When it’s your turn to present, start with a question

“That staff meeting was the best part of my day,” said no one ever.

People in organizations endure staff meetings and status update meetings everyday. Of all the dreaded rituals of organizational life, update meetings seem to be the most impervious to change. Staff meetings, task-force meetings, and information sharing meetings according to one study of meetings in America, make up 88% of all meetings. Over 33% of the time spent in meetings is considered, “unproductive” by participants.

We’re not suffering from a lack of effective meeting practices. The founder of the consulting firm where I work, Interaction Associates literally wrote the book on how to make meetings work in 1976.

We’ve known for years how to fix bad meetings, yet we don’t.

I have a theory that partially explains why we allow ourselves to be tortured by bad update meetings and I have a simple suggestion, in the form of a question, for making them better.

Team leaders and functional leaders who generally convene the update meetings are getting their needs met at the expense of all the other participants. If you lead a group and need to know what is happening so that you can anticipate problems, allocate resources or reassure others that you are in control, the most efficient way to get your needs met is to convene the group. The problem is that while the leader gets his or her needs met, everyone else at the meeting gets bored.

If everyone attending a meeting could get their needs met, not just the leader, meetings would be better. When it’s your turn to present at an update meeting, start by asking the group, “what are you listening for?” You don’t pitch in baseball without first checking to see what the catcher wants. Similarly, presenters should never pitch ideas without knowing what their audiences want. Don’t guess, ask.

Suppose you are responsible for working with a technology vendor on a project involving a software change that will impact accounting procedures. You have been allotted fifteen minutes on the agenda to update the team. Before giving your update, you say, “Before I begin, what information do you need from me?” Here are some possible responses:

• Leader: I need to know if we’re on track with milestones and whether or not you anticipate any budget overruns.
• Team member A: I need to know when to schedule training classes for the accounting department.
• Team member B: I don’t need to know anything about this part of the project. If you need support, I’d like to know how I can help.
• Team member C: I’m curious about your impressions of the vendor. I need a team of developers for a different project

Knowing what people are listening for allows you to tailor your update to the needs of the team. If the meeting is face-to-face, write down what people are listening for on a flip chart or whiteboard and respond to the items one by one. If the meeting is virtual, use the meeting platform’s shared screen to capture the list. Of course you may have important information to share that others won’t know to ask about. You can always add something to list. Most update meetings have nine or fewer participants. If you have a larger group, you may need to have people submit their information needs ahead of the meeting.

Once the idea of presenters responding to what people want to know becomes routine, you won’t even have to ask the question. When transitioning from one topic to the next, participants in the meeting will let the presenter know what they need. The group will understand the expectation that they share responsibility with the presenter for ensuring that only useful information gets exchanged. As a side benefit, people won’t be able to multi-task because they have a role to play even when it’s not their turn to present.

If you want to drive greater accountability, not just greater engagement, you can pair the question, “what are you listening for?” with the question, “what will you do?” at the conclusion of the topic. Before you present, you will know what information people need. After you present everyone will know the action steps people will take with the information you have provided.