Meet Like You Mean It

And I just got tired of people complaining about their terrible meetings. And when I asked them why their meetings are terrible, they would give me all kinds of reasons – they get off track, they don't accomplish what they're going to do, they take you away from other valuable work – I kind of went, "You know, they don't have to."

Rachel Salaman: In the book you say that meetings have a 70 percent failure rate. That's astounding.

Wayne Turmel: Well it is, and that number is hard to quantify, but it's based on a couple of things. One is that human beings basically love to complain, and so what that basically means is about 30 percent of meetings actually accomplish what they want to accomplish.

The thing is that in the virtual world it's even worse. Statistics from various sources (including Microsoft and Harvard Business School and some others) say that virtual meetings, conference calls, web meetings, that kind of stuff – two thirds of online meeting time is considered a waste of time. Which sounds awful, until you realize that that number sits at about 50 percent for in-person meetings.

Rachel Salaman: So what are people getting wrong?

Wayne Turmel: Well, I think there's a number of things. I think that one is fairly obvious, which is we just don't plan the meeting with the end in mind. We get together and we start down a road and we magically assume we're going to get there.

We need to have structure. We need to have people willing, both the leaders and facilitators, and attendees need to be able to say, "Hey, let's get back on track, let's do what we need to do." So there's an empowerment thing there.

The second thing which doesn't get addressed is that we have developed, especially around virtual meetings and conference calls, a culture of, "OK I'm here. That's my job, I'll put the phone on mute and go answer my email." And nobody is held accountable.

When was the last time your manager, or you as a leader, went to somebody on your team and [said], "We haven't heard from you for three meetings now. What's going on, why aren't you participating? I'm pretty sure we're paying you for your talent and your brain, why aren't we getting anything from you?"

Rachel Salaman: Well, meetings, whether they're face to face or virtual, are all about getting people together. How can an organizer make sure he or she is asking the right people to a meeting?

Wayne Turmel: This sounds simplistic but it's really, what is it the meeting is supposed to achieve? And it's astounding how often we don't take time before we call a meeting to clearly define the purpose and the outcome of the meeting, and those are two different things.

It's a Tuesday morning status update. OK, why? Well, because it's Tuesday, and we have to give status updates. OK, what's the purpose of a status update? I would bet that half of a status update meeting is:

"Alice, how are you doing?"

"Nope, it's all good, we're on track, we're going to make it!"

"OK, good. Sally how about you?"

What is the purpose? A lot of that information can be done through checking your dashboards, sending out reports, and that allows you then to focus on the things that you need, which is, "Hey, we're in trouble on this milestone. I need help finding a solution, does anybody have a resource?" There's valuable information but we spend most of our time on the status meeting just going round-robin, everyone going, "Nope, it's all good."

So that doesn't really help. First of all it makes people tune out, but secondly, it doesn't then allow us to focus our brain power on the places where we really need the brain power.

And then there's the outcome piece of it, which is different than the purpose piece. If the purpose piece is we need everybody to share, we need to brainstorm. What's the desired outcome? The desired outcome is we need to come up with a list of five ideas – we need to make a decision.

OK, who are the stakeholders for that decision? Does everybody on the team need to be there? Do certain people need to be there? And if not, let them go about their work and we'll let them know what happened.

Rachel Salaman: Yes, I suppose that's one of the key questions, isn't it: does someone really need to be in the room or can they just be told about what happened afterwards? How can a leader decide who to invite?

Wayne Turmel: Now, to be fair, you need to be careful about that because it's very easy (particularly in highly technical fields) to assume that only those with a direct stake want, or need, to be part of that process.

One big part of meetings, especially virtual meetings, that gets short shrift is the team-building relationship-building aspect of it, where the meetings become highly transactional. Whereas if you meet in the meeting room there's, "Hey, how are you? Oh! Alice, I meant to ask you about that project!"

There's a lot of social and a lot of secondary work that gets done in between the cracks of a meeting that frequently are intentionally kept out of virtual meetings, which limits the team-building relationship-building part of them.

So you need to balance the need to manage time, and not drag everybody into meetings they don't need to be in, with this kind of secondary social component that meetings serve.

Rachel Salaman: So you're asking the right people but you also need a good agenda. So what should a good agenda look like?

Wayne Turmel: There is nothing that impacts your meeting culture more than the way you handle the agenda, and yet it's the thing that seldom gets done or done properly. If you're getting the agenda five minutes before the meeting starts, you can't possibly be properly prepared for the meeting.

So what is a good agenda? A good agenda actually contains (and I'm doing this off the top of my head) I think five pieces.

There's the logistics part: when is it? How long is it? How do I join? That good stuff.

There's a clearly stated purpose for the meeting: why are we meeting and why am I being asked to this?

Outcome is the desired outcome: at the end of this meeting what are we going to have achieved?

Then, what are the expectations of the participants, so that they can be properly prepared? I need you to read this document and be prepared with your questions and your suggestions.

That's four pieces, and then the final piece is any preparation we can possibly give them in terms of documents, heads up, where we left off in the last meeting. So that when people show up they know why they're there, they know what they're supposed to achieve, and you can tell whether or not you did it.

Rachel Salaman: Is there any way of making sure that people actually do that prep?

Wayne Turmel: As a manager, as a leader, you know that you can't really control anything. The one thing that I do find though is there is seldom accountability for meeting behavior.

So I can't guarantee you're going to read this document and show up prepared. But I can say, "Hey, I sent you that document, why weren't you prepared?" Not in the meeting, you don't want to shame people during the meeting. But are you addressing meeting behavior as part of your overall performance management? And my guess is most people don't.

So, if you want people to be accountable for their meeting behavior, at some point you need to have those discussions.

Rachel Salaman: And just one other little thing on agendas – when should we be sending the agenda out and what's the best way to do this? Email or some kind of shared space?

Wayne Turmel: Well, it depends on the culture of your team and how you operate. As to when you send out the agenda, the easy answer is when it will do the most good – if you need people to read a document, or be prepared to discuss something, you want to give them time to do that. I would think a minimum of 24 hours before the meeting, and if it's a big meeting (where people need to do their research and think) you want to give them more time than that.

But I think if you send at least the preliminary agenda built into the meeting invite, that helps. Also because that means when they open their meeting invite, on whatever device they're on, they will see the agenda.

Rachel Salaman: So, staying with timing, what tips do you have for starting meetings on time? In both face-to-face and virtual meetings.

Wayne Turmel: The main reason meetings start late is not that people are inconsiderate weasels, it's because their last meeting didn't end in time! I haven't beaten time, space and dimension yet, where if my 10 o'clock meeting runs till 11:05 I cannot be on a meeting at 11 o'clock.

So some of this has to do with your planning. Are you booking meetings back to back? And, if so, there's a chance that you're going to have a hard time starting on time. A simple trick is to put fewer items on the agenda, so that your meeting is planned to be shorter, and then maybe start the meeting at quarter after the hour.

Because most of us are creatures of habit, and when we book in our calendar, we look in our calendar and we say, "Oh OK, I've got a block from 11 till noon." You have the same block from 11:15 a.m. until 12:15 p.m. if you really want it.

But we're creatures of habit. So if I have a meeting from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. and my next meeting starts at 11:15 a.m. there's a decent chance I may be able to be on time, because even if the first meeting runs a little long (or I have to go grab a cup of tea before the meeting, or I need to handle an email problem) I can still be there for 11:15 a.m. And that's a matter of habit – there's no law that says you can't do that.

Rachel Salaman: Now, online meeting platforms are changing all the time, but how much are they actually changing, and are they improving?

Wayne Turmel: The answer is yes, in general they are improving. It's funny, I saw a competitive analysis a couple of years back that said there were 120 web meeting platforms, and that number has probably gone down a little bit between bankruptcy and consolidation and some other things.

Here's the thing, the platform is important but it's not the most important thing. So it starts with your mindset, so when you're looking at platforms you need to ask, are there certain things that they do? And they all do similar things but not identical.

What's important is: do you have a way that everybody can see the same thing? Is there a simple way for people to get good-quality audio? Is there a webcam function (which is becoming increasingly important)? Does it have a whiteboard, does it have chat? There are certain tools that you want in your toolkit so that you can replicate the meeting environment as close as possible.

You'd ask for a show of hands in a meeting, look, there's a raised hand button, we can do a show of hands. We can take feedback in multiple ways, both audio and chat, we can put something on a whiteboard so that everybody is sharing the same visual and we get the dynamic of being on a whiteboard or a flipchart. Those types of features.

And you have to use them. So if you have a tool that has all of these features and all you're doing is audio and screen sharing, it doesn't matter what platform you're using because you're not leveraging it.

Rachel Salaman: Yes, which brings us to the all-important question of how to engage the participants so that they don't hit mute and don't check their email. So you mentioned a few of the tools that come on these platforms – what are the ones you particularly recommend to make sure people are focusing and are present?

Wayne Turmel: You've got to remember you want to engage people visually, auditorily and kinesthetically, so webcams are immensely helpful. They're not mandatory for everything: if you've got a big town hall meeting you might want your speakers visible. It doesn't matter if all hundred people are visible. But webcams… the smaller the group, the more critical those are I think.

Chat is a hugely valuable tool which leverages web meetings above conference calls. Because conference calls (teleconferences) are great if you are an extrovert or highly motivated, otherwise it's hard to get a word in edgewise.

You don't want to be hogging the meeting. If you're an introvert it's not your preferred method of communication. And, especially on international teams, chat is immensely valuable because a lot of people working in a different language, their written English is better than their spoken English.

If you are an introvert, in chat people can write something, take a look at it, say, "Is that what I really want to say?" OK and hit "send."

I very frequently send a chat message to somebody and say, "Hey, Raj. You were at this meeting, do you mind if I ask you about it?" And he sends back a chat message that says, "No, that's fine." So I go, "Raj, you were at that meeting, what do you think about that?"

Rachel Salaman: So chat is just as useful for private messaging as for group or public messaging in a meeting.

Wayne Turmel: Absolutely. And a lot of new meeting leaders tend to get very paranoid about the chat, "But what if they talk about me behind my back?" You don't think they're doing that anyway?!

The other thing is that you can lessen your blood pressure as the meeting leader by having somebody whose job is to monitor the chat. So I say, "Rachel, would you keep an eye on the chat and if somebody says something that should get our attention, stop me and say, ‘Hey Wayne, Bob said something in the chat,' or ‘Bob has a question.'" And that way I'm not trying to speak, listen, remember what I'm going to say, read the chat, write on the whiteboard, because my head will explode.

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Rachel Salaman: What about some ways to use the whiteboard? Because you've mentioned that a couple of times.

Wayne Turmel: I love the whiteboard, and I love the whiteboard for a couple of reasons. One is it serves the exact same function that a whiteboard or a flipchart does in a meeting. There's something about dynamically capturing ideas and writing things on the board and having everybody look at the same thing that helps generate ideas.

And that visual component can't be underrated, nor can the kinesthetic part. If you get people to engage by writing in the chat, or typing on the whiteboard, or taking a poll – once you've got them physically engaged it's a whole lot easier to keep them. If people join the meeting and sit there for 40 minutes before they're expected to do anything, why are we shocked that they've tuned out, or that they've decided it's not worth it and they're just waiting for the meeting to end?

So some of it is the tools, but a lot of it is the leader's mindset around engagement. And that means you have to plan for engagement throughout the meeting, not just have them sit there for 40 minutes and then expect them to spring into action.

Rachel Salaman: So does that mean if you're planning a virtual meeting you have to actively think in advance, "How is this going to be different from if we were all in one room, and what tools am I going to use to bridge that gap?" Are those the kind of questions you should be asking yourself?

Wayne Turmel: Exactly, there's a level of planning that has to occur online that doesn't happen, because we've been trained from birth how to socialize, and we've all been in meetings and face-to-face and we understand the rules of social engagement, and all of that good stuff – we're still learning how to run good virtual meetings.

And so you need at least a couple of minutes of think time about, "OK, what am I trying to achieve? If I want to reach consensus on a decision, I'm going to have to give people plenty of time to talk about it. So I'm going to have to solicit their input and give them a chance to offer feedback on that. How can I do that? Well, maybe if it's a small group we all have our webcams and I'm just going to use the whiteboard to list the options, and we can discuss them and then vote, and we can vote in a number of ways. And oh, by the way, if I really want everybody engaged, maybe I want to do that discussion early in the meeting!"

One of the things that kills productivity and engagement in meetings is, "Let's take care of all the administrivia and the little useless stuff first." And you run out of time to do the important thing! Well if this was the reason the meeting was called, and you run out of time before you can really hear from everybody and give it the attention it deserves, is it any wonder the people think it's a waste of time?

Rachel Salaman: And in the book you're quite specific about the best way to end a meeting. Could you share some of your advice on that?

Wayne Turmel: Again, this is about changing meeting culture. So there are a couple of things that you want to do at the end of the meeting. One is, you want to let them know in advance that the end is nigh, so that people can get their comments in, so that you can check your agenda, make sure you've done everything you need to do. So, that's the first thing: give them sufficient warning so that if they haven't spoken up, here's your chance.

The other thing you want to do is, you want to make sure at the end of that meeting that people understand, "Hey, we set out to do this, we did it, here are our action items." And very clearly in front of God and everybody, "Bob you're going to do this, Tony you're going to do this, Sally you're going to do this. Is everybody OK with that?" Get their buy-in because that helps them be accountable to each other, there is now a stated outcome.

And then, "Hey, we said we were going to do this; we did it. Good job!" Because what you want is people not dreading the next meeting. So if I attended this meeting and it actually did what it was supposed to do and it wasn't a complete waste of time, I might show up better prepared, better motivated, less dreading [it] than I was before. And over time people understand, "Hey, these meetings are not a waste of our time. It actually accomplishes something and there's some value there."

Rachel Salaman: Now, hybrid meetings are very common. We're all used to the situation where some people are in a meeting room together and then someone else dials in on the phone or joins by computer. What's your advice for that particular situation?

Wayne Turmel: This is a really common meeting situation and frankly it's the most difficult. It creates a couple of problems. One is that not everybody is looking at the same thing: people in the room are looking at a PowerPoint, or a chart or something, and they're seeing it, maybe the people on the phone aren't – that creates a discrepancy in their ability to understand.

Also (human nature being what it is) the people in the room are going to dominate. If you've ever been that person dialing into the meeting, everybody in the room gets to talk and then, "Oh yeah, what about you people out in the provinces?" If you want people to be able to contribute, if you want them to feel like a member of the team, they need equal access. So there are a couple of very simple things you can do.

One is, if you're going to show something in the room, make sure the people who are remote can see it – so a simple webcam, share your Webex screen in the room. That also is helpful because if people put something in the chat, or they say, "Hey, I have a question," everybody sees that, and they can see that they're contributing. But everybody seeing the same thing so we're all literally on the same page is important.

The other thing is a Jedi mind trick that the facilitators need to do, which is don't always start with the people in the room. Actively solicit the input from the people who are remote before the people in the room, at least some of the time, so that the message is, "Your opinion is valuable, I want you to be able to be seen as contributing, I want to give you the chance," and, "Oh, by the way, pay attention out there because I'm going to call on you!"

It stops that imbalance, because one of the great things that happens in hybrid teams is it very quickly becomes us against them. The people in the office get the best treatment, and they get donuts at the meeting, and they seem to be having an awful lot of fun, and we're the stepsisters out in the country.

Rachel Salaman: One of the really useful tools in your book is the meeting assessment form. So can you just describe that and tell us how it should be used to best effect?

Wayne Turmel: The meeting assessment form is a singular act of bravery on the part of the team leader. Because you actually use it to send out to the team after the meeting and say, "How did it go? What went well, what didn't, did we stay on track, did we manage the time well, are we putting too much in the agenda for the time allotted, did everybody get sufficient chance to contribute?"

It's a pretty brave thing to put yourself out there and say, "Hey, our meetings aren't everything we'd like them to be and you can be part of the solution." And it does a couple of things. First of all, it demonstrates that you, as the leader, care – we know these aren't what they need to be and let's do something about it.

It solicits feedback, which sends a very good message from the leader that says, "Hey, I humbly ask for your opinion." It also – and this is important – creates accountability on the part of the team: they make suggestions, they say, "This could be better" or "I hate this." Alright, so if you didn't get a chance to participate, obviously you're going to participate on the next call.

Rachel Salaman: So let's describe it just for people who haven't seen it.

Wayne Turmel: It's a PDF document, it's not terribly robust. It's not this highly complex online tool. It's a sheet and it basically has the factor: was the meeting outcome stated at the beginning of the meeting? Yes it was, or no it wasn't, and what are we going to do about it. And everything boils down to "What are we going to do about it?"

And that comes down to everything we've talked about. Everybody knows that meetings, in general, are painful: they don't always accomplish what they're supposed to accomplish. Well, what are we going to do about that?

Rachel Salaman: And this form can really help?

Wayne Turmel: It helps because it makes us ask that question. And once we've given the answers to that question, we know how to make it better. Then it's incumbent on us and on the team to do that. If people aren't getting the chance to contribute and I don't do anything about that (I run the meeting the way I've always done it), what's going to be different?

Rachel Salaman: And of course people can make their own list but you're kindly sharing your list, your meeting assessment form with Mind Tools members, and they'll be able to download it from the transcript of this interview.

Wayne Turmel: Absolutely, I'll make it available to you. You can take a look at it, you'll look at it and go, "Well this is easy!"

Download Your Meeting Assessment Form

Rachel Salaman: Now, you've recently written another book, "The Long-Distance Leader" with Kevin Eikenberry. How does everything we've talked about tie in with that?

Wayne Turmel: Well, "Long Distance Leader" is basically the first book, I think, that's really said, "Hey, we found ourselves in this world where we're doing remote teams and hybrid teams and I'm not in the same place, how do I do what I know I need to do as a leader, given this new environment?"

And, basically, it's designed to grab people, and have them take a deep breath, and think about what they're doing: why does it feel different to have my team scattered on three different continents than it does to have them together?

And then, once you've understood that (and we've got a model that demonstrates why this feels so different), there are tactical things that you can do. And one of the most important tactical skills that a long-distance leader needs is the ability to run meetings that solicit input and come to suggestions and keep everybody involved and help the team build relationships that will have long-term results.

And it's not difficult, as we've talked about today; we've talked about some very simple things that will have long-term results. And the virtual meetings piece is one of the tactical things you need to do as a long-distance leader. So I look at meeting facilitation as a subset of the skills that anybody leading a remote project team, or remote team, needs to have.

Rachel Salaman: As well as being a business communication expert, you're also a novelist, and you had a popular podcast for a long time, too – "The Cranky Middle Manager," which some people might know. So you have a lot of experience communicating with different audiences. What are your one or two top tips for people who want to be better at getting their message across generally?

Wayne Turmel: I think there are two things, and again simple but not easy. The first is: do you really know what your message is? If you are about to communicate something and you can't say it in one, maybe two sentences, you're not ready to communicate it yet.

Now that doesn't mean there isn't detail and other things, but if you can't say, "Hey, I want you to read this because we're having a meeting on Thursday and I want you to be prepared to discuss the following things." The details follow but that's your message.

The second thing is: who is that message going to and how are they best able to receive the message? And that will go to your tone, it will go to the manner in which you communicate that message. So is this something that should be a voicemail, should this be a one-on-one conversation, should this be a group email? We have to make those decisions based on who the group is.

If it's a group of engineers you are going to approach those people very differently than you will the sales team. So, do you understand your message? And then thinking about your audience, what is the best way for them to receive this message that I have?

Rachel Salaman: Wayne Turmel, thanks very much for joining us today.

Wayne Turmel: Rachel, thank you so much and I've had a long, tangential relationship with Mind Tools so I'm absolutely delighted to be part of the fun today.

Rachel Salaman: We were talking about Wayne's book, "Meet Like You Mean It" and also "The Long-Distance Leader," co-written with Kevin Eikenberry. As I mentioned, there's a book insight podcast about that book on the Mind Tools site.

I'll be back in a few weeks with another Expert Interview. Until then, goodbye.