125. Making Meetings Meaningful, Pt. 2: Key Ingredients for Effective Meetings

[00:00:00] Matt Abrahams: Many of us dread meetings. In our first of two episodes on making meetings meaningful. We learned best practices from academics on how to be better in meetings. In our second episode, you'll learn even more techniques for bringing people together, figuring out the best way to maximize our time, and making your meetings more effective.

[00:00:28] Some of the brightest spots in my day are when I receive an email that says a meeting has been cancelled. This is not a good thing. Meetings are important and can be very helpful, yet many are ineffective and a waste of time. By focusing on purpose and outcome, we can make meetings matter. I'm Matt Abrahams, and I teach strategic communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Welcome to Think Fast, Talk Smart, the Podcast. 

[00:01:03] Today, I am really looking forward to speaking with Elise Keith. Elise is a friend and a very creative thinker when it comes to making meetings more effective. Elise is also known as the Meeting Maven and co founded Lucid Meetings and wrote 'Where the Action Is: The Meetings That Make or Break Your Organization.' I'm excited to have you help us crack the code on effective meetings, Elise. Welcome. 

[00:01:29] Elise Keith: Thank you for having me. Let's do it. 

[00:01:31] Matt Abrahams: Elise, in your opinion, what are meetings good for? 

[00:01:36] Elise Keith: Everything in an organization's communication architecture is really designed to channel three things, right? We're channeling information, we're channeling attention. And we're driving intent. 

[00:01:51] So of all of the communication channels we have, so your email and your slack and your asynchronous work and whatnot, meetings are really the most powerful one. So, when you say, what are meetings good for, right? It's the one place where you've got the entire group's attention focused on the same information at the same time, and you can channel that into clarity of intent on what happens next. So, it's powerful. So, meetings are really powerful that way. 

[00:02:20] Matt Abrahams: Absolutely. They're a way of focusing and really making sure that people are aligned. I appreciate that. When is it best to run your meetings in person versus virtually? 

[00:02:32] Elise Keith: The short answer is how well do you know your group, right? And how clear are you on what you're trying to achieve? And if the answer is, I don't really know this group very well, and we're not super clear on what we need to do. Your odds of getting a good result are better if you're in person because when things are wishy washy and messy, being in the room so that we can interrupt each other and overlap and read that body language really, really well helps.

[00:03:02] That said, if you are super clear on what you need to achieve and how you're going to do it, you can use that intentionality to be successful in any format. 

[00:03:11] Matt Abrahams: Excellent. So, it really has to do with how well you know each other as at least an initial decision point for deciding virtual or in person. 

[00:03:22] Elise Keith: How well you know each other and also how clear you are about what you need to accomplish.

[00:03:26] Matt Abrahams: Right, absolutely. Now I know in your work, you distinguish among a variety of different types of meetings. Can you give us a rundown on a few of these different types? 

[00:03:36] Elise Keith: Yeah, you bet. What we've discovered is that across all of the business functions, leadership to, you know, onboarding your front end, customer support, there are essentially 16 different types of meetings that can be grouped into three rough categories.

[00:03:51] So there are these Cadence Meetings, which are the ones that we use to keep work going. We've got a team, we know what we're trying to achieve, and we need to get together to make sure that we're actually making progress, and that nothing too big has changed. You know, are you still, okay? Are we still doing the right thing? Those are your cadence meetings. 

[00:04:11] There are a whole ‘nother set of meetings called the Catalyst Meetings, and those are about changing things, brainstorming, decisions, problem solving. And for those, you're going to want to bring together the right people to help you achieve that goal and follow a process that helps that group think about the problem in the same way at the same time. So that's really where all that facilitation stuff comes in, is in those kinds of places. 

[00:04:37] And then the final set, that other last bit is what we call Learn and Influence. And Shishir Mehrotra at Coda, who's done a beautiful job looking at this from the Startup Valley perspective calls context. So, in essence, what do we do? How do we gather to help give people an understanding of how to make sense of what's going on for our organization right now and how we can better think about the work that we do together.

[00:05:04] Matt Abrahams: Cadence, catalyst, and context are the big buckets of different types of meetings. And I think that's really important for people to understand what the purpose of the meeting is so that you can better design the meeting to fit that purpose.

[00:05:19] Do you have advice and guidance on finding purpose and articulating that so people are focused on what is going on or will be going on in the meetings? 

[00:05:29] Elise Keith: Absolutely. The way to think about it is this, there are two things you need to know before you schedule any meeting. One is the purpose, and one is the outcomes. So, what will be different because we did this? And with the purpose, you want to state that as a verb. And here's a rule, that verb has to be something like to decide, to create a plan, to make sense of, to find an agreement, and it cannot include any words that are a synonym for meeting. 

[00:06:00] Matt Abrahams: So, give me an example of what a good meeting purpose statement would be.

[00:06:05] Elise Keith: Well, let's talk about the common example in companies where they might say, hey, there's a budget meeting on the calendar. So meeting is a synonym for meeting, pretty, pretty direct one. And budget is a noun, not a verb. What is the purpose of that meeting? No clue. Something related to the budget. So, what do you break it down?

[00:06:24] Well, if it were a planning meeting, it would be to create the budget plan for next quarter. If it's a problem-solving meeting, it would be to solve the budget shortfall. If it's a decision-making meeting, perhaps it is to approve the budget changes that came from our departments. 

[00:06:42] Matt Abrahams: Love it. That's really practical and tactical, Elise. The second thing you mentioned beyond purpose was focusing on outcomes. Can you tell us more? 

[00:06:52] Elise Keith: So, if our purpose is to make a plan or to approve that decision, the outcome will be very naturally a decision and ideally a documented decision. And then what else? You know, what else needs to come from that meeting so that the meeting has injected the intention, the energy into your system to get that job done. So, in the case of a decision-making meeting, it'll be our plan for how we're going to communicate this decision to the rest of the organization. 

[00:07:21] Matt Abrahams: This really nicely dovetails what we talked about when we talked with Karin Reed and Joe Allen. We were talking about setting agendas and the importance of having agendas, and they both advised that having a clear purpose is really important, more so than actually the itemized agenda. And you helped us, and I appreciate this, to best understand what that purpose should sound like, have it be a verb and make sure that you don't have any synonyms for the word meeting in there. And I think that makes it much clearer. And it also helps you, I would assume, and I'd love your opinion on this, to assess the success of the meeting. If you have a clear purpose, you can then judge the success of it, cause a lot of meetings I come out of, I'm not clear one, why we met and then two, were we successful? 

[00:08:07] Elise Keith: Agendas are a mixed bag. I have really mixed feelings about recommending people always pay attention to agendas, I think there are much better approaches and better ways to think about meeting success than that. But with purpose and outcome, you put those things in the calendar in advance. People know, should I be in that room? How do I prepare? Am I equipped to help us get to that result? It's it, that's all you need a lot of the time. 

[00:08:34] Matt Abrahams: I am smiling ear to ear because you mentioned the calendar invite. I feel like the calendar invite is the most underutilized tool for helping us have effective meetings. For the very reason you mentioned, it helps us get prepared. It sets our expectations. We can put in those invites so many useful things. Just what you call your meeting matters. Just as you said, how you label your purpose. So, I really encourage people to take what Elise is saying to heart and really think about how you can operationalize it in your meeting invites. 

[00:09:08] So Elise, I get that purpose and outcome are really important to define up front to have a successful meeting. I'm curious, as you begin to think through your purpose of meeting and your potential outcome, are there times where you might decide that a meeting isn't the most effective way to come together and accomplish this purpose? And if so, what do you advise people to do when thinking about not meeting?

[00:09:34] Elise Keith: The answer is embedded in the question. If you are unclear what the purpose is, do not hold other people's time hostage. Other people's time is not for you to sit there and work out what that might be. You're not ready to meet, do not meet if you don't know what the purpose is. Instead step back, maybe send an email, maybe use Slack, maybe talk to your dog, go for a walk, get clear. If you are clear on the purpose, you're clear on the outcomes, but you can't get the people who will help you achieve the outcomes, don't meet. Figure out how to communicate with them in a way to get that done. So, there's no reason to invite people to have a conversation that they then can't resolve, that's enormously frustrating. 

[00:10:18] And then finally, if you show up, you know, who's supposed to be there. You're clear on what to do. You're clear on what you're trying to achieve. You get there and then somebody doesn't show up or. Yeah, we all thought we would do this, but our dog died this morning. Like, whatever it is, if you're not in a position to actually be successful, stop. You can't have a meeting of the minds if the minds are not in the meeting, if they're like on their, you know, what they just ran into or their, their dry throat or whatever.

[00:10:44] Matt Abrahams: Yeah. Yeah. That's a great way of putting it. How can you have meetings of the minds if the minds aren't ready to meet? And this notion of being a steward of people's time, I think is really an appropriate way to envision meetings. Meetings can be incredibly effective uses of time. You can really catalyze and initiate good work, but at the same time, you can waste a lot of time. And I think the criteria that you gave us are really helpful. I have seen you run meetings and you're an expert facilitator. Are there things that you tend to go to, just get people to be engaged, to get them off their devices, to get them off of multitasking? How can you pull people into the content?

[00:11:21] Clearly making it relevant and relying on best practices that work for your team makes a lot of sense. But are there other tools or experiences that you rely on to help engage people? 

[00:11:32] Elise Keith: Yeah, and certainly if you're working with a group where you're not so clear or you're a guest, which I happen to be a lot of the time as an outside expert, always show up a little early, show up in advance. You know, you are hosting, you are creating an experience, so make it welcoming, say hello, right, bring people in. And there's something about when you, especially if you're in a virtual setting, but in any setting, when they see your face and you talk to them right off the bat, the, you set the expectation that, hey, guess what, you are here as a contributor, I expect you to talk. And you want to back that up by ensuring they're contributing in some way within the first five minutes. 

[00:12:10] Matt Abrahams: So, come up with activities and exercises to get contribution. And this touches on a topic again, that we spoke with Karin and Joe about, which is this notion of equity. You want to make sure that everybody has at least an equal opportunity to contribute. It doesn't mean everybody contributes equally, but that they have that opportunity. And especially in hybrid meetings where some are in person and some are virtual, that's important. Do you have specific questions you ask or ground rules you set up to help ensure that people do participate early and often?

[00:12:39] Elise Keith: You know, on occasion, I tend not to use ground rules very often. Instead, I work harder, and I recommend that people do things that make it clear in the environment what the natural behavior is. So, let's take an early engagement thing that you can do both with real teams that you work with and then as an outside person walking in to lead a meeting.

[00:13:01] First five minutes, hey everybody, how you doing? I want to check that we're in good shape for this today on a scale of zero to five, how's your energy? With zero being, oh my gosh, I'm nearly dead. And five being, woohoo, jazz hands, let's go. You know, and three, like, I'm fine, thanks. Let's move on. Three, two, one, show me how you're doing. It's a visual, we ask people to hold up hands or type in the chat. 

[00:13:24] Matt Abrahams: Mmhmm. 

[00:13:26] Elise Keith: And we have this opportunity to say, okay, hey, guess what? I'm going to ask you things and you're going to reply. Hey, we're going to all do it at once. Hey, everybody's participating. Hey, a range of opinions is welcome, right? So, we do things to set the conditions that make the kind of behavior that we want to share collaboratively obvious.

[00:13:46] Matt Abrahams: What is so cool about that bit of advice that you just shared, the example you gave, is not only does it get people engaged and demonstrate that you want them to be participating, but you actually get them doing it. So, you set that expectation. And with that one in particular, you get vital information that will help influence how you proceed in that meeting. If everybody comes back a five, you're going to do things a little differently than if you have mixed results or a lower average in terms of energy. So, I like that idea and instead of saying this is a meeting where we all will participate, you actually do the participation. That I think is a really valuable idea.

[00:14:23] Something I just learned that I really like, I was doing a presentation and I asked people to share their best practices they use for meetings. And somebody talked about sit back time, and I thought this was fascinating. So, in order to encourage fingers off the keyboards on a virtual meeting, for example, is they just say it's sit back time. So, everybody just takes a seat back so their hands literally can't reach the keyboard. And then they have their conversation that way. And anybody at any point can say it's sit back time and it's not seen as being harsh or aggressive. It's just saying we really need to connect on this particular issue. And it's a nice way of setting expectations and having a norm for talking about really important issues. So, I love these experiential ways of inculcating behavior such that we can actually drive success in those meetings. 

[00:15:15] Are there other tools that you use when facilitating to bring about the coordination and cooperation that we're looking for, paired with equity and safety and just the time constraints that go into meetings?

[00:15:28] Elise Keith: Two that speak directly to what you're talking about are Think-Pair-Share, or 1-2-All or whatever you want to call it, where you ask a critical question to the group and then you give everybody a minute to think about it on their own, in silence. Massive leveler, right, because not everybody processes instantly.

[00:15:47] Also, by the way, it keeps people who are likely to say, well, let me talk to you about this for 10 minutes. There's no space for that, we're doing silent. And then after everybody has silent time to think about it, they turn to one or two other people, compare those ideas. And in the full group, you invite those best ideas to come out. What is one thing that came from your group that everybody else needs to hear? So, everybody participates, but not everybody is put on the spot where they have to share in front of everyone else. 

[00:16:18] Matt Abrahams: I love the Think-Pair-Share. It is an excellent teaching technique; it is helpful for people who might be more introverted or perhaps don't have the same command of the language because it's not their first language. It gives an opportunity to reflect and then to connect with others before you actually bring to the table. And the thing that you highlighted there that many of us don't think about is the notion of silence in meetings. Silence can be productive time. It can be time where people are really doing active work. Was there another one you wanted to add? 

[00:16:49] Elise Keith: In the business context, it's important to remember that we also need to get work done, right? Meetings are about achieving results. You can use those same techniques and take the time where the group is working together through things, make it longer and achieve basically parallel processing.

[00:17:07] So let me give you an example. Let's say your leadership team is working through what's going on this month and you've run into a number of issues that have come up that the team needs to work through, right? We've got some hiring delays, we've got something going on in the supply chain, we've got a customer who's got a problem. You know, 10 things to work through. Well, if you keep the entire team together, talking through each of the 10 things, one at a time, what happens? You're there till Tuesday, Thursday, it's the longest meeting ever. And you make no progress because you don't have time to get any of them done. 

[00:17:40] So instead you can have the entire group silently rank which of these are the top priorities. And then break that group up, three people take the first one, three people take the second one, three people take the third one. And they work on them in parallel at the same time coming to a suggested resolution. 

[00:17:59] Matt Abrahams: I like having people maximize the productivity by splitting up and having people focus on what's most important.

[00:18:06] Elise Keith: Right. So, meetings, you have this opportunity to divide the work, but not the team, right? We're working on this all together. And at the same time, you're doing this thing, everybody's contributing, everybody has a chance to have input, everybody's valued and we're making progress. 

[00:18:22] Matt Abrahams: Driving towards that outcome you talked about more efficiently. So, Elise, you are full of lots of best practices. If you're okay, I'd like to do a lightning round, if you will of specific issues or challenges or opportunities. And I'd love just to get your thought about one best practice for each. Are you up for that? 

[00:18:39] Elise Keith: Bring it. 

[00:18:40] Matt Abrahams: Great. What's your best advice to empower somebody to contribute in a meeting when it's going hot and heavy, lots of folks are talking all at once. How do you get your voice heard in that moment? 

[00:18:53] Elise Keith: Parallel processing, parallel communication channels. So, use the chat if you're online. If you're in person, write it down and post it somewhere. 

[00:19:02] Matt Abrahams: Excellent. I like that. My advice in that situation is to paraphrase something that's being said and use that as the hook that pulls you into the conversation, so you can latch on. But I love this idea of parallel processing using chat, posting it on the board, writing it up. I think that can be really helpful. 

[00:19:18] A little bit of the opposite. How do you shut people down who are talking too much, who are sucking the air out of the room? How do you get them to quiet down to allow others to contribute?

[00:19:27] Elise Keith: You've got to boldly raise your hand and say, oh my goodness, I'm noticing the time. 

[00:19:32] Matt Abrahams: Yeah. So, use the time or use the goals that you have to achieve as the mechanism. Absolutely. I also rely here on paraphrasing too, where you can literally interrupt the person by highlighting something of value they said, and then politely moving the conversation over. So, I might say, Elise that point you made about cost really important, I'm wondering what does Neil think about costs? And all of a sudden, I've taken the floor away. So, I think you're right, you have to call it, blame it on timing, blame it on the goal, use paraphrasing. 

[00:20:03] Before we end, Elise, I'd like to ask you the same questions I ask everybody who joins me. The first question will be one I make up just for you, and then the other two are those that are consistent across many guests. Are you up for doing that? 

[00:20:16] Elise Keith: Bring it on. 

[00:20:17] Matt Abrahams: I want you to reflect on the most recent meeting that you were involved in, either as running or a participant. What's one thing that you would have done different to make it more effective?

[00:20:28] Elise Keith: The clearer you can be about your intent and exactly what you want to have happen as you move forward, the more likely you are to get it. And in my last meeting, I would have taken the time up front to be just even a little bit clearer. 

[00:20:44] Matt Abrahams: All right, so really having that purpose and intent clearly defined and aligned with everybody. Next question. Who is a communicator that you admire and why? 

[00:20:55] Elise Keith: I like Ann Handley because she makes me think, she makes me laugh, and she makes me better. 

[00:21:01] Matt Abrahams: What a wonderful reason to like a communicator. And I encourage everybody to check out Ann's work. Final question. What are the first three ingredients that go into a successful communication recipe?

[00:21:14] Elise Keith: I would say deep breath to get clearer on that intent, open ears, and a willingness to keep in the conversation. 

[00:21:23] Matt Abrahams: So, the deep breath to focus makes a lot of sense to me. Open ears so that you're listening and observing what's going on. Talk to me about the keeping in the conversation piece. What does that mean for you?

[00:21:36] Elise Keith: In the places where communication is most likely to break down, I find is that sometimes it breaks down because we're unwilling to stick with it. 

[00:21:44] Matt Abrahams: So, people disengage when it's uncomfortable or not in their wheelhouse or they just don't want to deal with it. 

[00:21:50] Elise Keith: Right on. The first time you get it wrong, you walk away, that is not a successful communication recipe. 

[00:21:57] Matt Abrahams: No, not at all. Not at all. Thank you for clarifying and I see how that is so important. You have to engage, and you have to participate even if it's uncomfortable. 

[00:22:07] Well, Elise, I knew this was gonna be an engaging conversation. I knew I would learn from you and all of our listeners are benefiting from your advice: having a clear purpose in our meetings, focusing on the outcomes, being equitable and open and demonstrating what we want, not just sharing what we want, really really important advice. Thank you so much for your time and for your input and insight. 

[00:22:31] Elise Keith: Thanks for inviting me. 

[00:22:34] Matt Abrahams: Thank you for joining us for another episode of Think Fast Talk Smart, the podcast from Stanford, GSB.

[00:22:41] To learn more about effective meetings, please listen to episode number 42 with Sarah Singer and episode number 14 with Bob Sutton. This episode was produced by Jenny Luna, Ryan Campos, and me, Matt Abrahams. Our music is from Floyd Wonder. Please find us on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. Be sure to subscribe and rate us. Also follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram and check out faster smarter. io for deep dive videos, English language learning content, and our newsletter.