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W
e curse meetings, but they are es-
sential to today’s collaborative lead-
ership approach. We may long to
eliminate them – and no doubt some
could be trimmed – but the bigger issue is to make
the ones we have more effective.
Richard Lent, a Boston-area consultant who has
spent 25 years trying to improve his meetings,
believes you can learn from the techniques he
has tested. It boils down to not continuing with a
laissez faire approach, wishing you can muddle
through, but applying some structure that nudges
participants in the right direction. Often those
structures are drawn from the practices applied in
large meetings. “I realized that some techniques of
these larger group methods could improve smaller,
‘regular’ meetings led by someone without specific
facilitation training,” he writes in
Leading Great
Meetings
.
There are 12 basic structural choices in holding a
meeting, and many tools you can apply at the vari-
ous junctures. Six choices arise in planning: How
you define the work of the meeting, who gets invit-
ed, how you design the discussion, how you intend
to reach decisions, how you plan to spend meeting
time, and how you arrange the meeting space. Af-
ter selecting from that menu, the agenda can be
prepared.
He highlights four choices while conducting the
meeting: How you share responsibility, how you
support productive conversations, how you man-
age time, and how you work with differing opin-
ions, less positively described as conflict. Finally,
he lists two choices for achieving results: How you
build decisions and how you follow up.
FATT can be used in many of those areas. It’s an
acronym for focused, actionable, timely, and timed,
describing how to engage participants effectively
in the work through a definition of what needs to
be done. You want the topic for discussion clear and
bounded, so everyone understands exactly what is
under consideration. The group must have the au-
thority and resources to take action. This should be
the appropriate time to address the topic – it’s time-
ly – and as well an appropriate time is assigned to
complete the task. “A good FATT statement is like
a ‘fat pitch’ in baseball – a pitch that is right across
the home plate and easy to hit. A clear task state-
ment helps meeting participants get a solid ‘swing’
at a piece of work,” he says.
The 1-2-All technique caught my fancy. He argues
a meeting of seven or more individuals constitutes
a large group and a potential problem because
most participants won’t stay engaged. They can
coast, expecting a few passionate colleagues to
gobble up most of the air time. That allows these
free riders to leaf through their email and maintain
limited involvement.
Involve them by announcing the issue at hand
and then telling everyone they have one or two
minutes to reflect and write their ideas down. Then
ask them to turn to a neighbour and share their ini-
tial reaction. After that discussion, the 1-2 of the
technique’s name, you revert to all, reconvening as
a group. Ask each pair what they talked about be-
fore edging into further general discussion.
The individual reflection allows who need more
time to get their thoughts together an equal start
with those who think as they speak. The dyad stage
allows thoughts to be tested and reaction gauged.
After that, participants can refine their proposals
for distribution to all in the meeting. The approach
engages everyone and gets more ideas on the floor
than just throwing an issue out to general discus-
sion.
Meeting engagement can be hampered when
people don’t know the method by which an issue
will be decided. If it turns out not to their liking
it can lead to suspicion and withdrawal next time
you gather. His tool here is the Five Cs, which
guides you at the start to explain the decision-mak-
ing process:
• Consensus: The group will develop a common
conclusion that all will support. A common trap
is to obtain false consensus, assuming approval
when we don’t hear concerns. Later we find out
we were incorrect. For consensus you must en-
sure everyone’s enthusiasm.
• Consent: Everyone expresses an opinion and
those with a concern must indicate it’s not funda-
The Leader’s Bookshelf
Harvey Schachter
Leading Great
Meetings
By Richard Lent
Meeting for
Results, 220
pages, $25.95
26
/ Canadian Government Executive
// December 2016