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 – Start Here – Podcast content starts here!

Welcome to another episode of the Meeting Leadership Podcast. Now, I’m really grateful that you’ve taken time out of your day to listen to the show. I’m also really excited because if you’re here, you understand that to develop your leadership skills, you have to know how to run outstanding meetings. You also know that you’re going to get the practical tips to do just that right here on the podcast.

00:50 – Family meeting – First reason for the meeting

Today, we’re going to tackle a topic that affects all of us, because today, we’re going to get into four ways to lead effective family meetings. Now, can you hear me on this one? It actually impacts every one of us. It’s the kind of thing that I know with my wife and I, and our two kids who are now teenagers. Well, honestly, I wish we’d done it a little bit sooner, because when we do it now and we communicate it at the high level that we do during a family meeting, it’s really kind of earned. We’ve kind of chipped away and getting better at it, and because I teach meeting leaderships skills, I wish again we’d combined more of my work into it sooner, but we’re there now. The family meetings run, not perfectly, I can’t say they’re perfect, but they’re better than they were certainly earlier on.

01:34 – Second reason – lead to outstanding meeting wherever you go

The second reason I want to jump into this topic, is that I believe that if you can lead family meetings at home, then you can lead outstanding meetings wherever else you go. Whether that’s at work, in a volunteer setting, or wherever else you have to lead meetings. With that in mind, let’s jump right into it.

01:50 – First suggestion – Parents should have a pre-meeting.

Now, the first suggestion that I have to create an effective family meeting is for the parents to have a pre-meeting. This means you’re going to get together before the meeting, you’re going to talk about the maybe two, three issues that you’re going to cover in the family meeting and really understand each other’s point of view. Now, I can tell you in my experience, sometimes you agree about those things, sometimes you don’t, but you want to do that together as parents first, and then you’ll be able to walk into the family meeting hopefully in alignment. But even if it’s sort of a respectful disagreement, you’ll have done that beforehand, and that way, you’re not discovering that in front of your kids.

02:25 – Second suggestion – create an agenda

Which leads me to my second suggestion, which is to actually create an agenda. And know it shouldn’t feel like work, but it should be the kind of thing where because you spent the time as parents to really understand each other and get together, now you want to have things go in an orderly fashion. The agenda can be as simple as putting a few point-form notes together on a sticky. I don’t know if you want to go much more than that in a family meeting, but getting an agenda together is absolutely critical, and your kids will feel it when you go into the family meeting to talk because things will be in order.

02:56 – Third suggestion – have a time limit

Another really important thing that your kids will appreciate, having a time limit. Family meetings in my experience when they’re run too long, everybody runs out of gas and you’ve got suddenly people pulling out their phones and this kind of thing, and it just doesn’t work. So, if everybody going into it knows that it’s going to last for say 30 minutes if it’s kind of light duty, it could be up to an hour if there are really some serious things to talk about, but if people know there’s a time limit, then they can really pay attention during that time and they’ll know, especially for the kids, that it’s going to end.

03:30 – Forth suggestion – understand the audience

Finally, one of the most important suggestions that I can make when it comes to running highly effective family meetings is to understand yourself and understand who is in the room. In family meetings, they’re often lit up with all kinds of charged emotions, and we want to avoid those triggers that lead to negative behaviors. Now, I’ve got a little three-question exercise that you can do with your family to help you start to build self-awareness and prompt discussions that will help you to avoid the negative things that can happen during family meetings.

04:01 – Question exercise – to build self-awareness and prompt discussions

The first question goes like this, you look at each other and you say, “How do you act during a family meeting?” People will get a chance to reply, and they’ll be able to point out the things they like and don’t like and this kind of thing. The second question is, how do you want to act during a family meeting? Now, this is a great question because it gets away from kind of the reactions that we’re getting from the first question, and it actually leads to how we’re going to make it better.The final question is, how are you going to get there? That’s going to allow you to lay out kind of a roadmap for each other to actually make family meetings as valuable as possible. Now it’s time to take a big breath in, give yourself a pat on the back and go, “Wow, that was a lot to cover. 

Gord, can you give us a reminder? I absolutely will, and here is a recap.

04:49 – Recap – Start with pre meeting, have an agenda, keep a time limit understand the audience and  ask questions

When you want to have an effective family meeting, start with the parent pre-meeting. Also, the parent should create an agenda. They want to set a time limit for the meeting itself, and then finally we want to use those three questions to make sure you understand yourself and help your kids to understand each other as well. The three questions are: how do you act during a meeting? How do you want to act during a meeting? Finally, how are you going to get there?

05:15 – Benefits of family meetings – you can take those skills out to any meeting that you need to lead and perform at the highest possible level.

The benefits of family meetings far outweigh the negatives. I can tell you from experience, it’s something that I hope you can take forward and do, and find the courage to do it, get the professional help that you need to do it. It’s really, really worthwhile, whatever way you kind of want to get there, figure it out, go for it, because also as a leader, if you can develop the leadership skills to lead highly effective family meetings, I’ll bet ya, you can take those skills out to any meeting that you need to lead and perform at the highest possible level.

05:48 – Meeting Leadership Academy – https://meetingleadershipinc.com/academy

Now, I’d like to let you know that this episode of the Meeting Leadership Podcast is brought to you by the Meeting Leadership Academy. If you want great training, live or online that will help you become a stronger leader by learning how to run highly effective meetings, then visit meetingleadershipinc.com/academy to learn more. Thanks to you for listening to another episode, and we’ll see you tomorrow on the Meeting Leadership Podcast.

06:17 – Podcast Outro

Thanks for listening to the Meeting Leadership Podcast. Be sure to subscribe for more strategies to help you become an outstanding leader. 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.