Archive for June, 2025
Meetings go long; attendees stealthily text under the table like no one can see them; one person talks the whole time, while everyone else rolls their eyes. All the while, the facilitator does nothing.
Sound familiar?
The amount of time wasted in unproductive meetings and the degree of frustration meeting participants feel is astronomical.
The solution is simple but may not feel easy.
Set clear meeting expectations at the beginning of EVERY in-person, virtual, and hybrid meeting and hold people accountable when they violate the guidelines.
Most meeting facilitators don’t set expectations at the beginning of meetings. Instead, facilitators expect attendees to follow the unstated, assumed guidelines. And when the meeting facilitator’s boss, peers, or customers are distracted, it’s too hard to say something, so facilitators ignore the behavior, hoping it will stop without intervention.
The key to getting what you want in meetings (and in life) is to ask, which for the most part, we don’t. We assume people will do things as we do.
Tips for Running an Effective Meeting:
1. Set meeting expectations at your next in-person, virtual, or hybrid meeting.
2. Write the expectations on a flip chart or in the online chat and hang them up/post them in the chat at the beginning of every meeting.
3. Review the meeting expectations every time you meet, even with groups who meet weekly.
4. Ask meeting participants’ permission to manage meeting behavior. Your role as the meeting facilitator gives you the right to address bad meeting behavior. Asking for permission and letting people know you will say something if participants are distracted, etc., makes it easier to speak up.
5. Tell participants they are expected to hold themselves and each other accountable.
6. Hold people accountable for following the meeting expectations. If you ask people not to side talk, address side talking when you hear it. If you ask people not to be on their laptops or phones, ask people to put them away. If one person talks too long, interrupt them. You will have no credibility if you set expectations but don’t hold people accountable. Hold virtual participants accountable just as you hold in-person participants accountable.
The reason facilitators don’t hold people accountable is that they feel uncomfortable. It’s hard to tell your peers, boss, and coworkers to be more succinct. It’s almost impossible if you don’t set expectations about meeting behavior and set the expectation that you will say something when the meeting expectations are violated. The simple act of setting meeting expectations and asking people’s permission to manage to those expectations makes managing ‘bad’ meeting behavior easier. Not easy, but easier.
You may be thinking, “I don’t run these meetings. I’m an innocent victim.”
As a meeting participant, it is frustrating to go to poorly run meetings. But it’s also your role to speak up when you see things going poorly. Talk with the meeting facilitator.
The conversation could go something like this:
Express empathy: “That Wednesday team meeting is tough. I wouldn’t want to run it.”
Ask permission to give feedback: “I’d like to help. I’ve got a few observations and suggestions. Is it ok if I share them?”
Give feedback: “I’ve noticed that several people have been missing the meeting and others are on their phones and laptops during meetings. This definitely limits what we can get done and must be frustrating to you. What are your thoughts?”
Make a suggestion: “What do you think of setting meeting expectations at the next meeting and then telling people you’re going to hold them accountable?”
Offer help: “You’re not alone in this meeting. I’d be happy to tee up this discussion and explain why we need to set meeting expectations. What do you think?”
The facilitator knows the meetings aren’t going well. They just don’t know what to do. Offer to help. Don’t judge. The facilitator might be more receptive than you think, and you can stop suffering through poorly run meetings.
Most of the feedback we give and receive puts people on the defensive. We don’t do this intentionally. It just happens. We say how we feel, usually when we’re upset, and the other person responds.
Most of the feedback we give and receive is judgy, like the examples below.
|
Judgy – Not Real Feedback
|
Just the Facts – Actual Feedback
|
| “You ignore me in meetings.” |
“When I raise my hand to participate in meetings, you don’t call on me.” |
| “You’re rude to me.” |
“When you pass me in the hallway, you don’t say hello.” |
| “You won’t work with me. You go around me.” |
“We were supposed to screen potential vendors together. You scheduled and held the appointments without me.” |
| “You’re not responsive.” |
“You usually reply to emails a week after they were sent.” |
| “It’s hard to get time on your calendar.” |
“It takes three weeks to schedule time to meet with you.” |
Becoming defensive when receiving feedback is a hard-wired response, like slamming on your brakes when the car in front of your does the same. The more people feel judged, the more defensive they become. If you want to be sure people become defensive when you give feedback, be vague. If you want people to be able to hear you and take action on your feedback, strip out the opinion (judgment) and give people just the facts.
Referring to the chart above, the sentences on the left are opinions. And opinions can be debated. The sentences on the right are facts. Facts are harder to debate. When giving feedback give just the facts, not your opinion. This will take practice.
The first thing out of our mouths will invariably be judgment/opinion. People who have participated in feedback training with me or who have read How to Say Anything to Anyone know I call the tendency to be vague Cap’n Crunch. Cap’n Crunch: “You’re doing a good job.” That’s sweet but useless.
When someone upsets you and you want to tell the person, prepare for the conversation by asking yourself these questions:
- What did the person do that frustrated me?
- What behaviors did they exhibit?
- What actions did they take?
- What was the impact on me?
Then practice giving feedback to someone outside of your workplace to reduce gossip and drama and ask the person with whom you’re practicing what they heard. If your feedback is specific and clear, any lay person will interpret the feedback as you intended it.
Giving feedback, that others can hear, isn’t easy to do. It requires you to put your emotions aside, strip out judgments and opinions, and tell the other person the facts of what happened. The more you focus on the facts and less on how you feel about what happened, the better your conversations and relationships will go.
You’ve undoubtedly heard that it takes fewer than 30 seconds to form a first impression. The question is how frequently is your first impression wrong?
If the person sitting next to you on a plane doesn’t speak to you during the entire flight, you may initially think they are unfriendly, only to strike up a conversation as the plane is landing and find out that’s not the case. If a job candidate is outgoing, you may decide the person has good people skills, only to experience contrary behavior when they start the job. If someone is late to arrive for an initial meeting, you may decide they have an issue with time management, versus they were just running late that day.
Your first impression may be right, and it may be wrong, but it takes more than 30 seconds to be sure.
If you’ve participated in job interview training, you were probably trained to look for contrary evidence when forming an opinion about a candidate. Looking for contrary evidence is an attempt to disprove your first impression. If you quickly dismiss a candidate for lacking knowledge of your industry, you should ask interview questions to disprove your opinion before making a final decision.
Why not follow this practice in all settings? If you initially decide someone is trustworthy and reliable, spend more time with that person to be sure. If you quickly decide someone is unhelpful and uncommitted, give the person additional opportunities to behave differently before making a final judgment.
Snap judgments eliminate lots of great people and experiences from our lives.
Unfortunately, just as we prematurely exclude potential employees, friends, and life partners without having enough information, people do this to us as well, which is why it’s important to know the first impression you, your department, and your company make. If you don’t know the first impression you create, there’s nothing you can do to shift behaviors that may be costing you friends and customers.
When I was new to a job, early in my career, I asked my new coworkers to give me feedback if they saw me do anything that got in the way of my being successful at work. They agreed. But when they had negative feedback, they didn’t give it to me, they told my boss instead. That’s when I got the hard and painful lesson that people have a tendency to talk about us, not to us. It’s also when I began asking the people closest to me, who I know love me and care enough to tell me the truth, the first impression I create.
Opinions are formed quickly and they’re hard to break. Give people more than one chance and see how they show up. And know that many people will eliminate you, your department, and your company after just one interaction. So, find out the impression you create, giving you the power to do something about that impression.
Download some of the questions I ask to learn my reputation.
Someone asks if you can (fill in the blank). You look at your calendar. That hour is open. You say, “yes.” You forgot that hour was designed for something you’ve been meaning to do, for yourself. You’re angry for forgetting. You promise to do better tomorrow.
The next day… repeat.
A way out of tired-inducing-people-pleasing is to set boundaries and stick to them. And this is hard, for me.
Examples of boundaries: Putting an hour in your calendar during the day to exercise; blocking 30-minutes between meetings to work on projects; only scheduling 80% of your workday to allow for last-minute requests and emergencies. Putting a boundary in place doesn’t mean saying no. Boundaries create the conditions that tell us, without struggle, when to say yes.
Before I had my son, I traveled for work constantly. Some weeks I was on the road for six consecutive days, in three different states. And I loved every second of it. Audience + microphone = happiness. When I had a child, I knew that schedule wasn’t going to work. So, I set boundaries. I decided how many nights per week I would travel and the time I needed to arrive home from each trip. And I didn’t violate those boundaries for 8 years. If a piece of work would require me to violate my travel boundaries, I said no without struggle, no matter how much I wanted to do that piece of work. The boundaries made the decisions easy. There was no deliberating or debating.
I’ll admit, I’m not as effective as setting boundaries in other areas of my life. Last week, I had a yoga class on my calendar. When I learned a repair person was able to be at my house during that hour, the yoga class was quickly deleted from my calendar. Yesterday, I asked my son what he wanted for breakfast, before flag football. He wanted scrambled eggs and a smoothie. I made both, knowing there wasn’t time. We were late for flag football. What was missing in both situations? Boundaries.
How does this apply to work? The key to preventing tired, burnt-out employees is to make it safe to speak up. Burnout is a systemic issue, not a personal one. Burnout at work comes from too much to do, over time. One way out is to make it safe to tell the truth at work.
For the most part, no one wants to admit to their boss that they are overextended or overwhelmed. Doing so feels like failure, and who wants to admit failure? If you want employees who are energized versus exhausted, focus on making it safe to tell the truth at work.
Five ways to make it safe to tell the truth at work:
- Leaders and managers share their own strategies for managing time and priorities.
- Ask your employees and coworkers meaningful questions. “How’s it going?” is not a meaningful question. Try: “What are your preferred working hours? What times a day would you prefer not to be contacted?”
- Show appreciation when employees risk and say hard things.
- Reward the truth. Make employees who are willing to say hard things a positive example.
- Help employees problem solve to manage their time and priorities. Be ‘in it’ with them.
The good news about violating your own boundaries is you will get another chance to do it differently tomorrow. You can always reset a boundary. This time, tell the other people in your life about your boundaries. Tell your coworkers if you don’t do happy hours, 7:00 am Zoom calls, and back-to-back meetings, and tell them why. Then offer an alternative. Everything in life is a negotiation.
