Are you dragging people to your meetings?
Posted on March 07, 2023 by Tammy Sherger, One of Thousands of Business Coaches on Noomii.
Do you hate meetings? If you do you're missing out on a competitive advantage in business! Try this one change and watch your credibility grow.
I love meetings! Hard to believe since most people hate meetings. The common belief is the problem is the meetings. The truth is the problem is the people running the meetings. Until you shift your beliefs about meetings you won’t address the real problem and you won’t be able to take advantage of the strategic value of being able to design and execute a successful meeting.
What if instead of viewing the people you’ve invited to your meetings as Bossy Bob or Sidetrack Sally you looked at them as your GUESTS. And you decided to treat them like you would a guest you’ve invited to your home? What would change?
1. You would prepare. How much time do you spend making sure everything is in order before guests arrive to your home? The same courtesy should be extended to your meeting guests.
2. Do your guests know why they are there? We make sure we tell our home guests it’s for a dinner or a birthday party so they can prepare in advance. Do your meeting guests know what the goal of the meeting is or what you expect them to contribute?
3. Don’t waste their time! Would you leave your home guests sitting outside your house waiting for you to arrive? Your meeting guests shouldn’t be sitting in a boardroom waiting for you to arrive. Be the first to arrive and ensure that technology is set up and working.
4. Simple shifts in how you think can have a BIG impact on your results. Meetings are not going away no matter how hard you try to cancel, ban or break free from them. Meetings are how we communicate in business and if you want a competitive advantage learn how to design and execute meetings that lead to a YES!
Meetings can be used to instill desired corporate values…. like being on time, keeping commitments, accountability and achievement of common business goals…By taking a practice such as the meeting, a repeatable action that people have over and over again every day and giving it a “system” then those very meetings can transform productivity, performance and results.
You can’t expect a mission statement or your core values posted on the wall in a frame to actually work. They are just words; you must incorporate them into day-to-day operational activities.
If how you conduct your meetings is aligned with your core values, then you and your people are living them every single day, it becomes the way you do business.
What else would you do differently if you started viewing the attendees at your meetings as your guests and yourself as the host?
Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way. Booker T. Washington
