Jess Britt, an experienced executive and nonprofit board chair, shares insights on transforming meetings from dreaded events into engaging collaborations. She emphasizes the importance of clear objectives to enhance participant engagement. Techniques such as warm-up questions, role-playing, and feedback methods like emoji polls are discussed to foster interaction. Britt also highlights the benefits of virtual meetings while stressing the need for open dialogue and respectful time management. Listeners are encouraged to implement simple strategies that lead to productive and enjoyable gatherings.
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volunteer_activism ADVICE
Meeting Objectives
Identifying shared and personal objectives for a meeting helps design and lead it effectively.
It allows for better preparation, reduces frustration, and enables pivoting when necessary.
question_answer ANECDOTE
Shared vs. Personal Objectives
Jess Britt used a shared objective of reflecting on a strategic plan, while personally focusing on her leadership transition in a board meeting.
This approach guided her preparation and in-meeting decisions, like delegating facilitation and stepping back to let others lead.
volunteer_activism ADVICE
Effective Objectives
A good meeting objective should be realistic, resonate with attendees, and be specific.
For example, "align on next steps" is better than "complete the project."
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This book by Marshall Goldsmith focuses on helping successful individuals recognize and change the behavioral habits that are holding them back from achieving even greater success. Goldsmith identifies 20 common bad habits, such as speaking when angry or adding too much value, and provides a systematic approach to changing these behaviors. He emphasizes that it is not technical skills but behavioral changes that separate the great from the rest. The book offers practical advice on how to eliminate these dysfunctions and improve interpersonal relationships, which is crucial for advancing in one's career and personal life.
Jess Britt
Jess Britt is an experienced executive and nonprofit board chair. Today as 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 a leadership role inside our community as a Coaching for Leaders fellow, providing coaching and facilitation to our members.
While some leaders love to hate meetings, a well-designed meeting can open huge opportunities to connect, engage, and build culture on a team. In this conversation, Jess and I zero in on simple tactics that will help you engage attendees and lead meetings that people actually enjoy. We explore how objectives, facilitation tactics, and adult learning principles can help and invite you to start with one.
Key Points
Identifying both shared and non-shared objectives helps you design meetings, informs how you show up, makes meetings less frustrating, and helps you pivot.
Invite discussion and engagement at the start with a warm-up question. If possible, connect the question to an objective of the meeting.
Check-out questions are a quick indicator of what worked and what didn’t. Use emojis, voting, or a quick question to assess, and follow up if something didn’t land.
Adults learn best by drawing on past experiences and taking action. Bring in role plays, think-pair-share, and gallery walks to help engage people.
Simple debrief questions will open up insights. Consider prompts like: “What came out of this?” “What did you hear?” and “I heard you discussing an idea. Tell us more.”
Reach out to Jess at jess@jessbritt.com and tell her one thing you tried from this conversation and what happened. She’ll respond by sharing her full guide of meeting facilitation ideas we weren’t able to entirely cover in this episode.
Resources Mentioned
Jess Britt’s website
Coaching for Leaders Academy
Related Episodes
How to Lead Meetings That Get Results, with Mamie Kanfer Stewart (episode 358)
Moving Towards Meetings of Significance, with Seth Godin (episode 632)
Bringing Your Strengths to a Big Job, with General CQ Brown, Jr. (episode 691)
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