FULL TRANSCRIPT

00:00 – Show Opening

Are you a professional who wants to become a more effective leader? Then get ready for daily tips from the coach with the experience and inspiration to help you succeed in any leadership situation. You’re listening to the Meeting Leadership Podcast with Gordon Sheppard. (singing)

00:27 – Start Here – Podcast content starts here!

Gordon speaking

Welcome to another episode of the Meeting Leadership Podcast. My name is Gordon Sheppard and I just want to say thanks for taking time out of your valuable day to spend time here. Thanks for being the type of professional who wants to trust the Meeting Leadership Podcast to give you the tips and the tricks that you need to become an outstanding leader.

00:45 – Introduction

Today we’re going to be tackling a leadership essential because today’s episode is titled Ten Ways for Meeting Leaders to Become More Self-Aware. It’s the kind of episode that I wish I’d had back in the day when I was a manager in the corporate world because there was many times when I was leading meetings when I was doing things that I just didn’t know that I was doing them. You get that feedback after the meeting and somebody says, “Well you missed here or you upset somebody that way,” and I didn’t mean to so often, but really at the root cause, it was because I didn’t have the self-awareness or the presence in the meeting to know what was happening.

01:21 – The Get Real With Yourself checklist

Today I can confidently say that I can help you avoid making the mistakes that I made because today’s episode is based on the Get Real with Yourself Checklist and that’s from my book titled the Meeting Leadership Solution. Don’t worry about getting out a pen and paper right now to take notes, because this checklist is available as a free download and you can get that download by going to meetingleadershipinc.com/32checklist. That’s meetingleadershipinc.com/32checklist.

01:50 – Tip #1 – Understanding how you act during meetings

Now, let’s get started with the first item on the checklist, and that is, I understand how I act during a meeting. Maybe for you this is a statement and you actually do understand and you know where you fall short and where you’re succeeding. But if you don’t, and that actually should sound more like this, I don’t understand how I act during a meeting and I really need to find out, let’s get started with a simple scale measure. You can do this just right in your head. On a scale of one to ten, give yourself a rating. If you’re a five out of ten, you’ve got some room for growth. If you’re a nine out of ten, maybe you should be mentoring other meeting leaders. If you’re honest about it and you’re in a position where you’ve got a title and you have to run meetings, but you really hate it, then give yourself that two out of ten.

02:30 – Tip #2 – Know how you wan​​​​t to act during meetings

Once you’ve got a number out of ten in mind, then you can move on to checklist item number two which is this, I know how I want to act during a meeting and how to achieve this. If you really do know the answer to this, well, you can stop listening and go and relax, but if you want to learn more then there’s a couple of ways to do it. You can listen to the remaining steps out of the checklist here or you can go to another episode of the Meeting Leadership Podcast, it’s actually number 18. That’s titled You Can Choose How to Conduct Yourself in a Meeting, and it’s another great set of practical exercises that’ll help you to understand how you act during a meeting, how you want to act during a meeting and how you’re going to get there. Of course, I’ll leave a link to that episode in the show notes.

03:10 – Tip #3 – Finding help becoming more self aware

Which leads us to the third item on our checklist which is this, I have talked with my friends, family and colleagues and/or a medical professional about how to become more self-aware. I can tell you this show is an advice only show. We’re trying to give you some tips and things that you can actually try out, but really, when the rubber hits the road, you want to make sure that you are being as thorough as you can, especially when it comes to being a meeting leader who can be truly effective. So often meeting leaders get isolated. They don’t ask for this kind of help, but I’m really suggesting that you find those trusted colleagues, trusted family members, and also go to seek out the type of professional help that you need, and they’ll set you on a real path to becoming more self-aware, and then, ultimately, that will lead to you becoming better in leading meetings. Once you’ve given yourself a rating out of ten, you’ve talked to a few folks, and you kind of know where you want to start to go, you can actually start a mini list.

04:06 – Tip #4 – Create a Top 3 self-awareness checklist

That leads us to number four on our checklist and it goes like this, I have named the top three things that I have to remember about myself to make my next meeting better. I like to think that you would actually just get a little sticky note and keep that up on your desk and write those things down. Then you can glance at it before you head into your next meeting.

04:25 – Understand the value of a personality assessment

Which brings us to checklist item number five. I understand that a personality assessment could help me. I can tell you I have experience with the Myers-Briggs Personality Assessment. I’m, in fact, an ENTP, which means I’m a dreamer who talks too much and loves to see the big picture and that kind of thing. I actually ended up doing it once and then I did it a second time. I got the same letters and that was when I really knew I had to pay attention to the results of that personality test. There’s a whole bunch of reputable personality tests. You can get DISC, True Colors. Make sure they’re administered by a professional if you actually do one. But, please, what I want you to do from this checklist exercise is to really understand that a personality assessment can be a big help.

05:10 – Recap of the 5 self-awareness tips

Now, let me take a moment to recap the first five items on our checklist. Number one, I understand how I act. Number two, I know how I want to act. Number three, I have seeked out help and gotten it. Number four, the top three things I need to remember about myself are…, and number five, I know that a personality assessment could be valuable.

05:34 – The Get Real With Yourself Checklist

Tomorrow on the show, we’ll tackle the rest of the Get Real with Yourself Checklist in part two of Ten Ways for Meeting Leaders to be More Self-aware. Just in case you haven’t gotten it yet, you can get a free pdf download of the Get Real with Yourself Checklist by going to meetingleadershipinc.com/32checklist, or you can just visit the show notes for this episode and the link will be right there.

05:58 – Meeting Leadership Academy – Live Training

I also want to let you know that this episode of the Meeting Leadership Podcast is brought to you by the Meeting Leadership Academy. Now, one of the specific pieces in there that I’m super proud of is the live training. That’s me going into work with engineers, doctors, project managers, human resource managers, and a whole lot more at the senior leader level and they are getting so much out of the live workshop work that we’re doing and they’re going back to their organizations and they are taking action. If you’d like to learn about how to do that, please visit meetingleadershipinc.com/academy. As always, thanks again for listening and we’ll see you tomorrow on the Meeting Leadership Podcast.

06:37 – Podcast Outro

Thanks for listening to the Meeting Leadership Podcast. Be sure to subscribe for more strategies to help you become an outstanding leader and don’t forget to rate and review so we can bring you fresh content every day. We’ll see you tomorrow, right here on the Meeting Leadership Podcast.