very good at summarizing them which is nice. But with those two ends of the spectrum like which one is right? Well, it’s better to have something than not in most cases, but better than that is share the output and share any actions that people are expected to take based on that.
Here are the next steps. And Praep, you you committed to doing something by Thursday and I’ve committed to doing something by Tuesday and I’m going to talk to Susanna in accounting about something and I’ll share the input with the team next week. to make sure you’ve got the output, any decisions, and any actions that were left from the meeting.
And then that gives you a to-do list. So, if you’re the one project managing this, or if you’re the one sort of been tasked with following up, you’ve got your list of things to follow up and you’ve made sure that everybody else has that list as well, so it’s not a surprise when you contact them on Thursday to say, “Hey, did you do the thing?” Fantastic.
So, um I think the main takeaway is that after a meeting is done, spend time and and this has to be done by just the person who’s who’s organized the meeting, right? It’s not it’s not a shared activity if I’m not mistaken. >> Yeah. Unless somebody’s designated to do it. It should be something that is quick and easy by the person who leads the meeting >> and you’re just doing a follow-up.
Thanks for coming. Here’s what we wanted to achieve. We did achieve it. Here’s the thing. Here’s what happens next. >> Perfect. Got it. Fantastic. Yeah. In the book, you also talk about the the meeting sweet spot. Can you can you talk a little bit about what that means? >> Yes.
This this was almost the title of the book. Um but uh and I’m laughing because it it can be quite cruel. So what is the meeting sweet spot? There is a there is a uh there are two things that guide a meeting. How rigid the meeting is and how controlling the meeting leader is. And I plot this on a on a two axis scale and then label the kind of meeting leader that fits into each one.
So a meeting can either be like have a really rigid agenda or have absolutely no structure. And a meeting leader can have total and utter control or it’s a complete freeforall and anything goes. And those are the two biggest variables that determine whether what kind of meeting you end up in.
And if you have uh the sweet spots in the middle, the sweet spot is where it’s not too rigid. You’ve got some ability to flex and you’re not being too controlling or too relaxed because the we do need structure as a group to achieve that purpose and produce the output. That’s the whole reason that we’re taking time out of our days.
And the further away from the center, which is that sweet spot, the further away from that you are, the more likely you are to be like a tyrant, if you have a rigid agenda and have total control, you are a meeting tyrant. And if you are the opposite of that, no agenda, complete free-for-all, you are the lord of chaos. And it’s just anything goes in these meetings.
And so there are eight different categories and labels that you can have. sort of micromanager uh control freak and it just uh most people like to use it to see oh my boss is this or so and so is that but I’d challenge everybody to think of it as a a self-reflection tool. I was very much on the micromanaging side.
Certainly early in my career I was I wanted all the details. I was on the controlling side and it’s just a fun way to say okay what are my sort of extreme characteristics in meetings and then how can I bring it back to add a little more flexibility or add a little more structure if you happen to be more carefree. >> I think the meeting sweet spot in that case is a lot not so much about the meeting but a lot more about the person moderating the meeting.
Would that be fair to say? >> Yes. Yes, it is. Yeah, that’s yeah that’s a a much better description. I shall add that at the beginning next [laughter] time. >> Fantastic. And and talking about the person who’s moderating the meeting, could you So I I remember from back in my days working in a job, there was this my very no my first my second boss was was this lady her name is Anna and she would she was a very hard taskmaster and in a meeting she was very very good at managing the room.
So it was her job to ensure that she was the sales head. It was her job to get the best creatives in the room and to get the best ideas from them and to filter out the bad ones. That was her job. >> And the way she was able to as you said right control the meeting as well as give everyone the floor because the ideas are not coming from her.
She has to give the floor to the uh the creatives as well. >> [snorts] >> uh but the way she was able to orchestrate that entire affair was at least when I looked at it I found it very very appealing from a meeting perspective and if I were to ask you that what if you were able to list a few qualities of a good meeting moderator what would they be one of them being to be in the meeting sweet spot what else can we add to the list >> yeah being able to adapt to the particular meeting.
So, some meetings are are crisis situations. Something’s happened. We need to react. We got to do this fast or or something’s going to blow up. That requires a different style from, hey, we want to we’re looking for ideas and we’re looking for new stuff and we’re looking for input from everybody.
They have two very different time frames, different dynamics, different um impact for what’s happening in the meeting. So being able to as a leader being able to adapt to the purpose to the audience to the urgency is really important because if every meeting is urgent and must be done and go doom doom doom that’s not every moment of a of a job and if it is gosh that’s a tough place to work.
So being flexible. The second thing is as the the leader or the facilitator of a meeting, you have to pay attention to the people in the room. And to get more specific, you have to start to become a student of body language. are if four out of six people are all leaning in and engaged in the discussion, if the other two are sat back in their chairs, arms crossed, looking away or frowning, notice that.
Be aware. Pay attention if somebody is dominating the conversation. As the leader, you’re the one who’s got to create space to draw in other people and say, “John, it’s great. I’m hearing a lot of great ideas from you today. I’m really interested in what uh Emma and Steve and Sanjay have to say uh in response to that.
So hang on just a second. Emma, what do you think about what we’ve just heard? Being able to manage that dynamic and adapt to urgency and purpose make much much better meeting leaders. I I also feel that one another important characteristic of a good meeting leader is also to ensure that the conversation remains in the topic box to follow TP effectively [laughter] right so how can we how can we as a meeting leader also ensure that that a meeting is not going off track >> in terms of controlling it yeah >> I used to I I was looking through some
of my old notebooks recently I keep keep all the stuff I’ve written I’m a bit of a hoarder when it comes to that but some of my old meeting notebooks I would I noticed I was drawing diagrams and they appear in the book at the start of the meeting. I draw across the top of the page I sort of draw a marker for we’ve started and then a marker for the end like what what are we going to produce come the end and then as the conversation went along I would just draw a path and say how far are we deviating away from like the the
straight line track to get where we need to be because conversations twist and turn. It’s never an exact stepbystep straight line to get to the end. And quite often there’d be sort of these huge deviations where we’ve gone off on tangents or talking about a completely different product, project, whatever it happened to be.
And so I had this little visual that would show me when we’re sort of deviating further away from this mainline topic. And that’s the point that I would then start to ask a question. Say, “Hey, um, if I missed something, that’s on me. apologies, but um it feels like we’re moving away from the thing we came here to do. And sometimes it was right to change and other times it brought the conversation back on track.
So this isn’t just for leaders. This is anybody in a meeting. If you feel if you sort of whether you do it visually or on a bit of paper as I did, imagine there’s a line between the meeting beginning and the end of the meeting with an actual valuable output. and just say how far away from that line is this conversation going.
Is it heading back towards the output or is it veering further away? And then you have a choice as to whether to do something about it. Fantastic. I think I I want to take a hard right and talk a little bit about the interpersonal aspect of meetings as well and move away from the meeting moderator or leader.
Let let’s talk to the audience who who are not currently moderating meetings but they are just the ones attending it >> which is most of us >> most of us most of the times yeah >> most of us most of the times right and one question that we get asked very often is that what do I do if I’m interrupted during a meeting I I’m not the moderator I’m not the most senior person in the room I’m talking I’m giving my idea and then somebody cuts me off >> what do we any any thoughts on what we can do over there to ensure that we are not so should we just let the situation
pass because those situations get delicate delicate when a senior is the one who’s interrupted us as well because we have to be slightly delicate with the words that we’re using in that case. Any thoughts on that in terms of what we can do? >> Yes, I like that you you gave a specific example there because it will be different in in different situations.
So if I’ve been talking and I’ve been brief and I’ve been clear, so that’s on me. If I’ve been brief and clear and a senior person interrupts me, first of all, I have to listen for why they’ve interrupted me. Have they given a good reason? Have they explained it or are they just like treading on me because it is their show? If it if there is a power dynamic of it is the leader who is just oh I’m bored of this I’m moving on you’re not going to be able to address that easily in the meeting. What you can do is give a
physical signal and say so I hadn’t quite finished. Can I can I just finish this thought so I complete my thing. So you ask so really it’s a polite way of showing I hadn’t finished but you’re also open to them saying no we’re moving on. So, it’s a question. I hadn’t statement first. I hadn’t quite finished my thought.
Can I please finish this and and then we can talk about your response. If they are dominating you, that might not work. If they’re not dominating you and if you’ve been clear and concise, that kind of sentence will usually help you. If you haven’t been clear, if you’ve been running on and rambling, the room is less likely to allow you more time.
Um, so there’s got to be some self-awareness of, have you really made a clear point? And at that point, you can say, “Hi, sorry, I realize I was going on for a while. Um, can I can I have 30 seconds to summarize my point so it’s clear?” So, you’ve got to have that self-awareness and then try and wrap up the thought.
Um there are some great resources and this happens a lot with ladies. It’s certain it’s a big big topic certainly in in the US um and Western Europe of ladies being spoken over and being interrupted. And there are there’s um I will share with you the resource afterwards. I don’t have it to hand, but there is some great advice for um what to do in those situations um that include some of the gender dynamics as well.
>> And one of the powerful things we can do is thank the person as they do it. But thank you for for getting involved. I’m just going to finish my comment and then we can follow up. >> So you acknowledge, you don’t push back. It’s it’s grateful, but it’s also you own it. Thank Thanks. I Thank you. I just need a moment to finish this and then I’d love to hear what you think about it.
>> Gotcha. Perfect. I I love that. I love that. So, we acknowledge them and then we we >> make them aware that they interrupted us but nicely and then back to our point. [laughter] >> Fantastic. I I I’m going to continue this side of the conversation which is the interpersonal side of it. And uh forgive me if I’m going a little away from the the the crux of the book as such, but it’s still going to be around me house, right? That’s okay.
>> One one thing that we get so this was one question that we get asked very often. It’s a little difficult to answer this question because as you mentioned it’s a it’s a very subjective matter overall and it also involves other people’s egos which makes the matter even more subjective right depending on the person who’s actually interrupting you.
>> And to talk about more interpersonal moments like that. One other question that we get asked often and tell me if you’ve experienced this especially in your early career or corporate days that when you’re young or when you’re at a junior position and you’re put into a meeting sometimes you’re put into a meeting from a learning perspective from a shadowing perspective >> or you are put into a meeting from an ideation perspective that hey we don’t know if you’re going to be able to add value but come here because your
qualifications say so and if you can give a good idea that’s fantastic and a lot of people do have those good ideas to give but they’re feeling to speak up >> and and they they stay in this in this box for really long in their careers that they don’t take opportunities and meetings to speak up even if they do have something valuable to say purely out of fear of public speaking, nervousness, the fear of blanking out whatever it might be.
>> Yeah. Do you have any thoughts or any advice to that person that if you have an idea what can that you should speak up that that that’s the crux of it? So any any thoughts or ideas over there? >> Yes, you you’ve given the advice which is you should speak up and that’s so easy to say and incredibly difficult to do because we’ve got positional power.
I’m the most junior person in the room. I that gives self-doubt. No one’s going to think think of this. Surely someone would have thought of it before or it’s not my turn to speak or I haven’t been asked. The the first thing each of us needs to do is recognize that we’ve been invited there for a reason to contribute.
If we don’t contribute when we when we could, we are wasting time in those meetings. So the start has to come from within. But to be a little more practical, there are there are some things that I’ve seen in my teams in the past whether whether I was leading them or part of them. I worked with a chronically shy person who was wickedly smart, but they also had a very uh pronounced stammer or stutter.
So they it took them a long time to get the words out. So they came up with an idea where they would write their idea down and give it to someone else who they knew was confident at sharing the idea on the condition that they were named as hey this is this is an idea from from so and so.
And this can work e if you’re willing to sort of share these ideas. You can have someone read it out as though it’s their idea and then it gets raised later on. Oh, this came from Sanjay. So, it doesn’t have to start with, oh, Sanjay would like to say because that’s that’s weird. But it it would be, oh, so I’m more confident to speak.
So, hey, here’s here’s some contribution. Have we thought about this? Why don’t we try this? Little bit of conversation in in the meeting. Go, yeah, so this idea originally came from uh from Sanjay. Um, so you’re crediting the person and getting the idea out. So, anyone who’s really really shy can try that. The next step up is it’s the classic hands up.
I mean, if that’s culturally appropriate. Uh just a little symbol to show. Doesn’t have to be sort of high school. I’ve got my I got my arm all the way up, but just a little visual signal that you’d like to say something and then it’s that sort of adapts to the power dynamic in the room and the hierarchy. >> And I’ve been in a situation like this.
I I was really early in my career. I was working for an organization in Europe and I was sent to Korea to um deliver some bad news for a telephone company, mobile phone company called Samsung. May have heard of it. They do TVs as well. And I was I was 22, 23 and I looked like I was about 15 at the time and I my job at that point was to go and deliver this bad news.
was sat in a meeting room with senior vice presidents of the whole of Samsung’s screen technology at the time and they turned to the older person in the room with me and would talk just to this older person even though I was the the the designated expert on that that topic and because culturally I didn’t understand the dynamics of how of the two very different business cultures I was do making sort of signs that I wanted to speak. I would start to talk.
I’d make very clear body language and the most senior person on my side just looked at me and just with a very slight shake of the head and a little hand signal told me to wait. So, so that I didn’t speak when I wasn’t supposed to. And later on they explained to me what would happen uh and they explained why.
And then that gave me an opportunity to pass them my idea so they could bring it into uh into the room. So all kinds of cultural dynamics and I’ve been on the definitely on the end of of putting my foot in it. Um and then by the end of that time I’d established credibility and I’d been introduced with enough credibility that I could interject in those sessions when when I felt it was appropriate.
There’s a real learning dynamic over a very short period of time. That makes sense. I And I have one one final question on the interpersonal side and then I have my final question for this podcast as well. The last question on the interpersonal side is the the rapport building part. So one thing that that we talk about is when you begin a meeting, how much [clears throat] time should you spend on pleasantries and catching up and hi hello how are you how’s how the wife and kids and everything and how often should you directly dive into the meeting. Of
course, it’s a subjective matter, but any thoughts on that side of it that should is there a correct amount of time that we need to spend? Is it better to just dive into it? What does that look like for you? >> Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a chart you could consult and say, “Oh, here’s the number of number of minutes.
“ Um, it’s here’s a a guideline to go with. The better you know the people in the room and and the lower the urgency of the topic, the more time you can spend on the social relationship dynamic at the beginning. >> The other end of the scale is if you don’t if nobody knows each other then you need to be very clear if the purpose of the meeting is get to know each other then you’re going to spend some time on it.
If the purpose of the meeting is to solve a critical problem and we’ve pulled seven people from across the organization, get to the work quickly. So, how well you know the people and how urgent the situation will will determine what’s appropriate. I love that that that’s a that’s a great framework in itself.
That that clears a lot of doubts around this particular point. Awesome. I actually I said this would be the last question, but actually have two two more questions I want to ask you. >> Okay. [laughter] One is uh what so in in the book you do talk about AI and I think people are interested to know about it. You do mention that there are certain things AI at least as of now cannot fix about meetings and there are certain things it can help with.
So what are your thoughts on what it can help with and certain things that it can’t currently help with? >> Yeah. So it can help with notetaking um and summarizing what the meeting was about. Excellent for that. There’s a a tool called Yodi um Y O D L I which can tell you you can get a popup on your screen if you’re doing a virtual meeting that tells you you’ve been talking too long. It’s wonderful.
Like you get these sort of alerts that will just pop up and say you’ve you’re monologuing um or you’ve gone you’re doing certain things like you’re not using good body language. There’s some really powerful stuff that can help you in those meetings. What it can’t do currently is it can’t tell you if your meeting is on track.
There’s nothing there at the moment that tells you whether the meeting is on track. And what I don’t believe the AI will ever be able to do is tell you what your meeting should be about. It can’t plan your meeting for you because it doesn’t know the per topic, purpose, and output that you have that your team needs to do. It can help you pick great activities.
It can help you avoid the wrong activities like brainstorming. Um, but it can’t tell you what you need to do in the meeting. So, we as as the employees, as the humans still own that bit and while we have jobs, we will always own that bit. Fantastic. The the tool you mentioned, the tool that Chris mentioned, uli, there are so that’s one tool.
There are a lot of AI tools around speech and that you can install, especially if you’re doing virtual meetings as well. Immensely helpful. I’ve used a bunch of them myself. They also help you with filler words and clarity of speech. So, try it out. I think all of these have a free version and a paid version as well.
And getting to the virtual side of meetings, that’s my final question for you. I am a complete remote worker. I believe so are you. And there are I’ve been trying to figure out a lot of things in terms of how I can make virtual meetings better and I feel I always always end up falling short because I I don’t know where to start really and a lot of videos I’ve seen online have not been the most helpful.
So I I would love to hear from you in terms of number one some general tips you might have to make virtual meetings more effective and number two you have been in a this is I think the second or third virtual meeting we’ve had. Do you have any blunt feedback for me that I can utilize to make my virtual meeting or presence better? So, these are my two questions for you.
What are your thoughts? >> All right. So, I’ll tie them tie them together. The first thing is audio over video. >> We we can forgive bad video. In fact, you can turn your your video off. We can’t forgive bad audio because without that there’s no no communication. And your audio is great. So really good. They Oh, nice. There’s a clip on there.
I have a little lapel one as well. These are great mics. Well worth well worth a small investment. The the thing there’s something that we can all do. And this this is an unusual piece of advice, but it’s so important. Um and uh Vincent Yang does this. He’s a great communications uh guy. Really really good compelling content as well.
and he will bring someone on stage with him. He’ll do these physical events and he will demonstrate one of the biggest most common mistakes we make with virtual meetings that is why so many of us have our cameras off and I’m going to see if I can demo it. So he’ll put someone on stage and he’ll walk towards them and he’ll he’ll have dropped down.
So, I’ve disappeared off the edge and then he will come up like this and it’s really close in and it’s such an invasion of personal space. We sit too close to our cameras. We sit too close to our cameras and it does two things. One is it it’s like somebody’s sitting right up next to you and it’s it’s uncomfortable because it’s far too close.
The second thing is we lose all the other body language. So, at this point, you can see my hands as though we were sitting at a desk opposite each other, you can tell what I’m doing. I can be more expressive. But if I’m right up close on the camera, it doesn’t matter what I’m doing with my hands. I’m actually waving them around like this a lot, but you can’t tell any of that.
So, we lose those visual cues that that are ingrained into how we interpret other people’s intentions, honesty, the real meanings in their messages. So for everybody who is on a on a virtual meeting, sit back a little bit. And this brings us back to the microphone piece. If you sit back on a Zoom call, your voice gets cut out because it cuts out all the background noise.
So you have to be close enough for the mic. So you got to make sure you’ve got the microphone. But just sit back a bit and it’s then as though you’re sitting around a table, not sitting in each other’s laps. Fantastic. There’s there’s one more there’s one more thing that I I think I I don’t know which communication expert spoke about but he mentioned this as well that if you want to understand whether you’re really close to the camera or not a good rule of thumb is the headtosreen ratio.
So if your if your head is touching the screen then this is probably not the best thing. So you want to if you notice mine is not that good. If you notice Chris Chris’s frame right now, it’s perfect in terms of the head to screen distance that he has, which makes him perfectly visible in terms of his body language and his bestness overall.
>> Well, thank you. That’s it’s nice to know that the setup works. Um the I think it’s Justin or Jason, there’s an Australian guy who talks about this quite a lot and he does really good video content. The the rule of thumb is you should be able to see it ideally if when your arms are by your sides, you should be able to just see the elbow like the bend in your arm should be at the bottom of the screen.
And then for the for your distance from the top, close your fist and put it on the top of your head. And that should make the distance between the screen and not There you go. >> I am I am I was way too close is what I’m realizing now. made me do it. Oh, this makes a huge difference. Yeah, >> it >> I was like I was I was here before.
So, this is and this is I’m folding my arms right now. That’s it’s not going to work. So, yeah, that’s a great litmus test to understand how what the distance should be. And I think most of the people we train and most of the people we talk to are remote workers. Now, I think that’s it. In case you’re just hearing this podcast, please come and watch what he just did right now because it it also opened my eyes right now in terms of the distance I should be keeping.
And it’ll also, if you have not done it already, it’ll also urge you to go get an external microphone because there’s no way from this distance if I’m using my laptop microphone will it uh will my voice be that clear. >> Yeah, >> it’s fantastic. I love it. >> And then an external keyboard because you’ve got dynamics there. You can’t type on your laptop with your arms at full stretch.
So there are some physical practical elements. But even just then when you lent back in your chair, it changed the framing of you so much more. Um and we have a natural revulsion to people being right up in our faces unless we want to kiss them. We don’t want anyone right up in in our face. And that’s it’s awkward seeing a bunch of people on a screen where they’re all really close in.
So that’s one of the reasons people put their cameras off because they don’t like dominating a screen that way as well. So just sit back and then we can have our cameras on and we can see the body language. Um and oddly put a bit more distance between you and the other people and it gets a lot more comfortable. >> Fantastic. Perfect.
I think I think I’m done. I mean I can talk to you about this for a really long time but I I think I think I’ll I’ll respect your time and pause it over here. Please let me know if you have any final thoughts. uh talk a little bit about the book in terms of where we all can find it and uh any anything else that you would like to you to use this platform for.
Please go ahead. >> Okay. Well, thank you. You can find me at chrisfenning.com. LinkedIn is sort of my social hangout and the book is effective meetings and it is available wherever you like to buy books. So, it’s short, it’s practical, it’s also full of pictures, diagrams and it’s printed in color which is my first color book which I’m quite excited about.
So yeah, and if you have problems, if you want your team to be uh better at meetings, let me know. I run trainings in person and online. >> Fantastic. And they can find you, they can find the details on that on your website, correct? >> On my website. Yep. And get in touch with me. A conversation is usually better than uh than just scrolling on a page. So I make time for everyone.
>> Fantastic. And he mentioned his book is short and sweet. That’s all his books, by the way. They’re they’re very they’re very crisp and concise. So, so make sure when you pick up effective meetings, pick up the other books as well. I think you you need one weekend to read them, but you’ll need years to implement them.
So, so keep picking up one of them at each time. And every book will be packed with a very practical communication frameworks, which is why his books are at the top top of my list in terms of recommendations for communication books. Having said that, thank you so much, Chris.
It’s always a pleasure to speak to you and I hope you guys got some valuable tips in terms of running effective meetings. I’ll see you guys next time. I really hope you enjoyed and got some value out of this interview. If you like such communications content, hit subscribe and check out Chris’s book on effective meetings. If you want to see another video we’ve made with Chris, another interview on his previous book, The First Minute, which helps you communicate in a concise manner, you can check out that whole video right