Making Your Meetings Matter

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>> In a perfect world when you call a meeting, everyone shows up on time, comes prepared, is not distracted by their PDA or laptop and stays alert and engaged throughout the meeting.

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>> But it's not a perfect world is it? People show up late, they blog, send text messages during the meeting, lose interest and burn out. So it's no longer enough to say that good leadership and preparation are the key to a successful meeting.

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>> Most meetings are boring that's why people don't want to go to them. That's the problem with meetings, meetings, meetings we always say. You can't live with them; you can't live without them. The problem is most businesses live with them poorly.

>> Bert Decker, a Communications Expert, best selling author and entrepreneur has some very helpful and practical tips to make everyone of your meetings shine.

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>> Bert: I have a general ground rule that we give our corporate clients that says take your meetings generally and cut the number of meetings you have in half; and then those meetings that remain because they're important because you're going in a direction, cut their time in half. You'll be much more effective and they will be much more interested.

>> There are three main ways to communicate:

>> Bert: Face to face--the most persuasive that's where you have meetings and that's where it's powerful if you're going to try to persuade and influence great action; then there's the phone and there are phone conferences that's a different type of meeting, but at least you get the emotional tone of the voice and then there's e-mail. If you just have tasks and information, do it in e-mail. But if you need to make a decision, you need some action out of it, a great place for a meeting.

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>> Bert: Most leaders of meetings don't realize it's their responsibility to keep people engaged, to have a productive meeting, to actually control it; and the leader has to not only set an agenda in the first place but he or she has to take responsibility for all of the interaction and there are ways to do that. A lot of people are embarrassed to call on people and it's really valuable to call on people.

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>> Bert: You want all of your team to be participating; you want to encourage those people who tend to be quiet.

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>> Videotape your meetings, watch yourself. Wii is a very powerful tool; just put one up in the back. If you are the leader of a team and you're having many meetings, you will be able--if you have to sit through 20 minutes of a videotape that's really boring, you will know it's boring and you will do something to change the next one. The attention span of an adult is eight seconds. It doesn't mean that you can only keep people for eight seconds but you can lose them. Where is the place that people go and they sit for two hours, and they're enthralled, they're captivated; they're interested? Feature films or theatrical presentations because there's drama, there's conflict, there's resolution. Most meetings are just information-oriented; they become data dumps and that is not a good place to use people's time particularly if you're in a corporation. You're wasting so much energy and time. So what we recommend to our clients and to anybody, make your meeting interesting. Add some conflict--I don't mean artificial conflict so that you have people fighting each other, but action-oriented conflict--this point against this point and maybe pre-plan some of that so that people come in and they have a robust dialogue.

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>> Bert: So that people are encouraged to speak out; they're encouraged to have some emotion and some passion.

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>> Check periodically to make sure your participants are paying attention. Body language is key. Only seven percent of communication comes from what we say.

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>> Pitch, volume, and rhythm account for 38% and eye movement is the other whopping 55%.

>> Bert: When you think about meetings they're not just intellectual. They are people dealing with people and so body language is the key part of it and it's not a soft part either. Most important body language you can use is your eye communication; and as a leader in a meeting you will control a lot of things unconsciously by just who you look at and why. If you have somebody who talks a lot, and every team has a talker, and so we call them Joe blow hard and he's just talking all the time over here; and you have somebody who is really bright and you wish they'd talk a little bit more--we'll call her Susie Shiner, she's over here. She does not talk much but Joe blow hard is talking. But you're the leader. With your eye communication alone you can just--Joe will be talking here and you can just glance over at Susie and then go back to Joe, glance over at Susie and what will happen Susie will tend to increase, Joe will tend to decrease. It doesn't mean he'll stop but where is the leader's attention going? It's going wherever the eyes are so you can do a lot with your eye communication.

>> And finally, the way you end a meeting can be critical.

>> Bert: The best way to conclude a meeting is having an action step because if you're having a meeting and it's just a data dump information, no action step, why have the meeting anyway? So that's a good measure of a good meeting--action step. So what do we recommend to anybody who's the leader of the meeting is you might have one, two or three action steps, different people doing, or group action step or whatever but definitely leave with action steps and then as a leader you also want to end with a bang, not a whimper. So end with a quote or a little story or something that is interesting so people are upbeat about it or end with a laugh.

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>> For more information go to bnet.com.

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