For Productive Meetings, Name What’s in the Room

Have you ever been in a meeting where the leaders did not immediately address the biggest issue on participants’ minds?

I have. Many times.

Last year, I attended a meeting about an educational program that was moving their work from in-person to virtual. It was a big change, and there was some anxiety about the details – not to mention a lot of questions.

But when we arrived at the Zoom meeting, the agenda had changed. The first hour (!) dealt with agenda items unrelated to this major transition.

As you might imagine, by the time we started talking about the big change that would impact us, the mood was not good. It was difficult to move forward productively.

This experience reminded me of a phrase I learned as a high school journalist: “Don’t bury the lede!” The “lede” is the most newsworthy part of a news story. An effective newspaper story mentions the most important news fact first, and then, in descending order, mentions the least newsworthy facts last. For example, if there are fatalities in a fire, this is mentioned first—not the location of the fire or how many fire engines showed up to fight the fire.

“Don’t bury the lede!” is an important principle for designing effective meetings and conversations, too.

How do we do this?

When I design any meeting or presentation, or work with clients to design planning meetings, a first question is, “What is in the room right now?”

And I’m not talking about the tables and chairs!

Rather, I’m referring to the issues on people’s minds and the mood that people are bringing to the meeting.

I asked this question recently in a presentation on “Designing and Leading Inclusive, Interactive Meetings” for the international AFP-ICON (Association of Fundraising Professionals) Conference. (To those of you who joined this list after attending my online session, welcome!)

We did a survey poll to take the pulse, with participants responding to the question, “Type in one word that expresses an emotion that is in your meetings at the moment.” Here’s an image of our word cloud:

The word cloud shows that participants are seeing some hard emotions among team members: frustration, boredom, fatigue, tension and anxiety all got top votes. There are some more positive words too – happy, enthusiasm, productive, curiosity, anticipatory. But those positive words got fewer votes.

Are you surprised by the results of the poll, or do they confirm what you are seeing, too?

How do you design for what’s in the room?

First, find out what’s there – ahead of time, if possible.

This can be as simple as offline conversations with team members to check in and take the temperature.

Once you’ve found out what’s in the room, you need to consider how you want to address and acknowledge this. When you acknowledge what is on people’s minds, they feel seen – and will be more open to the meeting conversation.

It’s also important to create space to acknowledge feelings. Note that I am not necessarily suggesting throwing out the meeting agenda. But rather, acknowledge what’s in the room – in order to move through it.

Try this:

·         Consider – how much do you know about what’s “in the room” in the meetings you’re leading or attending?

·         What steps could you take to learn more about what’s on participants’ minds?

·         What would be the benefit for your meetings?