Ample means “way, WAY too many.”

Here is one thing I have experienced from all of this ampleness: it is very distressing to see so many managers fail miserably in leading meetings. Not to mention the actual cost of these meetings. Add up the total compensation of the team sitting in your next meeting and determine the hourly rate your company is paying for them to be there. It is frightening.

A quick Google search produced 89 million results when you type in “Team Meeting.” Just about everyone has a perspective on what makes for a good meeting.
Too often, leaders limit their definition (and practice) of effective meetings to an agenda with topics for review or discussion. This is wholly inadequate.

The following “3 Part Agenda Model”  is a much more effective framework for setting an agenda and conducting an effective meeting. It is plain, and it is simple. If you follow it faithfully (in order!), you can reduce your meeting times by as much as 50%.

And…you can get a whole lot more accomplished.

Part I: Information

Question: What is the single largest violator of time in a meeting?
Answer: Sharing and exchanging information.

Part I of this model requires you to distribute and share information beforehand, and if need be, allow for a short “quiet time” right at the beginning of the meeting for information review. No more than 15% of any team meeting should be allotted to information sharing.

Part II: Discussion

This is where your address your topics. When it comes to addressing topics, I recommend you hold to a singular, overriding purpose.  All discussion should be seeking to do one of two things:

a. Clarification for future decision-making
OR…
b. Clarification for future action by the team or individual members

40 to 60% of your meeting should be dedicated to DISCUSSION.

Part III: Decisions

This is where you construct a list of the decisions that must be made at the meeting. As a leader of a team, you have an inherent obligation to be clear about exactly who is making the decision….is it the leader? Is it another manager? Is it the team?

A key to great decisions is timing. It is important to not take your team by surprise and have them later complain “I thought we had already made the decision….What happened?”

DECISIONS should occupy between 25 to 45 % of your meeting.

Following this straightforward model for creating a meeting agenda is a great framework and a great start.  However, there are numerous ways a team can go “sideways” during a meeting.

Here are three of the major hurdles to an effective team meeting:

1. Allowing a manager or leader to “storytell,” or embellish their example ad nauseam. Learn to first express your ideas, concerns, and information without taking away valuable time. Then, once you have learned this, teach others. Stop the war stories.

2. Allowing hidden agendas to surface. Keep the focus of the meeting exclusively upon the planned agenda items.

3. Allowing the practice of going “around the room” so everyone can have a voice. When you attend a meeting where everyone reports — whether they have something to contribute or not — wastes hours and hours of valuable time.

What do you think of my “3 Part Agenda Model”?  What other hurdles have you seen (or practiced yourself) that have crippled the purpose and the successful outcome of your team meetings?

This is a Guest Post by Nathan Buchanan, an Operator with Chick-fil-A since 2004. Nathan averaged over 17 percent in sales growth over 36 months and was named Rookie of the Year. Nathan spends his time helping his wife home school their five children, coaching his leadership team, and coaching new Chick-fil-A franchisees around the country. He can be contacted at nathan.buchanan@chick-fil-a.com

I read recently of a phenomenon in which top executives are finding it difficult to remain fully engaged in their roles.

I’ve never had that experience. Keeping a group of teens and twenty-somethings engaged, fulfilled, and moving in the same direction has often felt akin to trying to entice a school of eels to move from one side of the ocean to the other.

For a long time, I was laboring under the misapprehension that it was my responsibility to make sure that everyone on my team was happy.

My nature is one that dislikes confrontation. This, along with a fairly dynamic personality, enabled me to hold the team together by the sheer force of my own will. Every time team morale would dip, I’d jump in the middle of the situation, and make everyone happy again.

Often the frustrations the team experienced were self-inflicted, usually from a lack of training or talent. But I was always there to make certain that the employee’s lack of productivity was accounted for, and somehow managed to keep the attitude of the team positive.

It was exhausting, and in my inner thoughts, I knew something was off, but I couldn’t verbalize it. Wasn’t this the definition of an “engaged leader”?

About three years ago, I had the fortune to begin working with an executive coach. Since then, my life has been profoundly altered in response to the questions I’ve been forced to confront. One of the most impactful changes has been the strategic move from a “top down” leadership structure, to that of a “high performance leadership team” within my organization.

As part of this calculated move, I’ve had to divest myself of a lot of authority and control. Each leader now has a clearly defined job description that outlines the full scope of his or her authority, metrics used to measure performance, and a clear understanding of how his or her role relates to the store’s overall Vision statement. This includes the mandate for each leader to hire, train, and schedule his or her area’s team members.

During the past five weeks, our team came under considerable stress. One of my most popular leaders was out of the unit for a full month following the tragic loss of his children, we lost three high performers to college and other opportunities, and we saw a double-digit sales increase.

Toward the end of this time, my crew was emotionally raw, physically exhausted, and morale seemed to be ebbing. We also saw our customer service metrics — which customarily ran within the top 20% of all units — drop to merely average.

I was concerned. In the past, this would be where I was most needed — to jump into the fray and rally the troops — but I had to be out of town for the next two weeks.

I sat in on the last meeting prior to my departure, and watched my team in action. Using a tool I’d coached them through before, they identified five individuals who either couldn’t or wouldn’t provide service up to the level demanded. They realized that these individuals had replaced many of the hours that were vacated by the four top performers, and determined to remove them from the schedule and replace them with better people—both current employees and new hires.

I didn’t hear much from my unit while I was gone, and it was with some concern that I asked about team morale when I returned.

The answer to my question? “Never better!”

This so strongly contrasted with the morale mess I would have walked into in the past that it started me on the path to realization. My team was happy because I had a) given them the tools to succeed (and the authority to use them), b) removed the barriers to team success (in this case, five under-performing employees), and c) gotten out of their way.

Morale hinges on the satisfaction each team member derives from being part of a great team. If it rests on anything else—in my case, the personal charisma of me, the leader—it is unsustainable in the long term.

Ironically, I felt a sense of loss, even though I knew this was a huge positive change. It is nice to be needed—but it’s even nicer to be needed for the right reasons. It’s a loss I can live with.

I don’t know why I couldn’t see this before. I suspect it’s a combination of carefully concealed narcissism, unwillingness to give up control, and the fact that the ratio of great employees to those who couldn’t and wouldn’t was unfortunately too thin on greatness.

I do know that my store is more profitable, my team is happier, and I’m no longer exhausted. I’m grateful to add this lesson to what I’ve learned.

Pick one situation you are facing now, and apply the above. Let me know how it works for you.

Leaders insulate themselves by limiting their study almost exclusively to U.S. institutions, companies and authors.

Recently, Europe’s largest HR and professional development organization (over 135,000 members) completed a 2 year study entitled “Shaping the Future” (Research Lead: Dr. Jill Miller).

This study was not only extremely well researched, but the ten conclusions are superb insights for those who are in positions of leadership where they are responsible for sustained performance.

So, forget for a moment that “organisational” is spelled differently. This study is relevant to your business.

Here are the ten points, directly quoted from the study:

1. The organisation change response needs to be truly agile and enduring, not a knee-jerk reaction that quickly dissipates: Organisations need to ensure change isn’t just a temporary break from the norm, maintained by employees only while the immediate “storm” is passing. Instead, change should manifest itself as a more proactive agility, creating organisations open to new directions, aware of the limitations and risks of not changing, and equipped to keep moving and adapting.

2. It’s a fine balance between alignment and flexibility: While aligning employee, customer and other stakeholders’ values, behaviours and objectives with a wider organisational purpose is important, over-focusing on this alignment can create barriers to the flexibility needed to enable the organisation to change.

3. Shared purpose can only be achieved by finding human connections beyond short-term profit or efficiency targets: By fostering amongst employees a genuine sense of shared purpose and meaning at work, stronger connections, engagement and performance can be delivered.

4. Collaborative leadership brings sustainability, so organisations should avoid defaulting to a directive and driven approach to leadership in tough times: Reinforcing a collaborative problem-sharing approach can drive longer-term, sustainable change, agility and engagement.

5. ‘Middle management’ have a valuable transforming and translating role but are often sidelined, bypassed or cut out in change processes: Suitably skilled middle managers can play a key role as transformers and translators in bringing change to life. As translators they can facilitate two-way communications between leaders and the front line and as transformers they can bring change to life. Much of this can be lost when change involves “delayering” this middle-management tier, rather than refocusing, retraining and drawing on their skills and experiences.

6. An over-focus on today’s needs is not true talent management; it’s talent tunnel vision: Identifying and developing the capabilities individuals will need in the long-term is crucial to meet the organisational imperatives of tomorrow.

7. Truly understanding employees’ locus of engagement can avoid the risk of over-attachment and underperformance: Organisations need to get under the surface of employees’ engagement and better understand whether they are truly engaged with the organisation and its core objectives, or if they are only engaged with some selected parts of their roles, or with individual managers and colleagues. This more selective engagement can undermine sustainable performance.

8. Perceptions of unfairness undermine employee engagement: Perceptions of unfairness or organisational injustice can stifle employee engagement and act as a blocker to performance.

9. Process-heavy organisations are often still insight-light: Overemphasis on backward-looking targets defends existence but doesn’t prove worth. Organisations need to cull data that doesn’t add value and be curious with the remainder to uncover real insight.

10. Leaders don’t always know best about the long-term vision: Effective mechanisms for upwards communication – that filter important signals from the ground from the background noise – can provide real insight and challenge for leaders, and inform longer-term planning.

There are many ways to bring benefit to your organization through the use of these insights.

Please consider how you can make use of these points within your own company. I want to encourage to think beyond the obvious and make some creative applications.

Then, please share your discoveries with me and the readers of this blog!

Question: How do you slowly kill off the people who work for you?

Answer: Turn your direct reports into pessimists.

Do this, and you will eventually succeed in creating a culture where each person has a fully developed lack of self-esteem.

Perhaps there are some of you who are reading this and saying, “Yes, this is the kind of control I want and need!” Well, let me help you move as quickly and effectively as you can toward the destruction of your culture.

You must sharpen your skills with these seven steps:

1. Find fault with your employees, eliminating any appreciation for the small things they do.

2. Become proficient at nitpicking.

3. Practice the fine art of sarcasm. Perfect this art.

4. Frequently remind each employee that they owe you something. Be specific about what they owe you so there is no room for doubt. This will cause them to be frustrated, angry, and resentful. Once you have this in place, let them “stew on it.” Allow them to become their own worst enemy.

5. Reward employees when you see them distort the truth for their own gain. This creates mistrust among the team which you can build on.

6. Encourage them to be demanding in their work. You will know you are on the right track when you see the dissipation of gratitude.

7. Now, take it to the next level — show them how they can bring this demanding attitude into their personal lives.

Complete these seven steps with one person. Then repeat as needed. Get a solid coalition of like-minded people, train them and equip them, until they become your “apostles.” Reward them for being just like you by having them stay on without any regard to objective performance.

Do this, and I can make you the following guarantee: as a leader, you will be able to do whatever you want, whenever you want. And you will ensure a legacy of pessimism beyond your days of being a leader.

So what are you waiting for? Are you already down the road yourself? Or have I just defined the “cultural path” of your company?

“Top down” means that the CEO, CFO, and VPs huddled for a long weekend and came up with The Plan.

As they handed it to me with great pride, I asked, “Other than the four of you, did you ask for input from anyone else in your company?”

“Yes, of course I did!” replied the CEO. “Since we knew that we were going to put this together, I had conversations with some folks.”

“What ‘folks’?”

“A variety of people in the company.”

“Did you determine ahead of time who you would speak with?”

“No, I just talked with people. Random somewhat. But whomever I could grab for a few minutes.”

“And what did you say to these random folks?”

“I told them that we have narrowed down our strategic initiatives to three major areas and wanted to get their opinions. I let each one know that there were 3 initiatives, but only brought up the one that related to them. We discussed the initiative and they told me what they thought. It was important that I get their input.”

At this point, I am sure many of you are shaking your heads in dismay. But I would challenge you to consider that this situation is representative of how change is introduced in most small to medium sized companies.

I call this the “Moses Mountain Top” approach to strategy and change.

I could write a separate blog about each of the behavioral and process violations brought up in the conversation above. Today, I want to share a simple, straightforward tool that will help you to efficiently and effectively gather input from “your folks” before jumping into any strategic change effort.

First, be thoughtful about whose input you will solicit, so that you receive a comprehensive and relevant perspective.

Then, ask these individuals to respond to the following four questions:

1. Cost: Is there a better way of doing things to control or lower our current operating costs?  How about a different way?

2. Customers: What are you hearing from our customers? What are our customers saying or doing?

3. Change: What types of change inside and outside our company (regulatory, social, political, economic, etc) would cause us to respond better?  Respond differently?

4. Competitors: What exactly are our competitors doing that should cause us to respond better?  Respond differently?

You may notice that I consistently use the words “better” and “different” throughout the questions. I use this often in coaching because it is one of the best ways to generate thinking in relation to the two types of change: incremental, inside-the-box change (“better”), and radical, outside-the-box change (“different”).

Once you have collected the responses, you should tabulate them and prepare two copies: one for the senior team, and one for those who completed the questions. Any time you ask employees for their input, it is imperative that you let them know they were heard. It is a sign of gratitude and respect to give them the same report you will use as a leader.

Armed with the answers to these four questions, you and your executive team will be better equipped to create the right kind of change. And your team, knowing their voice was heard in the process, will be more ready to embrace it.

It took me about 3 seconds to respond: “DIFFERENT!”

Beginning this month, I will be teaching a graduate course in coaching for an Oregon-based university.

This particular client could be a “poster child” for a coaching leader. He regularly coaches members of his senior team on living out their Life Plans, he uses Vision consistently and creatively, he works daily from a simple Business Plan, and he is ruthlessly consistent in living his Ideal Week.

This client not only “gets” coaching, he has a hunger to know and do more.

When I mentioned my graduate course, he challenged me: “I know that many of your clients would appreciate seeing what you are teaching. What readings will you assign as the basis for understanding coaching?”

I was happy to oblige.

I believe the following thirteen works provide an excellent basis for the understanding and application of coaching for anyone, including graduate students:

1. Becoming a Coaching Leader (Harkavy)

2. Coaching and Mentoring (Parsloe and Leedham)

3. Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard (Heath and Heath)

4. Just Enough: Tools for Creating Success in Your Work and Life (Stevenson and Nash)

5. “Managing Oneself” (Drucker)

6. “My Life as a Knowledge Worker” (Drucker)

7. “Building Your Company’s Vision” (Collins and Porras)

8. “The Smart Talk Trap” (Pfeffer and Sutton)

9. “Why do Good Managers Choose Poor Strategies?” (Teisberg)

10.“Six Influences” (Cialdini)

11. “Six Thinking Hats” (DeBono)

12. “Three Signs of a Miserable Job” (Lencioni)

13. “Five Dysfunctions of a Team” (Lencioni)

This list is by no means exhaustive or definitive. It is my first effort to pull together what I believe will provide my graduate students a basis in understanding theories, principles, and practices for coaching.

I would love to learn from you.

What reading would YOU require if you were to teach an introductory course in coaching?

What one book or article has most impacted you in your understanding, or practice, of coaching?