Meeting Ground-Rules

I'm sure most of you hate meetings. You probably should. Most meetings don't have an agenda, they're not facilitated right, they're boring, no real decisions are made, and you're just looking at your watch. You can't wait to get back and get some real work done. And I'm sure the rest of the people around that meeting table feel the same way. But if you think about it, as a leader, what's more important than having a great meeting?

As a leader, you shouldn't be spending your time behind your desk working in the business, getting your own work done by yourself. That should be a smaller portion of your time than the time you spend with your team, whether it's with your team of peers or whether it's your team of direct reports. There's no more important time that you could spend as a leader than with your team generating new ideas, making decisions, building relationships, assessing the talent around the table, and assessing the talent of your direct reports. As a leader, you should be spending 80% of your time working on the business, and 20% of your time working in the business. A large portion of that working on the business time should be spent sitting around the table with your peers or your direct reports making those important decisions and generating those great ideas.

In order to have the right meetings, there are some things you need. There's a recipe to have the right meetings, and of course, it starts with having the right meeting rhythm. When should you be having your meetings? Daily huddles, weekly meetings, monthly, quarterly, annual? Do you have the right objectives for those meetings? Do you have the right agenda? Is the meeting facilitated in the right way? Did you do the right prep before the meeting? All those things are important and I'll talk about those on different blog posts, but what I want to talk about in this video is having the right set of ground rules for your meetings.

I'm going to talk about three ground rules that I use with my private clients. The right ground rules for your team might be different or you might steal these - that's fine. I stole most of these ideas from others. Steal them from me.

Ground rule 1: Brutal honesty.

Brutal honesty means when you're around that table with your team, those things you're a little uncomfortable sharing because it may be difficult for you to say, or it may be difficult for someone else to hear, normally those things you're hesitant to say are actually the most important things to say. You need that level of vulnerability on the team to be able to say things that show that you don't know the right answer or admit you made a mistake or ask for help. Maybe it's giving somebody feedback about their behavior or about a specific idea and you're not sure how they're going to take it. Maybe it's being honest about the performance of the company or performance of the team and you're hesitant to say it. Brutal honesty means you owe it to your team to say those things. Without brutal honesty, you're gonna have boring meetings where those things that should be said, those discussions that should be had, are, pun intended I guess, left on the table, and it's going to lead to boring, ineffective meetings.

Ground rule 2: No shame, no blame.

No shame no blame means when we are being brutally honest, it's not for the purpose of pointing the finger at anyone else, making them feel bad, blaming someone, ganging up on someone. It's not for the purposes of looking back. It's always for the purpose of looking forward. So no shame, no blame means let's be brutally honest, but let's do it - not look back, not blame - let's look forward and say, how do we do it better the next time? If we made a mistake as a team, if I made a mistake as an individual, or one of you around the table made that mistake, let's honor it, let's understand it, and let's talk about how we do better next time.

Ground rule 3: Disagree and commit.

This rule is probably the hardest one. It comes from Pat Lencioni in his book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Disagree and commit means we can disagree around this conference room table. It might even get heated and emotional at times, and that conflict is okay. In fact, that conflict is more than okay - it's critical. But once everybody has had the chance to be heard around the table and a decision is made - the decision may be made by the leader of the team, the decision may be made by whoever is accountable for that function - you need to commit to that decision. You need to leave that room as committed to that decision, as bought into that decision, as if it was your own idea. Sometimes with my teams when I coach them privately, it's easy to actually describe what disagree and commit is not, because I think people believe they are following disagree and commit when they're not. So here's what it's not. Let's say three of you on your team believe with all your heart that the right answer for a given question or a decision you need to make is option A. You just know it's option A. And the other three people on the team, the other half of the table, believe that it's option B. So you and two others believe it's option A, three people believe it's option B. You get into some heated important debate, everybody has a chance to be heard, and whoever is accountable for making that decision chooses to go with option B. Now, you wanted option A. Here's what disagree and commit it is not. It's not then going back to your team who says hey, I heard you were making that decision today. I hope you went with option A, we wanted option A, and you say well yeah, I know option A is the right option, but the team decided option B. Let's make the best of it. That's not disagree and commit. When you say well, let's just make the best of it, that's like asking your team to look for any excuse to prove that option B was the wrong answer. That's not true commitment. True commitment is going back to your team and saying guys, we discussed it as a leadership team, we chose option B, we are going to make that work. Let's talk about how we're making option B work. That's disagree and commit. It’s not easy to do, it doesn't mean you're being dishonest, it doesn't mean you say I always believed it was option B, but what it means is you've got to commit to that and be as passionate about making that work as if it was your own idea.

So, what are your ground rules? Do you have ground rules? If you have ground rules, do you share them at the beginning of every meeting? Are they followed in every meeting? Do you hold people accountable for following those? If you want to generate more ideas, you want to make better decisions faster, you want to build stronger relationships - start with the right ground rules in your next meeting.