Podcasts Culture Life is Work Meaningful Meetings

Meaningful Meetings

Published: March 10, 2020, 5 a.m.

Co-hosts, Producers:
Danielle Stenger 
Cameron Navarro, LMSW 

Contact Info:

Website

Email

Twitter 

Instagram

Pa’lante Consulting, LLC

Music:

Intro - King Must Die, by Picnic Lightning
Outro - Pa’lante, by Hurray for the Riff Raff

Meaningful Meetings

Our histories with them

  • Danielle perceived them to be performance art
  • Cam perceived them as an opportunity to hide
  • Culturally, meetings have a bad reputation because most people are not taught how to do them well - that’s where we can help!

Common meeting problems that we hear about:

  • People not knowing why they are there
  • People not feeling empowered to contribute
  • Having the same conversation over and over again
  • No follow up, no movement forward
  • Couldn’t this have been an email?

Meaningful Meeting Tools

  • Agreements
    • Assume positive intent
    • Ask clarifying questions
    • Lean in, Lean back
    • Give permission to the group to respectfully interrupt to keep the meeting focused
    • Agenda is a guide/Facilitation is not a presentation – permission for imperfection
    • Consensus as a means to reach a decision
  • Results at the Center Template
  • Meeting Agenda Template
  • Bike Rack
  • Coming Soon: Episode on Meeting Engineering and other tools

Mel’s Mindful Minute - 39:15

  • Breath Awareness

Client & Listener Questions

  • Question Submission: How do you make meetings more productive and useful? Everyone hates a meeting that could have been an email, on the other hand, we are inundated with emails.
     
  • Question Submission: Need a working meeting because they wont read the email and we need to do the task while I’m there, babysitting.

We Are Always Students

Sharing is Self-Caring

  • Self-care - Start With You! 
    • Set boundaries
      • External: Can stay until X time, set the meeting result, be clear about the intention and desired result of the meeting from the onset
      • Internal: Set your own result. What do you want to get from this meeting? What would make it meaningful for you, personally? Engage in that way. Use a bike rack.
  • Community-care - Taking Care of Others 
    • External: Meet with people and design the meeting beforehand
    • Internal: Meet with people afterwards to process the meeting, clarify (may not feel comfortable speaking up in the meeting, but can follow up after the meeting when it is a safer space one one one with your colleague/community member)
       
  • Systemic/Structural-Care - The Wider Systems We Live & Work In
    • Research Dynamic Governance
      • Self-reflection: To what extent do you need to have these meetings? If your workplace had a system of shared power and accountability, less meetings might be needed and each individual would feel empowered to do their own work without the direction of a single leader or leaders. Learn more about dynamic governance and see how you might implement it with your own team if you are a manager, or advocate for it yourself to model for your team.
    • Consider how these tools can be used in other areas of your life - PTA, church, family, etc