721: How to Lead Engaging Meetings, with Jess Britt

Dave Stachowiak [00:00:00]:
While some of us love to hate meetings, a well designed meeting can open huge opportunities to connect, engage, and build culture on a team. In this Saturday cast, how to lead meetings that people actually enjoy. This is Coaching for Leaders episode 721. Production Credit: Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

Dave Stachowiak [00:00:29]:
Greetings to you from Orange County, California. This is coaching for leaders, and I’m your host, Dave Stachowiak. Leaders are born, they’re made. And this weekly show helps you discover leadership wisdom through insightful conversations. This is one of our Saturday casts. A few times a year, I air an episode here that’s a chat with one of our fellows or members. These Saturday casts are sponsored and brought to you by the Coaching for Leaders Academy. If you’re at an inflection point in your leadership, you may benefit from considering our academy and working personally with me and a small cohort of supportive colleagues.

Dave Stachowiak [00:01:10]:
To get an invitation when we next open applications, just go over to coachingforleaders.com/academy. A conversation today with Jess Britt, one that I’ve been looking forward to for a while, on how we can all do a better job at leading engaging meetings. I have learned a bunch from Jess over the years that I’ve known her, and she has such a passion for this topic of helping leaders and teams to communicate so well. I am so pleased to introduce Jess to you. Jess is an experienced executive and nonprofit board chair. Today, as a a coach and consultant, she uses a facilitative leadership approach to empower leaders and teams to build collaborative, high performing, data driven workplace cultures. She’s an alum of our academy and for the past two years has taken on a leadership role inside our community as a coaching for leaders fellow, providing coaching and facilitation to some of our members. Jess, so glad to have you here.

Dave Stachowiak [00:02:12]:
Welcome.

Jess Britt [00:02:12]:
Thank you. It’s great to be here.

Dave Stachowiak [00:02:14]:
This boy, this is a topic that I think it’s one of those things that sometimes we all love to hate. Right? Like meetings and getting excited about meetings. And so often, like, the narrative is like, oh my gosh. I just need to get out of more meetings and not be in meetings all day long. You really have a passion for meetings. What is it that gets you excited about them?

Jess Britt [00:02:35]:
I think as a participant in an effective meeting, I love the chance to learn from other people, to deepen my relationships with people, hopefully, with some laughter, and to move important conversations and work forward more efficiently than you might without the meeting. And as a leader, I really enjoy the puzzle of planning a meeting to achieve the objectives and help people build relationships.

Dave Stachowiak [00:02:59]:
Nice. A puzzle. I love that analogy of, like, thinking about it that way. And and you said, a word there, objectives. That’s really key. I know you feel really strongly as do I about meetings having objectives. And a lot of folks listening will know, like, okay. That’s important.

Dave Stachowiak [00:03:16]:
We all recognize meeting having objectives is key. And you approach this through a slightly different lens though in thinking about, like, how does having objectives actually help the person running the meeting, the facilitator of that meeting? How do you think about that as why why are the objectives good for us?

Jess Britt [00:03:35]:
I think reflecting on objectives, they’re critical for both planning and for leading the meeting, because they can help you with, I think, four key things. One, you can design the meeting to give you a better chance of achieving your objectives. That’s what I said at the beginning about the puzzle. You can think personally about how you as a leader need to show up to have a better chance of achieving those objectives. You can set yourself up for less frustration and disappointment by really thinking, hey, is this objective realistic? And then potentially kind of backing off if it isn’t. And then most importantly for being a a good facilitator, you can be prepared to pivot in the moment. And a practice I’ve really developed in the last couple years is setting both public objectives, which are those that I share with maybe with the agenda, and personal objectives or objectives that I don’t share with the attendees. And I think that that has also been just a helpful part of setting objectives in a way that sets me up for success leading meetings, and I think sets others up for success too.

Dave Stachowiak [00:04:32]:
Interesting. What informs an objective that maybe is one you share explicitly with people versus something that is something you’re just holding for yourself?

Jess Britt [00:04:44]:
I think a good example is from a board meeting I led last year as I was finishing up my term on the board. And so for that meeting, the shared objective that was kind of shared with the agenda was reflect on our strategic plan progress and any changes that are needed. That’s pretty standard. But when I was reflecting and planning for this meeting, I set personal objectives about focusing on my leadership transition and ensuring that my voice wasn’t dominating the discussion. Those didn’t need to go out with the board wide emails to plan for the meeting, but knowing that I had those personal goals really guided both how I showed up in the meeting and how I delegated the facilitation responsibilities ahead of time.

Dave Stachowiak [00:05:27]:
By having that in your mind for yourself, what’s one thing you did differently and just how you showed up in the as either in preparation or in the moment?

Jess Britt [00:05:36]:
I think in preparation, it made me realize that I needed to spend some extra time with other leaders on the board to ensure that we were all really aligned on the the board meeting plans and really planning it together. And so I tried to share that planning work. And then in the moment when I was faced in the room with a choice between stepping in to push us towards the full meeting objective or stepping back to let other voices really carry the work, I chose to step back because it was in service to that larger objective that I had for myself and how I showed up in the meeting.

Dave Stachowiak [00:06:11]:
There’s something so powerful about having just identified a success metric point or an objective or a goal in advance. Like, you have something sort of to hang your hat on, which I think a lot of times in meetings, so often we fall into the trap of whatever it is. It’s Tuesday morning at 9AM. We have our regular all hands stand up, and we sort of, like, do the stuff we always do, good or bad. Right? But don’t really think about what am I doing to not only move the team forward, but move myself forward. And there’s something about just identifying in advance that gives you something to actually aim for and then to be able to measure against.

Jess Britt [00:06:46]:
Absolutely. It’s actually one of the the small commitments that I set during the academy was reflect on a meeting and what a realistic outcome is for it every day. And so I started kind of building that habit, and it’s really served me well in in how I approach my meetings over the last few years.

Dave Stachowiak [00:07:02]:
Nice. So going in, having the the shared the non shared objectives, we’ve talked about shared more public objectives for a meeting in the past on on other episodes. But just so we have, like, a sense of that, what does something like that sound like? What’s a good objective for a meeting?

Jess Britt [00:07:20]:
Oh, a good objective for a meeting, I think, needs to be realistic, but also something that appeals and kind of resonates with everybody that’s going to be attending. And so and I I recommend that they be as specific as they can be given what you’re trying to achieve. And so, you know, align on next steps for a project versus complete the project is generally what’s realistic for a meeting.

Dave Stachowiak [00:07:45]:
Nice. Citing in advance and then informs everything else you’re doing and then gets into some of the facilitation stuff that you and I wanted to talk about too as well on, like, how we do this well. And I I know some folks listening will have heard some of these. Some of people will not. But I am just struck by how often I find that some of what I would consider foundational facilitation just doesn’t happen in meetings as regularly as it should. I catch myself sometimes not doing some of the things that I have been teaching for years around facilitation and meeting management. And so you invite us just to do some really foundational things that, like, I think a lot of that we see it. We know it’s good, but we don’t think to do it.

Dave Stachowiak [00:08:28]:
And one of them is just sending an agenda in advance. That’s huge, isn’t it?

Jess Britt [00:08:33]:
Absolutely. I think that’s a really good way to force you as the leader and convener to clarify your thinking, so that you know why you’re bringing folks together. And it also can serve as a kind of reminder for attendees to speak up if the agenda isn’t aligned with what they thought we were gonna be talking about. And so sending it in advance can be really helpful. And it doesn’t have to be super detailed, just, you know, a few bullet points to ensure that that everybody’s kind of starting from the same page at the beginning of a meeting can be really helpful.

Dave Stachowiak [00:09:05]:
And helps people know what they’re walking into too. When you send something in advance, do you typically send an email that goes on a calendar invite? What does that look like logistically that you find works? I think

Jess Britt [00:09:14]:
it really depends on the filter of the organization and team and the folks with whom you’re meeting. I think kind of embedding it or linking it within a calendar hold can be a really good practice. I also think there is a benefit to keeping it at a pretty high level, so not too much detail in case things need to change. So I think concretely, yeah, putting it in a Google Doc or a shared Drive document that is then linked in a calendar agenda or shared over Slack or whatever other tool you’re using. Any of those can really work.

Dave Stachowiak [00:09:46]:
And, also, one of the things that you helped me learn this last year for those listening just did a wonderful project within our pro community to help surface some feedback. Did a survey. It was really extraordinary just what we learned. And one of the pieces of feedback I got was too like, too much preparation for events and, like, asking people to do much or read too much or listen to something too much. And I’ve backed off that pretty substantially, and boy, it’s helped. And I I think I think one of the things, like, sometimes we tend to go to either one or other pole opposite poles on this is either there’s nothing. Like, there’s no sense of, like, what this meeting’s about or the mistake I made, which is, like, too much. Like, too much information asking people to do too much in advance, which they’re just not going to do in many cases.

Dave Stachowiak [00:10:37]:
And so, like, really striking that balance. And when you said, like, high level, just keeping a couple bullet points there, like, that struck me as it it’s a it takes some experimentation to find that sweet spot, but, like, it’s worth experimenting with that and asking people what’s useful in advance, what did you read, what didn’t you, because that helps set this up so well.

Jess Britt [00:10:54]:
Yeah. I think pre work and asynchronous work can be really, really helpful for people, especially those who process better, not in real time, so having time to react to something. And that only actually makes your meeting more efficient if everybody does it. And so really kind of being honest with yourself, I think that might be a kind of a theme through this is being honest with yourself with, will everybody do this pre work, will everybody read it in advance, or how do I ensure that folks are clear that that’s an expectation, I I think is really critical. And so if the reality is that folks are too busy and won’t have the time to read it in advance, making sure that you’re then designing the meeting to account for that and not then adjust to a mixed group of folks, some of whom have read the prework and some of whom hadn’t haven’t. It’s a lot easier to, just know going in that folks haven’t done that prework, but that you’ve given everybody the same baseline level of information.

Dave Stachowiak [00:11:45]:
Once the meeting starts, I know you’re a fan of using warm up questions to engage people. What is it that’s important about that? And then maybe what are some questions you’ve used that you find are helpful and get people talking?

Jess Britt [00:11:59]:
I think, a high level, the warm up question is a low stakes opportunity for everyone to have their voice heard really easy, which can pave the way for folks to feel more comfortable participating throughout the rest of the meeting. And I also think of it as a really good kind of transition point. So by requiring everyone to participate first thing, it can help focus people on being present in your meeting. So it can be difficult to keep thinking about the last meeting you were in or to multitask if you know that you’re about to be called on. And, I’m a fan of being strategic with the question. So I think a lot of us are really familiar with warm up questions as being just about personal connection, you know, folks call them icebreakers. But they can really also be used to reinforce an organizational value, get people thinking about a topic or a skill that they’re going to need to bring later to a conversation. It can be an opportunity to generate accountability for professional development or leadership development goals that the whole team is working on.

Jess Britt [00:12:58]:
Or as a leader, it can give you some really valuable data about how folks are doing depending on the question that you ask.

Dave Stachowiak [00:13:05]:
I was thinking about this conversation, Jess. And just in this past week, Jess and I were part of a larger conversation with a number of our fellows on some of the facilitation that we’re doing inside of our community. And I was inspired a bit by thinking about warm up questions or what sometimes people call icebreakers, but thinking about it in the lens of, like, what’s a strategic question. And I started that meeting by asking the question, what’s something in a facilitation you’ve had within our community in the last week or so that’s made you smile? And so it got everyone talking. It got everyone engaged. But to your point, it also linked back to the purpose of the conversation because the purpose was about that, about engagement and facilitation and the work we were doing. And, boy, it worked, and it kicked off a meeting where we had a ton of collaboration and interaction and ideas. And I just think that’s, like, a really nice nudge.

Dave Stachowiak [00:13:58]:
Like, oftentimes, we just think about throwing in an icebreaker question. It’s all good. But to take the next step of really think of, like, well, what’s the question that actually would sort of relate to some things we’re gonna talk about? And think about that at a bigger picture, higher level.

Jess Britt [00:14:11]:
Absolutely.

Dave Stachowiak [00:14:12]:
You also suggest checkout questions. What’s what’s a checkout question and what’s helpful about it?

Jess Britt [00:14:18]:
I think it’s pretty similar in that it gives an opportunity to hear from everybody, and that opportunity to hear from everybody, and that doesn’t necessarily have to be everybody, you know, coming off mute and speaking up. It could be in the chat. But it can really help reinforce learning or decisions made and can give you valuable insights as a a leader, you know, data points about how content landed, how well folks understood the content, how people are feeling as they’re leaving a meeting. And before heading into a checkout question, it can be helpful to reground everyone by recapping the objective, what you did together, and what’s next to kinda just re summarize what what was covered in the meeting. And just some examples of ones that I use frequently or that I’ve used before, I think plus delta is a pretty common one. This is especially good for a team that meets often or on day one of a two day set of meetings. So asking folks to share what’s something they liked about the meeting and what’s something that they would change, so the plus and the delta. I like head, heart, hands a lot.

Jess Britt [00:15:19]:
So what’s one thing you’re thinking, one thing you’re feeling, and one thing you wanna be doing as you leave this meeting? You can ask folks to do an emoji poll or a five finger survey. Those are all different kinds of ways to do checkout questions.

Dave Stachowiak [00:15:33]:
Oh, nice. What’s an emoji poll? I don’t think I’ve come across that.

Jess Britt [00:15:37]:
An emoji poll, you can do it in a couple ways. One is very free flowing, especially this is especially good if you’re on Zoom or another virtual platform, but saying everybody put in the chat an emoji that shows how you’re feeling right now as you’re leaving, and people can get really creative. Or you can pick a couple in advance and say, if you’re feeling really clear on this, put a sun in. If you’re not feeling so clear, put a thumbs down. I’m making this up on the fly. And then you can kind of think in advance about how you want to collect that information.

Dave Stachowiak [00:16:06]:
Oh, interesting. And I’m curious, like, when the flood of emojis comes in in that case or the the fingers where I’ve seen that before of, like, give a quick rating to the meeting. Let’s say someone, you know, has a rating that’s, like, really not good or they put in the, like, head explosion emoji or something. Like, that’s clearly an indicator or something didn’t work. How do you decide- and do you decide in the moment, okay, do I call attention to this? Do I follow-up? Like, how do you think about that?

Jess Britt [00:16:35]:
Oh, it’s a great question. And with so much of this, it depends. I think it depends on the culture. It depends if you’re right at the top of the hour or if you still have a couple minutes left to close out, because I’m I’m a big fan of being very respectful of people’s times and reflecting meeting end times. Yeah. And it depends on the person who who put that in or how many folks did. Right? If it’s just one person, maybe that person’s particularly quiet and you only have one minute left before folks are supposed to go to their next meeting, I probably wouldn’t call it out in the moment, but would follow-up with that person one on one directly to say, hey. I noticed this.

Jess Britt [00:17:08]:
Wanna share a little bit more. If, for example, you get five people who put the head explosion emoji in, I think it’s totally fine to say, hey. I see a lot of this. And, again, if you still have some time, say anyone who put that in wanna share what what was going on for you. I think that’s a good way to to address it in the moment. Again, if you’re running up on time, you can say, hey. I’m gonna look at all of these, and then we’ll revisit where we ended here when we come together next.

Dave Stachowiak [00:17:34]:
I I love the tactic and the broader principle here is, like, however you do it, whether it’s verbally, an emoji, a little poll, a checkout question, like, doing something that’s some indicator of how did this go. What are people walking away with? And then it gives you the choice to do something. And like you said, Jess, maybe you do it in the moment, depending on the situation. Maybe it’s a conversation afterward. Maybe it’s the opening question for the next meeting. Right? But there’s some sort of, like, we didn’t just get in the conversation and say whatever was said, and then we’re just dropping it and we never revisit this again. It it it shows a sense of learning and growth and also community and engagement with us.

Jess Britt [00:18:13]:
Absolutely.

Dave Stachowiak [00:18:15]:
On facilitation, one of the other things I know that you think about a bunch is enforcing norms. How do you think about norms? And when either either in establishing the norms or when someone’s, like, veering from one of the norms in a conversation, a meeting, like, how do you handle that as a facilitator?

Jess Britt [00:18:36]:
It’s a great question. And I think norms are most easily enforced when two things are true. When the group has cogenerated the norms, and had the opportunity to contribute to the norms that, we’re all using in the meeting. And so that can be done the first time a group meets and, you know, depending on how short on time you are, you could come in and say, hey. Here are five that I have. What else do we wanna add to this list? Or, you know, you could start from scratch depending on the culture and the time that you have. And then I think it’s important even if those are norms that everybody’s committed to, say it’s a weekly team meeting, referencing them frequently, you know, at the top of the meeting, as a reminder, these are objectives, this is our agenda, and our team norms are in place. And again sometimes you might read them all out, sometimes you might not.

Jess Britt [00:19:22]:
It really depends on the context, but I think kind of regrounding every time you’re in a meeting that these norms are the norms is a really helpful kind of first step to being able to then enforce them later. And then in the moment, I think you can do it with good humor a lot of the time. So saying, you know, hey, as a reminder, one of our norms is take space, make space. Can and I would love to hear from some folks who haven’t shared much before before we hear from folks who’ve already spoken. That’s one way to to enforce the norm.

Dave Stachowiak [00:19:53]:
So you’re you’re coming back to a larger principle that’s already been established. You may reference that in the moment, maybe use a little humor, and then you use that to nudge the conversation forward in a way that aligns with those norms and comes back to what everyone already agreed with.

Jess Britt [00:20:08]:
Exactly. And I think even if you’re using norms that perhaps you as the leader or perhaps your company already have established, I think it’s pretty common in teams to come up with shorthand for referring to norms that by, have a little bit more of kind of the humor and team culture involved. And so leaning into that when you see that organically emerge can be a really kind of good humored way to enforce the norms.

Dave Stachowiak [00:20:30]:
So many of these things, like doing one or two of these things can actually go a long way. And you have some more advanced things to think about, especially if maybe the things that we’ve already talked about or things like you’ve been doing, you’ve utilized, you’ve started with a warm up question or closing question. And one of the things you and I both think a bunch about is the adult learning principles and the and bringing those into meetings and interactions. And for those who’ve not thought about that before, what’s different about adult learning principles than maybe we think about with kids learning something? Because it there are there are differences, aren’t there?

Jess Britt [00:21:06]:
There are differences. And I think the the two principles that I find most helpful to keep in mind when I’m thinking about meeting design are one, allowing participants to draw on past knowledge and experiences when they’re in the room is really important for facilitating adult learning. And then the second is that adults learn best by doing. So there are other principles that can be applied to meetings, but those two are the ones that I come back to over and over again.

Dave Stachowiak [00:21:36]:
And the research has reinforced that for many years that, like, those those areas are really key. The hard part is how to bring that into a meeting conversation. Like, when you think about drawing on past experiences, learning by doing, how do you bring that in?

Jess Britt [00:21:52]:
I think, again, you you know, you shared a great example of designing a warm up question to tee up the conversation. I think the warm up question can be a really good place to start for drawing on past knowledge and experience. And so, for example, I was chairing a board meeting a few years ago with some tense topics that we needed to discuss, and our, director, the executive director, was only a couple months into her role. And so the warm up question I asked the board was think about a time you had to share your work with someone before you were ready. What went well and what made that difficult? And then I gave them time to think about it, reflect, and then we had a full group discussion about that. And when board members had to share about their past experiences with that type of a situation, It forged personal connection among board members, and it also put us into an empathetic and solution oriented mindset that was really helpful later on in the meeting and brought folks into just a more productive space as we were solving challenges.

Dave Stachowiak [00:22:57]:
Yeah. So you’re using a combination there of a warm up question and drawing on the past experience in order to set a tone. And again, to the point of the conversation that day, set the tone for empathy, for collaboration, for listening. That’s really powerful. It’s a real like a really powerful way to start. And it starts with just thinking this through, like asking a single question. When when you think about the learning by doing, oftentimes, we get in a meeting, we think, okay, I’m sitting here, and I’m listening. Maybe I’m contributing.

Dave Stachowiak [00:23:26]:
But oftentimes, we don’t think about doing. We’re not doing anything. A lot of times, it feels like sitting in a meeting, listening to something for forty five minutes or an hour. How do you think about that, and how do you invite people to get into the doing mindset?

Jess Britt [00:23:39]:
Yeah. I I think there’s a few different ways. I think role playing can be a really powerful tool. Think pair share is a common approach I know used in teaching, also used in facilitation that I bring into a lot of meetings and happy to share an example of what that looks like. And then even sticky notes and gallery walks, I think a lot of folks have been in a meeting or a workshop where there have been kind of posters all over the walls and you’re writing on sticky notes. Part of that is kind of walking around and being more active in doing. And so that can be an approach to bring into your meeting, whether it’s physical paper or virtual version of that. Those could all be helpful ways to learn by doing in the room.

Dave Stachowiak [00:24:21]:
Yeah. Nice. And I’ve heard that term think pair share, but I’m guessing a lot of folks haven’t. What does it mean? And then how do you actually do it?

Jess Britt [00:24:28]:
Yeah. So it’s a three step process. So asking a question and giving folks talk the opportunity to think on their own first and then pair. So either kind of turn to the person next to you or go into a breakout room if you’re online and talk about the question together. And then the share is come back to the big group and share some of what you talked about. And so that could be, I wanna hear what everybody said, but really oftentimes it’s more about share how that experience was for you in the room. What did you learn from your partner? And so it’s a way to kind of vary the way that somebody’s engaging with answering a question.

Dave Stachowiak [00:25:07]:
You said two words a few moments ago that I’d like to come back to because they, I think, are fearful for a lot of folks, and that’s the word the two words role play. And I happen to work for an organization early in my career that had the expectation that a lot of role play happened, and I learned how valuable it was. But I think it’s kind of scary for a lot of folks, and it’s also one of those things like it feels weird because you’re sort of like acting and it can be so so valuable, and yet I think it’s hard for a team who’s never done that or a group of people together to nudge into that. When you think about doing role plays or just getting people started with developing some comfort on that, what do you find helps?

Jess Britt [00:25:47]:
Oh, it’s a great question. So following on that example that I just was sharing about about the FAQs practice, role play then became something we scaffolded onto it later. So once we had all kind of developed those questions and answers, we had experience building and drafting new answers to questions. When we didn’t have a new one to draft, we would use that time in our agenda to call on someone and ask them a question and they would practice the answer. And yes, that can be intimidating, that sounds intimidating. Ways to make it less intimidating, I think the best one is to put people in smaller groups to start to really kind of build that comfort. I also think kind of giving folks clear norms around feedback and what it means to give kind of productive feedback after a role play is an important piece of kind of norm setting Uh-huh. That that may take some time to build up to, but can be go a long way to making folks feel more comfortable in a role play situation.

Dave Stachowiak [00:26:43]:
I know there’s a bunch that we could say. What’s one norm that you found that’s often helpful, like, when inviting someone to figure out how to give feedback after role play that you find often lands?

Jess Britt [00:26:54]:
Oh, I think ensuring that it’s balanced and that it’s not just focused on things that someone could have done better, but is leading with strengths is something that I learned just about feedback in general earlier in my career and and something that that stays with me now that I think is a good practice.

Dave Stachowiak [00:27:10]:
Oh, nice. It’s interesting. You said that I was thinking it was something I learned as a Carnegie instructor too of, like, two or three things that someone did well and then just one thing for improvement. Like, even if you’ve maybe noticed seven or eight, you just focus on one because, like, people can’t hear that much, and that’s a really useful place to start for people.

Jess Britt [00:27:28]:
Absolutely.

Dave Stachowiak [00:27:29]:
One more thing that I want to ask you about. You’ve highlighted debrief questions for me in the past. And are debrief questions different than checkout questions? And and and if so, how? What’s the what’s the point of those?

Jess Britt [00:27:44]:
Oh, it’s a good question. So when I think about a debrief question, I think that that’s the thing that the leader or the meeting facilitator is asking after each piece of interactive content. So those are the types of questions that you’re asking when people come back to the big group after being in pairs. Those are the questions that you ask to really kind of solidify the learning or any key takeaways and next steps from the activity that folks were doing. And so I think it’s important to ask open ended questions and ask questions in a way that get the meeting attendees to reflect on what they just engaged in to generate the key takeaway themself without telling them the takeaway.

Dave Stachowiak [00:28:27]:
I know this is gonna, of course, vary a ton on, like, what the meeting is, context, team. Can you think of a a debrief question and example of one you’ve used that you find, like, help is helpful to, like, center people after a particular piece of a meeting or content or section?

Jess Britt [00:28:42]:
I think a couple pretty open ones that can apply in a lot of contexts, which folks may recognize from meetings they’ve been in with facilitators before is what came up for you or what came up in your group that you hadn’t thought about before. That’s a good one. Oh. Or what’s top of mind after listening to other people share? And I also think don’t be afraid to call on people directly. So you can say, I heard your group talking about x. Could you share more about that with the full group? Or I saw you nodding when this person was speaking. What was on your mind? Those are all ways to kind of get folks reflecting and sharing with the full group after they’ve engaged in learning by doing or one of those other types of facilitation.

Dave Stachowiak [00:29:28]:
What strikes me about every question you just articulated there is just how simple and conversational and casual it is. It’s, oh, what’s top of mind? What came out of your conversation? I noticed you talking about this. Tell us more about that. Like, it’s just it’s not like this long paragraph of deep reflection go off and journal under a tree somewhere. Right? It’s just like the kinds of things we would say in regular conversation anyway, and it’s just being curious and simple. And sometimes just three or four words of a simple question can open up, like, a whole opportunity for hearing more and collaboration, which is, like, what we all want in most of our meetings anyway.

Jess Britt [00:30:04]:
And what I would say is if this is a new style for you or for your team, be patient. It goes a long way to ask an open ended question and then just wait and be comfortable with the silence until somebody answers because they will answer.

Dave Stachowiak [00:30:18]:
They will eventually. Yeah. Indeed. And I love that invitation here as we close because there’s a tendency, like I know so often we hear an episode or we hear advice on something, and there’s, like, all these different ideas we talked about. And my invitation for folks listening is decide on one of these to try. If you have not done a warm up question or maybe you’ve done one, but you haven’t thought about it in the context of a meeting, or you’ve never done a think pair share, or you’ve never used a debrief question, don’t try to do all those at once. Find one that you’re like, hey. Yeah.

Dave Stachowiak [00:30:48]:
I feel like I could experiment with this in my next meeting. And then try it out. And we’d love to know what did you try and what happened as you did it. So we’ve got an invitation for you. I’d actually invite you to send Jess an email and let her know what did you what did you try and what happened as you did it? And her email address is Jess@JessBritt.com. We’re gonna put it into the episode notes. And the other thing, the reason I’m inviting you to do that is Jess and I, in preparation for this conversation, put together some ideas and Jess did this incredible work of, like, detailing all these different ideas for leading engaging meetings. And what percentage of that have we covered just? Like, I don’t know, 15% in this conversation.

Jess Britt [00:31:32]:
Probably something like that. Yeah.

Dave Stachowiak [00:31:33]:
Yeah. So there’s a whole other chunk of this that we’re not even talking about. And one of the things Jess would love to do is if you decide to reach out and tell her, like, what was helpful, she’ll send you the whole list of it, and we’re not gonna add you to mailing list or anything like that. But we just like to know, like, what worked for you and then actually give you more ideas on things you could use and try. So, Jess, how’s that? If people reach out anything folks should put in a subject line or just send you a message with it?

Jess Britt [00:31:58]:
Yeah. Maybe meeting conversation on Coaching for Leaders, something like that.

Dave Stachowiak [00:32:02]:
Yeah. Okay. Great. Sounds good. Well, let’s do that then. Okay. So all of that will be in the episode notes. Just so you know I’m gonna ask this last question, which is what you’ve changed your mind on.

Dave Stachowiak [00:32:11]:
You’ve been doing this a lot over the years as a manager, as an executive. You’ve been on a board. You’ve been the chair of a board. You’ve done this in so many different contexts of helping people to engage well in conversations. In the last year or two, as you’ve been doing this even more as a coach and a consultant now, What if anything have you changed your mind on?

Jess Britt [00:32:31]:
Yeah. It’s a great question. And first, I just wanna say thank you to everyone who taught me these skills over the course of my career. This is not stuff that I made up myself. And when I first started facilitating highly engaging meetings, I was really facilitating highly engaging meetings, I was really convinced that in person was the only way to go. I couldn’t imagine engaging folks in this way online, especially for retreats and planning meetings. But that really changed when I was leading in an organization that was spread across the country. Before COVID, we had to figure out how to make virtual meetings work to keep travel costs in check.

Jess Britt [00:33:04]:
And I was really pleasantly surprised by the advantages of virtual meetings, both for facilitators and participants. For a leader, I can check my notes, message co facilitators privately, save all of the contributions that happen in breakout rooms without having to take pictures and transcribe things. And I also love how virtual meetings open up lots of different ways for people to participate. You know, I mentioned those emoji polls earlier. Some people are more comfortable typing in the chat, and others like to speak up. And when a facilitator can pay attention to all of those inputs, it can make meetings a lot more engaging and inclusive because people can join in a lot of different ways. So my preference for in person meeting facilitation is something that I have totally changed my mind on. But of course, you know, that only works if there’s strong norms about being present and not multitasking.

Jess Britt [00:33:52]:
So that’s the caveat. I’ll share it to my changing my mind.

Dave Stachowiak [00:33:55]:
Yeah. Indeed. Well, Jess, thank you so much for your leadership as a coaching for leaders fellow, and thank you so much for sharing your work and your experiences with us. I so appreciate it.

Jess Britt [00:34:04]:
Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Dave Stachowiak [00:34:12]:
If Jess’s words were helpful to you, three other episodes I’d recommend. One of them is episode three fifty eight, how to lead meetings that get results. Mamie Kanfer Stewart was my guest on that episode, host of the Modern Manager podcast. Mimi and I talked about purpose behind meetings, and who do you invite, and how do you keep people informed? So many great compliments to this conversation. I think it fits in so well with so so many of the things that Jess mentioned about objectives at the start of this conversation. Again, episode three fifty eight for that. Also recommended episode six thirty two, moving towards meetings of significance. Seth Godin was my guest.

Dave Stachowiak [00:34:49]:
Seth has been challenging me and many of us for years on how to have conversations that matter, how to get teams working together in significant ways. And in that episode, we talked in detail about his thinking around how to really create the environment and the meetings and the mindset that will really lead you to conversations that are much more significant than many of the conversations in meetings that happen regularly in organizations. Episode six thirty two for that. And then finally, I’d recommend episode six ninety one, bringing your strengths to a big job. General CQ Brown junior was my guest on that episode, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff here in The United States. We talked about the reality that he faces almost every day as our nation’s top ranking military officer and needing to engage people in conversations and meetings. Sometimes folks who are very junior to him and being able to make it comfortable so people talk and engage in conversation so he knows what’s happening. He talked in that conversation about how does he think about that? What’s his mindset? And then what are the tactics and actions he takes in leading those conversations so that he hears truth? Episode six ninety one for that.

Dave Stachowiak [00:35:58]:
All of those episodes, you can find on the coachingforleaders.com website, and you can get access to everything, not only on the public apps, but also to search by topic just by setting up your free membership at coachingforleaders.com. You know, a part of leading well is about handling inflection points effectively. Whether that inflection point is a promotion, a different organization, a new team, a big initiative, those are the inflection points of our careers, and they almost always bring a big challenge. What worked yesterday doesn’t work today. That’s why Marshall Goldsmith’s best selling book is called What Got You Here Won’t Get You There. When he was most recently on the podcast, he made the point that the higher you go, the more your problems are behavioral. A lot of us get to that point in our careers when it is important to change our behaviors. The Coaching for Leaders Academy provides both the community and the structure to accelerate your movement on the behaviors that are most critical right now, and that is our biggest goal, movement.

Dave Stachowiak [00:37:07]:
If you’re ready to get moving with me and a small cohort of five to six other leaders working together, I invite you to join our invitation list for when our academy applications next open. To do so, go over to coachingforleaders.com/academy, and I’ll make sure you get an invitation when we next open our applications. Coaching for Leaders is edited by Andrew Kroeger. Production support is provided by Sierra Priest. I will be back on Monday with Rebecca Homkes, and we are gonna be talking about where to start when your organization is in survival mode. Join me for that conversation with Rebecca. Have a great weekend and see you on Monday.