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!

Gordon Sheppard Speaking

Welcome to another episode of the Meeting Leadership podcast. I want to say thank you so much for spending some of your valuable time here with me today to learn how to build your leadership skills and also learn how to run highly effective meetings. Now if you’re enjoying the show, please take a moment to hit the subscribe button because that’s really, really valuable. Also, if you want to rate and review, we’d really appreciate it and I’d be happy to read some of those reviews out here on the show itself.

00:54 – You Can Choose How You Act In A Meeting

Now, I don’t know how your meetings are going right now, but in today’s episode, whether they’re going poorly or going well, if you take on this concept and actually apply it, it’s going to be a game changer, and it’ll make your meetings way more productive and way more profitable, because the theme of today’s episode is that you can choose how to conduct yourself in a meeting. This is a critical concept for you and your teammates. I can tell you it’s one that I didn’t always grasp, and I wish I had earlier in my career because there was a big stretch there where I worked in a large corporate setting.

01:27 – Gord’s Regretful Meeting Story

Back in about 2004, I can tell you there’s a bunch of stuff that I didn’t like that was going on at work, but one of the specific things that I didn’t like was the weekly staff update meetings. Those for me were just 90 minutes a week that I wish I could get back. It’s just not my nature to conduct meetings in that way, but that’s how they ran them around that time, and I didn’t like all the personal things that were said during that time. I thought there was a lot of out of bounds things and things that weren’t related, but it doesn’t really matter what I thought, because really in that situation, I was an employee and really my obligation should have been to go to those meetings and do my best. I wish I’d known how to conduct myself in a meeting at that time, but I can tell you I was the guy who was huffy or stonewalling or unprepared. I regret it now, but it’s a big reason and motivator to help teach you this key concept today. I also have to admit that one of the worst things that I did coming out of those meetings was complain. I would complain about those meetings to anybody that would listen. You now what I did that was really not a good thing? I would complain to my wife, I mean not once, twice, I mean over and over again for probably a year and a half.

02:39 – Shut-Up Gord! – Start taking responsibility for yourself

One day, painfully and thankfully, thankfully in the kitchen, in our house in 2004, it was in the spring. I was complaining about these things, and my wife looked at me, and she said, “Shut up.” Now, of course I was shocked, but it was like getting a shake, shaking me out of that complaining rhythm. I can tell you if you’re spending more time complaining about meetings than the time that you’re spending in meetings, there is a big, big problem. Now, when I connect that moment to the moments right now when I’m teaching meeting leadership skills, I can see a direct correlation because that was the moment when the seed was planted. That was the moment when I started to take responsibility. 

03:21 – Self-Awareness Exercise – Explained

Honestly, I wish it hadn’t taken this long to get this far, but here we are and now I want to pass along some of the wisdom that I’ve gained since then for you. The way that we’re going to do that for today’s episode is I’m going to teach you a self-awareness exercise that I teach in every workshop that I do, and here’s how it goes. Imagine that we are in a pair. One of us is A and the other person is B. Now, we’re going to start like this. You’re going to be A, and I’m going to be B. Now, A is going to ask a question, and the question is how do you act during a meeting? If I’m B, I’m gonna give one answer. I’m not going to give a monologue. I’m just going to give one answer. I would say, “Well, I really like to use my hands.” Then you’re gonna ask the question again. How do you act during a meeting? If I’m B, I’m going to give one answer again. I’m going to say, “Well, I really like to raise my voice because I get really excited.” Then you’re gonna ask the question again and so on. Right now, we’re actually going to do the exercise, and we’re going to flip. I’m going to be A. I’m going to ask the questions. I’m gonna leave a little space in between each question, and then you can imagine that you can answer with one answer each time.

04:30 – Self-Awareness Exercise – How you can try it and apply it

Here we go. How do you act during a meeting? How do you act during a meeting? How do you act during a meeting? Now, I’m going to move on to the second question, which is how do you want to act during a meeting? How do you want to act during a meeting? How do you want to act during a meeting? Now, here’s the third question. How are you going to get there? How are you going to get there? How are you going to get there? Now, I have witnessed how powerful this exercise has been, I mean, for engineers, doctors, project managers, government workers, all kinds of people, because what they do at this moment, once they’ve done the exercise in pairs is they sit down, and I have them write in their workbooks. They write down the answers that they’ve had to those questions. I really hope that after you listen to this episode that you do the same thing. Go ahead, write them down on a sticky, on a piece of paper, in a journal, wherever you do that kind of thing, or relisten to the episode and actually go through the exercise again and make sure that by the time you get out of here, you really understand how you act in a meeting and how you want to act in a meeting. Just as a reminder, here are the three key questions. How do you act during a meeting? How do you want to act during a meeting, and how are you going to get there? It’s a great exercise for yourself, and I hope you take that in and actually do it with your team. 

05:51 – Meeting Leadership Academy – https://meetingleadershipinc.com/academy

I also want to let you know that this episode of the Meeting Leadership podcast is brought to you by the Meeting Leadership Academy. If you want to become a more effective leader, if you want to do that by learning to run outstanding meetings, then visit meetingleadershipinc.com/academy to learn more. As always, I want to say thank you for listening and thank you for taking action, and we’ll see you tomorrow on the Meeting Leadership podcast.

06:16 – 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.