Coaching Churches

There is nothing worse than a bad meeting. The lost productivity for everyone in the room not to mention the ongoing withdrawals of trust are painful.  In a collaboration culture they are necessary but they must be prioritized for maximum effectiveness.  This Fast Company post is helpful:

“Meetings can be the bane of working life, but they don’t have to be a waste of time if you ask yourself a series of questions before every meeting, and only attend meetings that are really necessary. So before you click “accept” on that new calendar invitation, look out for these signs that indicate it’s not going to be a waste of your time.”

Read More …

Collaboration as a style of leadership has been both overvalued and underutilized.  From the overvalued side we spend far too much time talking and not enough time working.  Everyone does not need to be involved in every decision or know everything to be supportive.  The whole point of collaboration is the value of collective input and development which almost always requires debate.  This HBR post is really good:

“The modern workplace is awash in meetings, many of which are terrible. As a result, people mostly hate going to meetings. The problem is this: The whole point of meetings is to have discussions that you can’t have any other way. And yet most meetings are devoid of real debate.”

Read More …

I have read more information in the last year on this subject than any other.  There are many great things you can do to make your meetings more effective but this one thing is the most significant.  Have separate meetings that cover administrative, tactical and strategic objectives and never combine them again.  This Forbes post is great:

“Meetings to convey information should be different than those to get input or make decisions, which in turn should be different than those to generate breakthrough new ideas or solutions. Deliver those different outcomes with different types of meetings:

1. Level One Meetings: One-way presentations to convey information.

2. Level Two Meetings: Two-way conversations to get input and make decisions. Better approach to most meetings.

3. Level Three Meetings: Joint sense making. Curated co-creation or problem solving.

All of us have been in more bad meetings than great ones.  I absolutely dislike the organic approach where the agenda is lose and the results are feel good.  I admit that I am more tactical than most but all ongoing meetings should have some guidelines for mutual respect and effective outcomes.  This HBR article is excellent:

“If you want your team to be effective, you need meeting ground rules — and you need agreement about how to use them. Many teams that have ground rules don’t regularly use them. But having rules in place that you consistently enforce can significantly improve how your team solves problems and makes decisions.”

Read More …