Phase 3 – Inspiration – Virtual Toolchest

Download this guide as shortform in pdf format

The goal of Inspirometer is to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of your meetings.

Through Phases 1 and 2 of the implementation, you will have established your meetings on a sound footing. Phase 3 is about building on those foundations to identify where (and what forms of) best practice in meetings can provide further benefits, and to support you in implementing that best practice.

For those organisations beginning to suffer meeting overload, it is about sustained reduction of meeting time through enhanced effectiveness. For organisations who feel they have about the right level of meetings but want to achieve greater impact through them, it is about increasing participation and engagement through them. In both cases these are brought about by adoption of best practices and deployment of responsibility for good meeting behaviours.

The key questions for an organisation progressing through Phase 3 are: Can we see real improvement trends? Is there much clinic activity/adoption? Is participation improving? Are there coaching programmes taking place? And is review systematically established?

Key elements of Phase 3 include the adoption of a model of meeting effectiveness, to provide a practical structure and strategy for improvement, and active utilisation of the meetings clinic to explore and adopt elements of best practice within that.

The steps for Phase 3 are expanded below. Click on the titles below to gain an understanding of each step and how you will implement it in your own work:

Step 1 - Question: Develop a deeper insight into effectiveness

Objective: To appreciate the potential of meetings in their fullest sense, and to solicit fresh insight across these different aspects

Our current paradigm of meetings has been an accepted and unquestioned modus operandi for so long, that we have largely lost our ability to treat it (or even see it) like the process it is. But it is a process, with inputs, and outputs, and options for converting one to the other.

Key to Phase 3 is redeveloping that objective discernment which questions what we are trying to do, how we are trying to do it, what the options are, and what factors determine which are the best options to take.

We must move our thinking beyond the default paradigm of a group of people sat round a table (physical or virtual) receiving presentations and constrained to predominantly verbal, single channel, exploration of them.

The first step on doing this is to re-question what meetings are actually for, and what are the key factors which make them effective in doing that.

The reality is our rapidly changing future requires us to continuously develop and engage the best in our people. The evidence of this can be seen in how our language is changing: The term ‘manager’ with its connotations of formality and defined remit is in decline. We see it increasingly supplanted by the term ‘leader’ with its connotations of direction and movement; of creating an environment in which adapting, flexing, caring, creating and collaborating can work together to a shared and evolving purpose.

Leadership is change! And the key mechanism the leader has for delivering this change, whether one-to-one or group, locally or at a distance, is through meetings.

Sadly, traditional approaches to meetings are no longer fit for purpose in this regard. Their forms of presentation and debate are better suited to the era of management where relationships and responsibilities were largely stable. Conversely, leadership needs to deliver agility and requires meetings which generate energy, lift people up, empower them to do their best, and make them feel part of something bigger. They need meetings which utilise multi-channel, multi-sensory means of engaging more of people.

Symptoms of having this balance wrong are: Too many meetings; packed diaries; increased busy-ness of senior people; stress; and sometimes illness. And these symptoms will continue until the meeting process better engages contribution, creativity, fellowship, celebration, recognition, learning, teamwork, appreciation, insight, values, alignment, direction, resolution, …

There are many simple, easy-to-adopt, strategies that can support, enable, and gradually bring about such a meeting process, and we cover this in the next section. But before people invest in change (no matter how easy it may be) they need to appreciate the need for it, and this will require them to engage a more questioning mindset in respect of their current meetings – to recognise they may be trapped in a paradigm, and to bring a more intelligent questioning approach that is unwilling to simply accept that ‘meetings just are’.

This educational shift is a big thing, and it has to combat decades of established practice and habit. We would therefore recommend that you consider a formal programme of cascade training, engaging people in these questions, opening their eyes to seeing meetings in a new light, and then using them to engage the next level so that the understanding cascades down through the management structure. This should include education on the key factors which impact meeting effectiveness.

There are a number of resources available through the clinic to help you to do this, some of which have been covered in previous phases. What we are looking for in this phase is that they begin to question these things for themselves – that they move beyond receiving this programme of meeting development, to recognising meeting development as an evolving understanding which they will drive for themselves.

Step 2 - Experiment: Try out different ideas and approaches

Objective: Equip yourself with a richer understanding of what is possible in a meeting, and try out different ideas to achieve meeting effectiveness

Key to your people ‘recognising meeting development as an evolving understanding which they will drive for themselves’ (see the conclusion of the preceding step) is the ability for them to experiment with their own meetings; to have a selection of viable options, and the means to evaluate them effectively.

The good news is that the viable options required to adapt meetings to better support effective leadership are readily available. Many of them are already well known, all are within the public domain, and adopting them can be fun, energising, even releasing for people – leaders and participants alike. The meetings clinic is one source of these options.

Furthermore, Inspirometer can be configured to look at a range of different meeting aspects, making it possible to gather more detailed meeting data almost effortlessly.

These two things, options through the clinic and evaluation through Inspirometer, empower leaders with the means to sustainably improve their own meetings, using approaches which suit their own particular style and requirements, and which build on their strengths. In this way, meetings can be as flexible and as innovative as the situations they are required to address, and meeting improvement can become a natural, distributed, form of continuous leadership self-development.

However, as Rumi observed in his question – “Why in all the plenitude of God’s great universe do you choose to fall asleep in this small dark prison?” – we have a propensity to drift back to unquestioned routine in the absence of challenges which might prompt us to think further. Success will therefore depend upon a steady stream of such prompts, and a context which sees those prompts as important.

In terms of context, we need to get people to appreciate meetings in terms of their true importance to their own leadership identity. Viewed from a traditional management mindset, meetings are often simply a routine task or activity. But viewed from a leadership perspective they assume much greater importance.

As we explained in the preceding step, the key mechanism the leader has for delivering their ‘leadership’ is through meetings. Therefore, if they are to develop as a leader, if they are to aspire to be a good (or even an excellent) leader, if they are seeking to bring about great things as a result of their leadership, then the nature and design of the meetings they run will be key to that achievement.

And, in the same way as a master craftsman has a wide variety of tools which they are expert in handling, their own mastery of leadership will depend on their own set of meeting tools and their ability to select and apply the right one to bring about the changes in attitude and understanding that they are seeking.

Such mastery develops over years. It comes from regular application of different tools to different situations, learning just how to hold them and when to let them run, gaining insight through examining the result and making adjustments, reading up about new tools and trying them out when appropriate.

So the question becomes – do we see leadership as a right, or as a responsibility to develop? Do we assume our growth as a leader is accidental, serendipitous, or inevitable, or do we see it as something to actively and intelligently pursue? Do we assume a standard approach to our meetings, or are we open to learning different approaches to effect the leadership result we want?

If we can get those people who run meetings to appreciate this context, then the prompts will be welcomed. So what sort of prompts might be productive?

Most organisations are likely to be starting from a fairly low base in terms of meeting tools, and so a strategy which highlights different tools on a monthly basis, encourages people to try them out, and shares the learning in some way, could be very helpful in lifting that baseline. A sort of tool of the month club.

The growth of virtual meetings may be a real asset in this regard. The paradigm of existing meetings may be so strong in people that they resist the idea that their way of leading people in a room might be improved by new techniques. But, those same people might be more easily won over to the idea of how you might achieve the same ‘engagement’ in a virtual meeting. They may more easily accept that the new medium may (on occasion) be better served by new approaches – there is now widespread acceptance that process design should be reconsidered when it is computerised!

All of the tools in the meetings clinic can be used as easily in virtual meetings as they can in physical meetings, and often they can have even greater impact in that environment. By influencing people to use these tools within their virtual meetings, they will more easily be able to appreciate their potential for physical meetings also. In this way, it may be easier to lift the baseline.

Then, once the context has been established and the baseline has been lifted to a point where presentation and debate are no longer the inevitable pattern of meetings, it may be helpful to establish meeting skills development in the same way other skills are developed – with a competency framework, coaching, training, recognition, communities of practice etc.

But key within this is to maintain the mindset of continuing personal experimentation – research, innovate and evaluate – the same as we might expect in those developing other professional expertise sets.

Step 3 - Engage: Nurture shared responsibility for improvement

Objective: Build a sense of shared responsibility for meeting effectiveness and for the strategies adopted (individually and collectively) to achieve it

Fully 60% of meeting effectiveness is determined by participant behaviour. In other words, we can design perfect meeting processes and environments, but if we cannot engage participants in ensuring their behaviours also add value to the meeting, then a large part of the meeting effectiveness issue remains.

Fortunately there are a number of strategies we can adopt in encouraging this responsibility within them:

Using in-meeting feedback and discussion to build shared responsibility for meeting improvement
Enabling participant feedback so that people can more accurately assess their contribution
Building ownership for a shared vision of meeting effectiveness through maturity models
Ensuring the blue-star-face feedback is only used for inspirational contributions
Engaging people in forums and discussions about the participant role and co-active leadership

In this step, we will take each of these strategies in turn and look at how it can be used to better engage participation which determinedly adds value to the meeting and its outcomes.

Using in-meeting feedback and discussion to build shared responsibility for meeting improvement

There is a big temptation to see meeting feedback as being an evaluation of the leadership of that meeting, and the risk arising from this is that the leader of the feedback will see that feedback as theirs (and sometimes even as personal) and this may reduce the likelihood that they will share it with the meeting participants.

However, in the resources, and in the feedback notifications, and in every other practical way available to us, we have been at pains to point out that the feedback is not, and cannot be, an evaluation of the leader. There are just too many other factors at play.

And, once we accept the feedback is not an evaluation of the leadership, we can recognise that the learning from the feedback may have lessons for everyone involved in the meeting, and we can see that sharing the feedback makes sense. It is feedback on the meeting, and we all play a part in its effectiveness and value.

By sharing meeting feedback, we do a number of things: We increase the likelihood that feedback is given and appropriately commented; we help recalibrate the feedback given to improve its quality and accuracy; we engage others in a sense of responsibility for ensuring it is used.

Meetings are not down to one person, and by communicating and discussing feedback it builds shared ownership for what emerges and for helping to make any adopted solutions successful. This can be particularly useful where the leader adopts new strategies as a result – since they will find their participants are likely to be extra tolerant of hiccups in its adoption, and mindful of their part in supporting it to work effectively.

Enabling participant feedback so that people can more accurately assess their contribution

Just as the leader needs feedback on the meeting so they can identify issues, and objectively assess their progress in ensuring those issues are addressed, so people need the same sort of feedback on their behaviours, and for the same reasons. Sometimes we can be oblivious to the impact we are having, and even when we are mindful that our behaviour has fallen short in some way, we are frequently optimistic in terms of how often it happens and the extent of its consequences, as in: ‘its only rarely!’ or ‘it doesn’t really matter!’

Participant feedback enables everyone at the meeting to see how their contributions have added or detracted value from people’s experience of the meeting. As with meeting feedback, participant feedback is not judgemental on the recipient, but merely an accurate assessment of the impact on their colleagues time and received-value.

While the feedback is confidential to the receiver and anonymous to the giver, it at least helps each participant to be mindful of their own contribution and its impact on overall meeting effectiveness: How their punctuality, diligence, listening, comments, attitude and personal disciplines added value to their colleagues’ progress, insights, confidence, inclusion, understanding and commitment.

In this way, people can more objectively understand how they impact others, can take ownership of self-improvement, and can track their progress as a result. If participants are sufficiently brave, they can share what self-improvements they are trying to make, and seek the support of their colleagues in helping them take effect.

Building ownership for a shared vision of meeting effectiveness through maturity models

Meeting effectiveness is far more than people’s satisfaction with the meeting. The reality is that meetings have remained the same for so long that our satisfaction is against a baseline of low expectations. Ask someone to rate individual meetings, and they will often describe themselves as satisfied, even when a large proportion of those meetings: include things that could be done as pre-reading; re-cover things from previous meetings; are called to chase lack of progress on actions; have technical issues; start late; have people that don’t contribute; fail to really inspire and enthuse.

If we are to really improve meetings, we need a shared vision of how we want them to be different, and we need to use this vision as our expectation. Then feedback can be productive in highlighting the priorities for improvement and helping us adopt the strategies which will best realise our vision.

Maturity models provide a practical basis for discussing and determining such visions. The example shown below is a simplified model, but it gives an indication of how they work.

The rows of the grid reflect different dimensions of meeting performance (in this case the 6As) and the columns represent different degrees of progress (or maturity) along each of these dimensions.

Using such a model a team can reach consensus on where there meetings are currently, and where they would like them to be at some point in the near future. Engaging in this discussion will recalibrate what the expectation actually is (i.e. a green face is commensurate with a meeting which fulfils the vision), and it will help people to better identify the strategies to be adopted to close the gap.

Ensuring the blue-star-face feedback is only used for inspirational contributions

It is important that people recognise that they should not give the blue star face in feedback unless their expectations really have been exceeded. The blue star face is intended to be motivational, in that people who receive it can rely on the fact that it means something significant – a recognition of an contribution that someone truly sees as inspirational or outstanding.

The danger is that if people cannot rely on people only using the blue star face when they feel that way, then they will not feel that sense of motivation when they receive one. As a result, they are less likely to step out of the ordinary in the hope of receiving one.

The value of the blue star face is that, used properly, it can really encourage people to think out of the box and seek to identify ways to make contributions that are innovative and extraordinary. For this reason, they should only be awarded with a comment which describes why the contribution really was special.

Engaging people in forums and discussions about the participant role and co-active leadership

Changing perspectives on the role of meetings in creating an inspirational workplace is not a one-time deal. Shifting paradigms takes time; while the initial insight may be quick, the implications that this has for what we think and do, and what we expect to result take time, and opportunity, to work through. If the insight is not reinforced by reconciling people’s thinking around the new insight, then the insight will be largely ineffective, and can be lost.

A good way to provide this reinforcement and enable people to recalibrate their thinking is discussion forums. These can be either local to your organisation, through the intranet, or public forums. We have a Linkedin forum on this topic (which has free open membership) called Inspiration@Work where people can post articles, questions and discussions to engage the community in debate.

One key perspective change that is needed is that in an increasingly complex and uncertain business environment, we must all see leadership in a new light and take opportunities to enact that leadership. Co-active leadership is a model which recognises that the perspective of a formal leadership position is increasingly dated and unhelpful. Leadership influences can come from anyone at any time, either proposing directions, or supporting them, or coaching colleagues, or introducing new perspectives. Leadership is increasingly becoming a choice that is open to anyone at any time in virtually any situation. Getting people to recognise this and take responsibility for their part in it can make a huge difference to the effectiveness of meetings.

Step 4 - Establish: Meetings as a driver of culture & performance

Objective: Develop sustainable practices for continuing to develop and grow meetings as an efficient enabler of creativity, culture and performance

Organisations rarely measure their effectiveness in what they were set up to achieve.

Please note here, that we are using the word ‘organisation’ in deliberate contrast to the word ‘enterprise’. Your enterprise may have been created for making money, providing a service, achieving a goal, or selling product – but your organisation was created in order to support the relationships which you need to deliver that enterprise efficiently. You have ‘organised’ in order to formalise an efficient set of interactions between people and events, and your ‘organisation’ is the outworking of that.

Sadly, we tend to use the words ‘enterprise’ and ‘organisation’ interchangeably, often using the latter when it may be more technically correct to use the former. And that creates a problem for us, because we tend to lose a sense of distinction between the two. As a result, our metrics tend to be almost exclusively enterprise metrics: turnover, goals achieved, profit, market share, growth – all the things that any participant in your market might measure, even a sole-trader who has no organisation to speak of.

But as our operating environment becomes more complex and uncertain, and responses need to be quicker, it is the quality of the relationships enabled within the organisation structure that are becoming increasingly important to ensuring our competitive edge. And to maintain and improve this we need organisational metrics alongside our enterprise metrics to better guide leadership decisions.

Furthermore, as complexity and uncertainty grow, it is the flexible and informal elements of our organisational structure – the meetings, projects, alliances, sharing and collaborations – which will become increasingly key to our sustained performance.

Inspirometer provides a set of top level organisational metrics which Executive Teams can use to augment their operational and financial metrics, and it is important that these become established as an integral element of the reporting and management process of the business. Top level Inspirometer metrics will show you (in real-time) the extent to which the relationships (formal and informal) within your organisation are enabling creativity, culture and performance, and this can help guide systemic strategies and/or local interventions to ensure those relationships best realise your collective potential to thrive in the emerging business context.

The final step in phase 3 is working with the leadership at all levels of the organisation to ensure that Inspirometer metrics are an integral part of the business dashboard, and are actively and sustainably used to drive improvement.