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.

00:27 – Podcast starts here

Welcome to another episode of the Meeting Leadership podcast. My name is Gordon Sheppard and I just want to say thank you so much for taking time out of your valuable day to come to this podcast to get another tip, another strategy, something you can use to up your leadership game, something you can use to get into your next meeting to make it way more productive and way more profitable. I really appreciate that you’re taking the time. And if you’re like me, you can’t get enough of a great book and today I’m going to talk about three highly recommended books for conducting effective meetings.

01:03 – Book 1 – Business Model Generation 

Let me jump right in with my first book recommendation and before I do, let me tell you why I recommend it. Now, as many of you know, I believe that you should be able to stop any meeting at any moment and connect that moment directly to your strategy. And as many of you also know, whenever I say it, I always say it twice. I believe that you should be able to stop any meeting at any moment and connect that moment directly to your strategy.Well, if you’re looking for a great book that’s really going to help you get on top of your strategy, you have to check out Business Model Generation. Now, this book is by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur, and I really appreciate this book because beyond your traditional vision, mission, values and objectives, this book allows you to start to look at your organization in a really neat and innovative way.For example, one of the first things that they ask you to consider in this book is what is your organization’s value proposition? And as a leader, when you start to get into this kind of mindset, not only will it have an impact on the bigger picture of your entire organization, it will directly influence the productivity of your meetings. Because imagine you’re connecting every moment in your meeting directly to your value proposition. It doesn’t get better than that.

02:21 – Book 2 – Facilitator’s Field

Which brings me to my second book recommendation, which is The Facilitator’s Field Book by Thomas Justice and David Jamieson. And I have to say that if you run meetings, this book is essential. I mean, call it your bible, call it your manual, call it your go-to, whatever you want to call it, make sure that you get a copy of this book because it’s got everything from covering really core adult learning principles, right through to checklists and sheets and all kinds of things in at least 450 plus pages of just chock-a-block full of value for anybody that has to lead meetings.

03:00 – Book 3 – Fierce Conversations

Which leads me to my third book recommendation, but before I mentioned the title, I want to tell you why I’m going to recommend it. Now, I believe that in every meeting that you’re in you should really learn how to fight so you can really get along. And if you’re going to try this, you really better have some great tools on hand and some of the best tools that you’re going to find are in this book called Fierce Conversations by Susan Scott. And there is just a ton of high communication value in this book and let me talk about a couple of the core concepts that I take into every meeting that I lead. The first one is this, Susan Scott helps us to realize that when something is said during a meeting, there are competing realities. That means you go to say something but everybody is going to interpret it in their own way. I think you have to agree that this is highly valuable, especially when you’re trying to align communication in any team setting. And the other huge takeaway that I have to pass along that I learned in this book is to let the silence do the heavy lifting. Now, when I leave those few seconds of pause after I mention this concept to a group that I’m training, people start to crawl out of their skin. But can you imagine as a meeting leader, when you’ve got something really important to say, if you have the ability, and I mean the physiological ability to practice this idea, then when you have to say something important during a meeting, everybody will listen.

04:28 – Recap of book list

Now, let me take a moment to recap three highly recommended books for conducting effective meetings. Number one, Business Model Generation. Number two, The Facilitator’s Field Book. And number three, Fierce Conversations. Don’t worry if you didn’t get a chance to write those titles down because I’ll leave links to all of those books in the show notes for this episode and you can get that by going to meetingleadershipinc.com/53.

04:58 – Bonus book – The Meeting Leadership Solution

And of course, I have to give you a bonus book recommendation and that is the Meeting Leadership Solution because I wrote it and in there there is a 10 step system for professionals who want to make their next meeting highly productive and highly profitable. And if you’ve been enjoying the concepts in this podcast, so many of them come right from that book and they’re on offer for you. If you want to get a copy of that book, you can go to meetingleadershipink.com/book.

05:27 – Meeting Leadership Academy – https://meetingleadershipinc.com/academy

And 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, if you’re looking for live training options and online training options that work to help you and your team grow your leadership skills and learn how to run highly productive meetings, then visit meetingleadershipinc.com/academy.

As always, thank you so much for listening and we’ll see you tomorrow on the Meeting Leadership podcast.

05:56 – 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.