FULL TRANSCRIPT

00:00 – Show Opening

Are you a professional who wants to become a more affective 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 where we help professionals just like you build your leadership skills and learn how to run outstanding meetings. 

00:37 – For meeting leaders who really want to support your people

And if you’re the type of meeting leader who really wants to support their people, then you’re going to really appreciate what you learn in this episode because today we’re going to tackle three personality management skills that will improve your meetings.

00:51 – Suggestion #1 – Get to know each other

And let me jump right in with number one, which is to get to know each other. Because we all know that getting to know each other during your meetings will help to deepen your mutual trust and that will lead to more innovative and profitable conversations. And here are some basic questions to ask about how each person acts during your meetings. Are they quiet or loud? Are they happy or sad? Are they idea generators or idea enablers? Are they snappy dressers or slobs, listeners or talkers? Are they prepared or do they come unprepared to meetings? And finally, are they polite or are they crass?

01:32 – Suggestion #2 – Play to your team members’ strengths

And once you understand the individuals on your meeting team, then you can begin to play to their strengths. For example, if somebody is an idea generator, then maybe they need more time to speak during a meeting. Or if someone is an idea enabler, then maybe you have to stop the idea generator at the appropriate moment so that the idea enabler can have their say and ultimately that will improve overall outcomes in your meetings.

02:00 – Suggestion #3 – Surprise each other

And finally we get onto our third suggestion, which is this surprise each other. I mean, so often in our meeting team situations we’ve kind of, we get used to each other, we get into a bit of a rut. We’ll, if you can have a few techniques that can really light people up and get them more motivated, it is really worth finding out what they are. And let me give you an example. Let’s say you’re walking into kind of a heavy meeting where you know you’re going to tackle a big change management exercise that’s going to move a big piece of your organization forward. Well, one of the simplest things that you can do to introduce this concept is to ask people to cross their arms. And once everybody in the room has actually crossed their arms, then you can say, “Okay, now try to cross your arms in the opposite direction.” And I can tell you from experience that a bunch of people in the room will not be able to do this easily.

03:06 – Put techniques into a common document for future reference

And once you’ve had a good chuckle about it, then you can actually get back to the main topic, which is to say, “Hey, if it’s difficult just to cross our arms in the opposite direction, think about how difficult this changes that we’re going to have to manage. So let’s get to it.” And there are dozens of these little simple techniques that you can actually use to surprise each other during meetings. And the one of the big suggestions that I would have about it as well is make sure each time you get one you actually put it into a common document list that everybody has access to and that way when you move on from running that meeting, the new person can come in and actually put the techniques from that list into action.

03:31 – Recap of episode

And now let me take a moment to recap the three personality management skills that will improve your meetings. Number one, get to know each other. Number two, play to people’s strengths. And number three, surprise each other. 

03:47 – MLP 032: 10 Ways For Meeting Leaders To Become More Self Aware – https://meetingleadershipinc.com/32

And if you’re the type of meeting leader who really wants to learn more about personalities then check out episode 32 on the Meeting Leadership Podcast. It’s called 10 ways for meeting leaders to become more self aware. And you can get that by going to meetingleadershipinc.com/32. 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.

04:04 – Meeting Leadership Academy – https://meetingleadershipinc.com/academy

If you and your team are looking for great live and online training options that are going to help you build your leadership skills and learn how to run outstanding meetings than visit meetingleadershipinc.com/academy. And as always, thank you so much for listening and we’ll see you tomorrow on the Meeting Leadership Podcast.

04:32 – 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.