I find it extremely common that people dread

workplace meetings. They don't look forward to them.

There's something that they're demotivated to attend.

Not everybody, but it doesn't have to be that way. You

can actually have meetings where people leave energized, they

leave fulfilled and they're excited about the next one

because there's some universal, some factors,

aspects that you can incorporate that will make your meetings

go much, much.

We're going to talk about that today in the Decide youe Legacy podcast,

how to energize your workplace meetings. Three

keys, aspects you want to keep in mind. And so by the end of

this podcast, I can promise you that you're going

to learn a formula that will work. It's not

complicated that you can implement today in your meeting

tomorrow and it can work in personal

meetings as well. So. But we're going to use a lot of the

illustrations and everything going to be related to the workplace. There's reasons

for having meetings and you're going to learn how to have very

productive meetings because it benefits you. There's open communication,

you're more apt to succeed. You get different perspectives, you make more money,

you see opportunities you wouldn't have seen before as you communicate. Communication is a

big deal. You're going to make better decisions and you're going to feel some

excitement about the future because of the other insight you gain

during meetings. I'm your host, Adam Gragg. I am a legacy

coach and a corporate coach. I've been a family therapist for over

25 years. I founded Decide youe Legacy in 2012 and

our purpose is helping businesses and people,

all businesses, all people, live with courage.

I struggle with meetings myself. I'm a

guy that puts together agendas at the very last minute.

I don't like the preparation time that goes into

actually having a good meeting. I feel scattered.

I'm a guy who can procrastinate

on a lot of things and meetings and getting ready to lead them is

definitely one of them. And I'll even tell myself, you know, I'll put the

best agenda together or I'll be able to facilitate a great meeting if I wait

to the last minute because then it'll be all this inspired content that

I know we need to discuss. Not true, because I go in then

lacking some confidence because I'm not prepared and I'm doing

things off the cuff so I can avoid

and I can get anxious

during meetings. And I'll tell you if I keep the truth in

mind about how to have a Great meeting, which I'm going to share with you

today. And you're going to find one of them incredibly

fun, something I'm going to recommend. Eventually you'll find it fun,

but if I keep that in mind, I enjoy them, they go much better. And

there's a lot of reasons why people

do dread meetings because they've been in bad ones and

they've gotten negative feedback. I mean, they've been embarrassed, they've

maybe even gone in under prepared or maybe they always get

over prepared for meetings. There's so much pressure they put on themselves

and that creates this dread as well. Maybe it's their

mindset that it's going to go bad. Based on what happened in the past,

it could just even be the potential conflict that can occur.

Pushing back. You know, I had a meeting with a company,

just got done with it about an hour ago, and I knew

everybody involved. It was the third monthly meeting that

we have had with the ownership of a company. And

I knew going into it that there was going to be some anxiety

and there were some situations at the very beginning of the

meeting that could have derailed it. My job was to keep it out of the

drama, to turn the drama into something productive. And it actually

ended very well. I sensed energy, I sensed

excitement. I, I not perfectly, I mean it,

there's still future meetings to be had. But I

sensed this desire to engage at a

higher level, all these leaders as well. So that was super energizing for

me. I mean, I'm pretty energized right now. Plus I just came off of a

two week vacation, which is kind of cool. Having meetings

where people leave energized, ready to take

action is not only just possible, but it's something

that you can learn how to do and it's

gonna take you doing some things differently

to get there. So every episode I like to share something that I

have done recently that was facing a fear. Because

where our fear is, there lies our task. And what

I did is at a graduation party on vacation for my

daughter Emerson, I actually

facilitated a discussion

about giving her our best pieces of advice. Becoming 18,

everyone shared something they could if they were

to give her advice, they asked for their best piece of advice on

something she could stop doing, something she could start doing, and then something they hope

she continues doing. Wrote these things down. And the reason it

was a risk is because sometimes when I've decided with family to,

to challenge people to engage in that way, I

get some negative energy towards me, like you're being a family

therapist you're trying to control the conversation. But I didn't

get it this time. And I was surprised actually because everyone jumped

in, I think partially because we've done these types of things

in the past with family that I facilitated and they've been

pretty fun. So maybe they are even wanting me to do this now.

I can struggle with meetings. I know that you can

as well. And if you're human like me. So

the first important aspect of a great

meeting is to start it off by making it fun

so that people come in anticipating something fun, to get it

rolling, something light, engaging,

not too deep. And have this planned in

advance. An icebreaker.

And some of my favorite icebreakers I actually have

listed in an article that I've written called 17 Fun Icebreakers for

Workplace Meetings. You can go ahead and go through that list and pick one

that you can engage in. And I mean you will find that they work

at family events. I'm Pretty sure all 17 will

work at family events. So either way, because but couple

that I like one, and I use this one today as well, is you

share what your top 90 day personal goal is

and what you think you can do today to get started

on that goal. So everybody shares. You get to know more about what

they are focusing on in their life and then

they will leave, hopefully energized to take some kind of an action to reach

that goal. That's a fun one. Of course you may know that one of my

favorite beginning questions to ask at a meeting is, so what was something positive

that happened yesterday? Something exciting that you have planned for the

day ahead? Really good fun icebreaker. Another

one is what I just shared. You can do it in a workplace meeting. Stop,

start and continue for yourself. So here's something I want to

stop. Here's something I want to start. Here's something I want to continue. So everyone

shares that. That's different than how I use that activity

in at my daughter Emerson's graduation party.

But it's a great one. You just do it for yourself personally.

And another fun one kind of bonus is you have a jar of coins.

Everyone picks a coin and they share something historical or personal

that happened during that year listed on

the coin. And they can use their phones for that too if they want to

do some research. I don't know, maybe you got to 1925

coin and you'll remember what happened in 1925 because you weren't alive. So that's number

one. Make it fun intentionally put energy into making it

fun. And that's even your attitude about the meeting. Everybody picks up

their cues off the leader. And there needs to be a facilitator

in every meeting. It's somebody that keeps it heading in the right direction

on topic, so that you don't go on a tangent. Because one

of the reasons people dread meetings is because people may have

a certain person that easily goes on a tangent

and then they take up all the oxygen in the room and they demotivate

everybody and it's just not a good situation. So facilitator, it does

not have to be the CEO, it does not have to be the president. It's

simply the person running that meeting. It may be because everybody that's in

a leadership position has to learn how, in my opinion, to run an effective

meeting. But it needs to be somebody who's willing to keep that

meeting on track. There you go. So the second

aspect of a great meeting is people are going in

with some level of embracing drama.

Not loving drama, not looking for drama, not trying to cause drama,

but embracing the potential that comes out

of that drama. Seeing it as an opportunity, seeing it as something

that really needs to be discussed in many cases, sometimes it doesn't, but a lot

of times it does. Seeing it as something to ask questions about, something to dig

deeper on. A solution can come out of you, you facing that

thing that's not being addressed. Your job as a facilitator is to

be the drama miner. You're actually pulling it out, looking for

it. You may be prepared to bring up a topic that you know people

want to avoid, but you are the one who's willing to bring it up. That's

what I do with companies. I mean, I bring up the topics that as I

meet with them one on one, people are sharing and then I can

subtly, in a kind direct way, which is not really

subtle, but in a way that gets people engaged, bring it out so we can

have a discussion about it. Not a monologue, not

a beat up fest, but a discussion so we can

get insight and then take action based on that.

Drama. Drama. So you need a facilitator to help you with that. Another

reason is because if you don't have the leader, if you're not being a leader,

it will, it will easily get

directed towards the person who either has the most drama in their life,

who is naturally wanting to be the center of attention possibly, or

it'll easily go to the least important topic because

it's safer to discuss that than, rather than the most important

topic to discuss. Maybe it's the financial condition of the company or hiring

somebody new or firing somebody, or the direction of the company. I mean, companies

frequently. And I heard this just recently, I asked a

company leader what she thought, what she

would like the business to look like in 10 years. So creating a vision for

the business, and she couldn't go there. And she

identified that there was too much conflict amongst

the leadership and too poor communication amongst the leadership for

her to even want to dream that far ahead. And she's

the president of the company and she wasn't willing to

because she had to get the organization healthier before she

could feel she could dream. But I challenge her to step back from

that and say, hey, you as the leader, have to be casting a vision. I

mean, it's not going to be the perfect vision, but something that people can grasp

onto that says, we're going in this direction and we want to

take you as the team there. We want to help people in this way, want

to dream big time. So that drama,

it's being willing to have a conversation about it, being

willing to ask questions rather than get consumed by it. But if you go

in good meetings, have some drama, just like a good

movie, it's going to have some drama. Your life has some drama. Are

you willing to face it is the challenge. If you're willing to face it and

see that when you get to the other side of that personal drama in your

life, then you have all the good stuff on the other side of that, which

is a huge deal. So the third aspect of a great meeting

is that it ends with action.

So this is what I require when I have a meeting

with my team and then a team that I'm facilitating a

leadership discussion or an ownership discussion, is that at the very end of

the meeting. And they know once they've actually gone through some of these meetings, there

is going to be a couple questions that I'm going to ask. I'm going

to have them rate the meeting on a scale 1 to 10 and 10

is high and 1 is low. So they get going to assess the quality of

that interaction. Today, I got a 6, I got a 7.5, I

got a 7 and a 7 from a meeting that I was leading of an

ownership group. And I could look at that and say, oh, I wish it was

all eights and nines, but, you know, it was still higher than the last one

and we're trending in the right direction. It was hard, though. It was a hard

thing. And I felt energized by it anyway because I know that

things were addressed that were so crucial. So you end with action. And so the

other question I ask is, you know, what was helpful from this meeting

today? And people get to share. And in this case today, they

shared that there was some openness to hearing and

understanding and letting go of assumptions. They shared that there was

people interacted in a more positive fashion, that they went

deeper. One person said, we talked about core issues in a way

that I didn't think would happen. And she was

very encouraged by that. So then the third question I ask that

leads to action is what are you committed to applying from

today? You know, what are 1, 2, 3

actions with deadlines that I have them write down

and then I write down and email out to that group once I'm done with

that meeting that they can physically see that I'm going to get this thing

done with a deadline. That action orientation

creates hope because the dread comes from

people feeling in meetings that we're not going to make any decisions

that we act on. So there's not actually going to be any good, positive,

productive change based on this meeting. I mean, so why would I be looking

forward to it? It's just a, it's just a

complain fest. It's just a get together, you know,

it's just a coffee sipping time. It's not a productive

workplace meeting. And then if you look at that, it leads to a lack of

hope because then you think you're going to go back and talk about the same

stuff the next time you all visit or you think you're going to go back

and just waste time in the future meetings. But once you can see, and

I find that once people can see that a meeting can be

effective, it can be fun, it can be dramatic and we still stick through it,

we can find productive action to take at the end, then

they're energized and you have them. You know, after this meeting

today, I had requests based on, and this is what I get too,

when it's a good productive meeting is like, when's the next one? When's the next

one? And wow, I mean, can we do the same thing

then? You know, and so, and I'll ask them that as well, like what was

helpful from today? They're giving you feedback. Well, you, you pushed us, you challenged us,

you kept us on topic and there were a number of times where it could

have gone on a tangent that derailed the whole thing. But you can do that

as a leader to say, hey, we're going to focus on this and to do

that too. I like to think about their being four different types of

meetings. I learned this from Patrick Lencioni and the advantage. Four key types of

meetings. So one is called a weekly

tactical meeting. And at a weekly tactical meeting, you're sharing

updates on divisions of the company, future plans.

You're sharing metrics like sales

metrics, sales calls, revenue. You're sharing

detailed information about problems in the organization. If there's a mo.

If there's multiple divisions in that company, then they're

all giving updates on their section of the company. So that's what's going

on. And then we're doing a real time agenda, which means

what is it that you believe we need to discuss in a healthy, effective way

during this meeting for it to be productive? And people are sharing and there might

be 8, 10 things depending on the size of the meeting. And then they decide,

or the leadership decides, or sometimes I decide because I've had times where

everyone in the meeting seems to not want to talk about what is the most

essential core issue. And I say, hey, well, if I ask them what

they want to discuss, they nobody mentions that as a topic they want to discuss.

And I'm like, well, you guys have mentioned this as a problem and

you've even identified that this is the thing that needs to be most addressed, but

for some reason you don't want to. What is that all about? Well, we're going

to offend this person or that person that's actually in the room. Okay, so what's

going to offend them about this? Well, they're not going to like the feedback they

get because it relates to their job and their performance. And even just getting

that out gives them generally a willingness to say, hey, we're even. From

the person who is. Who is

who they're afraid to share this information with. There's an openness because

we've gotten the elephant out of the room and now we're talking about that, that

drama. And, and then hopefully over time they see that's going to lead to

action, positive action, productive action, fun action.

So they make a commitment and then they can even ask somebody. I often

assign this with companies, somebody to hold you accountable.

Accountability is necessary between meetings.

So big, good stuff. So I went

to Portland, Oregon over the weekend and

I was went to see a friend, my friend

Aaron and Ryan and John

and another buddy, Max, and another friend, Jeremy. And

these are all college fraternity brothers. I decided to

do this fairly last minute because his wife Erin

sent the invitation out like two weeks ago. And so

I think he was really surprised that a number of friends flew

in from out of state to attend. And at the

very end of this event we came in Friday, we left Sunday morning, we all

had breakfast together. There was a party, got to meet his friends in Portland, Oregon.

And I went to college in Eugene, Oregon at the University of Oregon. So I

know them from, from Oregon. And Aaron and

his friends I got to meet from that area right there.

And it was. It was a really great time. It was a blast. But I

remember at the very end we had a meeting. Basically we went to

breakfast and we talked about the trip and it was fun

because we reminisced on the night before. There were some really silly funny

things that happened at his party and it did involve

some very random things like a parade in Portland that I never knew

existed. And I can't really talk too much about it on this, but you can

look it up. There's a. There's a parade in Portland. It's called

the. Anyway, it's called the Naked Bike Rice

Bike Race anyway. But that. That legit

exists. And it was going by the venue where we

had our 50th birthday party for Aaron. And

so people got to be near

this event. But. But at the very. So we laughed and that was the fun

part of that meeting. And then, and then there was some talk about when do

we get together again. And there's some drama in that because some people

can't make certain dates and other people have ideas about going to a football game.

Some of the friends had ideas about celebrating another 50th birthday party. Others

like myself had an idea of meeting somewhere in the middle because I'm the furthest

away. A little bit of drama. And then there was some action at the end

like we are committing to

following up to talk about this as do we organize our

schedules on this specific date

ten days from now. And that's not exactly what happened. So

we didn't totally. We failed the action part because we didn't nail down a

specific date and a specific commitment. The commitment would have been verbalizing that we want

to do this again. This was fun. You can do this when you

practice. Give yourself 90 days. If you're going to

commit, which is what's required if you're going to have good meetings, if you're going

to commit to making your meetings much more productive, much more enjoyable, much

more action oriented, more fun and drama facing fear facing.

Give it 90 days assess but be all in

because you won't want to do it when it's hard

unless you're committed. That's how we work. You know willpower

doesn't work. You don't will your way in anything. You have to create the environment

that makes it easy to go downhill. So you schedule the meetings at

the same time every week? Oh yeah, I was gonna tell you the four different

types of meetings. The weekly tactical. There's a daily check

in where people meet in the morning or the afternoon and they check in for

five or 10 minutes and it happens every day. People go and they share

it can bring questions for their co workers to that meeting so they know they're

gonna have that regular consistent time to check in. There's a topical

meeting which during your tactical meeting you might realize that we

need to spend some time, a whole hour on this topic. And so you put

that into the schedule where you're talking about one specific topic and you're

staying on topic, not off topic. So you have a topical meeting

that keeps you away from tangents as well. And then there's like a quarterly retreat.

A way to do strategy, a time to plan strategy. It could be

on site or off site. I like off site. Get people thinking, get people

dreaming. So there you have it. So let me summarize

three different aspects of a great meeting. It's fun. Go

into it with fun. Have an icebreaker at the beginning. That's fun. Good

stuff. Embrace the drama is number two. And

that does mean confronting it at times as a leader.

Confronting people during these meetings for behavior that you don't think is

leading towards your goals or their goals and then end with action. So

there's commitment, there's follow through, there's assignments even potentially

of who's going to hold people accountable. But, but the main accountability is the fact

you have a follow up meeting where it's part of it at least where

you're gonna ask, did you get this done? Well that's two weeks from now, a

week from now, it could be a month from now. But there's a follow

up aspect. So if you found this content helpful

you are gonna wanna check out Shatterproof Yourself

Lite. So this is a free mini course and in this course

one aspect of it is relates to

relationships. It's seven small steps to a giant leap in your mental health.

So step seven is building true friends. And if you check that

out, you're gonna see and learn some skills on

making the types of connections in meetings. Being an

ace, you gotta look at the course to see what that is so that you

can help people go further and beyond what they believe. Possible. And that's what a

good friend does. So check out Shatterproof Yourself Light. Hit the

link. Don't miss that content. There's a worksheet you can go through as

well. So in in summary,

as I said, you know, make it fun, embrace the drama, end with action.

Remember that nothing will make my day more

bright than knowing that you have left this podcast with some kind of action that

you're gonna take based on this content. So send me an email

share comment below. I'd love to hear about it. Give us a

rating and review on Apple or Spotify, wherever you get your podcast content. And share

this episode with your team because I'm sure you

got other colleagues that do not like meetings. Don't believe it's possible.

If you are interested in digging deeper, check out the

Advantage by Patrick Lencioni. He talks about meetings in this book and has a

bunch of other great content as well. So there's no positive change until

you decide to change. You can decide today because your

legacy depends on you acting, doing something about it. To

decide means to eliminate other options. There's so many options out

there, and your legacy is the impact that your life is going

to have on others after you leave

God's good green earth. So today I want to close the way I always do.

Live the life today that you want to be remembered for 10 years after

you're gone. You decide your legacy. Nobody else. I

appreciate you greatly and I'll see you next time.