FULL TRANSCRIPT

00:00 – Show Opening

Are you a meeting leader who wants better results from their meetings? Like right now? We’ll then stick around for today’s episode on, the Meeting Leadership Podcast because today we’re going to talk about, why leaders need to fail faster so they can have better meetings.

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. 

00:43 – Podcast content starts here!

Welcome to another episode of the Meeting Leadership Podcast, my name is Gordon Sheppard. I just want to say thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having confidence in this show to get here and pick up another leadership skill, another strategy that you can take back to really build your meetings and make them as productive as possible. Thanks for being here.

01:04 – Failing faster increases productivity

And today on the show, we want to rip a page out of the entrepreneur playbook and introduce you to the idea of try, fail, get feedback, and try again, or fail faster. And that’s why the title of today’s episode is called, Why Leaders Need to Fail Faster so They Can Have Better Meetings. And take a step back to think about how powerful this concept can actually be. The idea that you would say, pick up a tip from this podcast or maybe something that you read, take it into your next meeting, try it out, and then if it works, keep it, and if it doesn’t, go to the next meeting with another idea and actually try to make those little incremental improvements. Because as we all know, the faster that you get rid of bad meeting practices, the sooner you’re going to find the right techniques, and then your meetings start to get significantly better, and your output, and your productivity, your team satisfaction, essentially your retention, and all those good things start to really grow.

02:03 – Tip 1: Agenda editors

And let me take a moment to kick things off with a couple of examples. Now let’s say that you’re going in to facilitate a meeting, and you’re getting ready and you’re preparing the agenda. Now, one of the best practices I think you can try is to actually work with an agenda editor. This is somebody, a colleague that can actually take a look at the agenda, and reflect back to you whether or not the agenda is kind of on track. And after they take a look at it and send some notes back to you, you can actually assess whether or not those notes are going to be useful. So maybe the notes are really, really good and they actually improve the agenda. And if they don’t then you let it go and you don’t do that anymore with that colleague.

02:40 – Tip 2: Timing the speaker

And another example of something that you can try during the meetings, is let’s say you’ve got a talker, and you’ve had a hard time kind of wrangling the talker in to slow them down from wasting time and talking too much during your meetings. Well, one thing you can actually do on your agendas is put timings. So each person say, gets 10 minutes to introduce their point, and say their piece, and do whatever they need to do. And then you can actually try that in the meeting. And when that talker goes onto 12 minutes and 15 minutes, then you can reflect back to them and say, “You know what? We only put 10 minutes on the agenda for you to do your thing. Would you like to ask somebody else in the meeting for some of their time?”

03:48 – Creating small victories to gain traction

And of course there can be a couple of reactions to this. Now the talker might actually learn their lesson, slow down, use their time properly in this meeting and all the meetings going forward, and suddenly you’ve got to win. You can leave that timing thing in your agendas. And on the flip side, what can happen is the talker could go and say, “Hey, person to my left, can I have some of your time?” And if that person says, “Yeah, go ahead, I didn’t have much to say anyway,” then you know, that’s a practice you’ll have to let go of pretty quickly because it didn’t work. And in the end when we’re going, try, fail, get feedback and try again, we’re actually trying to create small victories. And it’s just the small wins that we’ll give you and your team, the traction that you need to turn your meetings into sort of strategic profit driving engines for your entire organization.

04:28 – MLP 23: How To Fire A Bad Meeting Facilitator – https://meetingleadershipinc.com/23

And now let me take a moment to summarize the key points from, Why Leaders Need to Fail Faster so They Can Have Better Meetings. Try, fail, get feedback, try again. Be like an entrepreneur, be agile, go forward and make your meetings as productive as possible, as quickly as possible. And if you’re looking for an even faster way to turn your meetings around, then check out episode 23 on the Meeting Leadership Podcast. It’s called, How to Fire a Bad Meeting Facilitator, and you can get that episode by going to meetingleadershipinc.com/23.

04:46 – 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 there, what are you going to find? Great online training and live training options for you and your team, to build your leadership skills and learn how to run outstanding meetings. And you can get all of that by going to meetingleadershipinc.com/academy. And don’t forget to hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app so you don’t miss an episode going forward as you build your leadership journey. And as always, thank you so much for listening, and we’ll see you on the next episode of the Meeting Leadership Podcast.

05:23 – 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.