Running Fast or Running Far?
“Antony Jay wrote in How to Run a Meeting that our attachment to the places we work is based on social interactions. If there are no meetings, our devotion to the organization we work for decreases dramatically. Collaboration is deeply ingrained in our human nature. We are social animals. We do our best work interacting with others, not in isolation.”
From “The Ultimate Guide to Successful Meetings,” by Gustavo Razzetti
For the last 2.5 years we have worked consistently with an exceptional non-school client. They lead their industry because of their mission-driven, customer-focused, high-achievement employees.
Over time, we have noticed that these folks have a deep hunger for human connection with one another. When I mentioned this to one of their senior leaders, she said, “I have a theory about that: We have to be superhuman with our clients, and we let that crowd out space and time for being human with each other.”
Schools face a similar dilemma. The adults who choose to work in schools are typically the kind of people who want to do superhuman things on behalf of kids. And sometimes that means sacrificing being human with one another.
This manifests itself in meetings. Sometimes they’re unfocused, other times they’re too focused, and other times you need a meeting-after-the-meeting because participants lacked trust and connection.
When I Head of School at Malvern Prep I was terrible at leading meetings, because I was monomaniacal about getting things done. It was not until I left Malvern and started Basecamp that I realized how much I had missed.
“Death by meeting” is a thing, but meetings can actually be a solution--if we treat the start of every meeting as an opportunity to connect people to one other and their purpose.
When we facilitate meetings with the client mentioned above, we start with empathy interviews. In these short, non-work conversations, one person asks her partner questions—and only questions. She can ask as many follow ups as she wants, or pivot to other topics entirely. (We provide more than enough prompts to keep the conversation going.)
Here is a real example:
A question about your partner’s favorite thing to drink might lead to coffee, which might lead to…
Her childhood memories of preparing a pot of Café Bustelo for her mom every day, which leads to…
Recalling that her mom moved to the Bronx from Puerto Rico when she was a chid, which leads to…
A conversation about how your partner has sometimes felt like she has a foot in two world: the Spanish-speaking, working class South Bronx and the English-speaking, white collar world of her job.
Of course, empathy interviews are just one way to create connections at the start of a meeting. A much simpler, quicker technique is for the person running the meeting to ask, “What’s got your attention?” [1]
Will having that kind of conversation help you get through your meeting agenda? No. Will having that kind of conversation help you to trust—and care for—the people you work with? Yes.
As the African proverb goes, “If you want to run fast, run alone. If you want to run far, run together.”
Are you designing your meetings to run fast or to run far?
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[1] For this and a lot more on the art of designing meetings, check out Gustavo Razzetti’s “The Ultimate Guide to Successful Meetings.”
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