As a CEO, you can choose how involved you want to be with your senior executives on issues that are beyond the direct scope of their jobs. It's a spectrum, but let's consider two ends of the spectrum: bilateral and collective approaches.
The reason many CEOs stick with a bilateral approach is because they aren't the ones who experience its negative effects. All of their meetings are clear, focused, and efficient. All of their executives leave the CEO's office happy and with a clear understanding of what to do next. Further down the organization, these disagreements surface, leading to conflict, poor alignment, duplication of effort, process gaps, and other dysfunction and inefficiencies.
Nothing makes a team more effective (or worse) than the quality of the in-depth meetings where big strategic, commercial, operational and organisational decisions are made. And these meetings strengthen team cohesion, turning top executives from a source of division and friction further down the organisation into a source of consistency that reduces friction.
Step 1: Plan ahead. A little bit of planning ahead of time can make your in-depth meetings more effective and efficient. Here are three things you should do before the meeting begins:
• Determine the most important issues your team should focus on right now. A lot of valuable time is wasted on updating tasks and addressing necessary but low-value issues. Set the agenda to tackle key strategic, commercial, or operational issues first.
• Define the outcome you want from each agenda item. Is it a list of options? A decision? A detailed plan of action for starting a new project?
• Make sure everyone has the key information they need to deal with the problem effectively, ideally in the form of memos that can be distributed in advance or read by everyone during the meeting.
Step 2: Set yourself up for success during the meeting. Here are a few things that can help get everyone in the right frame of mind.
• Ask everyone to turn off any devices or apps that may be distracting and give their full attention to the discussion.
• Don't jump straight into the topic. Instead, start the meeting with a warm-up round and use a mindset-shifting question like, “What's going well at work right now?” Or better yet, ask everyone to close their eyes and take five deep breaths. Participants might frown, but after a few minutes you'll notice the room becomes more focused.
Step 3: Adjust according to the questions. Fully agree on the specific questions that need to be answered today. Team meetings often feature vague topics like “sales” or “finance.” Everyone has something to say about these topics, but no one knows what specific questions they are trying to answer. As a result, people end up not speaking to each other, or debating questions that are important but cannot be answered today. Good questions have the following characteristics:
- Highlight where you're stuck, your current problem (e.g., declining sales this quarter).
- Define the outcomes you want to achieve from today's meeting (e.g. a list of possible actions to reverse trends). Once you have clarified your questions, read the energy in the room. If the energy is high and people are eager to participate, then it's the right question.
Step 4: Host a round. In every group, some people have more speaking time and some have very little. These factors have nothing to do with the value of their contributions. To really get the groupthink engine going, you need to give everyone a platform to share their best ideas. This is where rounds come in. Start the round by restating the question you arrived at in step 3. Here are the rules:
• Anyone can start. Go around in a clockwise or counterclockwise direction until everyone has spoken.
• The listener must give the speaker their full attention. Keep your eyes on the speaker while he or she is speaking, and concentrate on understanding the meaning of the speaker's message, not on what you want to reply to. Your turn will come in one minute.
• Do not interrupt or cut someone off under any circumstances. Even if you feel compelled to ask questions for clarification or express your opinion, please refrain from doing so.
Rounds are so simple, yet I have seen them transform teams time and time again. That’s because rounds are more than just a mechanical device. They are also a powerful social contract that both binds and liberates meeting participants. Here’s the unspoken contract. As members of this team:
• I am confident that there will be an opportunity to talk about our biggest issues, and I am confident that when I do speak, I will not be interrupted and that others will listen with 100% focus to what I have to say.
• They know their opinions will be heard and they have the opportunity to influence others.
• In exchange for this privilege, I will keep my remarks brief and give my utmost attention when it is someone else's turn to speak.
Step 5: Use a talking stick. After the first round is over, you're free to contribute to the discussion as normal, with one small change: the use of talking sticks. This is simple: only the person holding the talking stick (a marker pen will do) is allowed to speak.
This last tip is extremely powerful because it eliminates the possibility of being interrupted. When you know for sure that you won't be interrupted, you reduce a lot of stress and pressure. You can choose your words carefully, pause, and think as you speak without worrying that someone will take the floor from you. As a result, the quality of your speech skyrockets and the number of misunderstandings plummets.
Pay attention to equality of participation: if two or three people dominate the discussion, invite others to share their opinions. Or, reopen the discussion and ask for updated thoughts in light of what has been said so far. This will let you know the group is ready to move towards a conclusion or decision. If not, it will give you clarity about where the open issues are and help you focus there.
