Three Great Meetings

How to Align, Empower and Energize Your Team

Traditional organizational communication approaches assume people can process, evaluate, and commit to new ideas in a single interaction. While leaders usually have weeks, months or even years to think about a new idea, the rest of the organization is brand new to the idea. What has become almost inevitable to the leader in her own head is a surprise to the rest of the team.

Human nature and team psychology drive the fact that any new idea is initially met with an emotional response. One of two responses are typical: fear/resistance and desire/excitement. However, diverse teams can have wide-ranging and often conflicting emotional responses to new ideas. In any case, however, the emotional spike deters their best thinking and decisions that are made in this state have a much higher probability of being wrong or delivering mediocre results.

Another drawback to single-meeting discussions is that, even if you ask for detailed feedback and get everyone to contribute in the moment, they will have far more thoughts about the idea over the following hours and days. Secondary thinking allows people to uncover hidden implications, identify practical challenges and expose potential unintended consequences during aha moments that happen at night, in the shower and at other times of internal insights.

Instead, we need to deliver the initial message in the first meeting expecting only an emotional response at first. It’s always telling to assess the balance of resistance to excitement in a group of people. Regardless, however, it is incumbent on the leader to set the stage for the second meeting when the group shares all their thoughts. The second meeting is key to a successful launch: It is when the leader has the opportunity to hear all of the team’s obstacles and issues along with the potential excitement for something new and hopefully better. Getting a complete list of both the challenges the team sees and the benefits they might perceive is critical to making the best decision on the path forward and gaining buy-in from the team.

Receiving the combined wisdom of the team all at once in the second meeting is just as overwhelming to the leader as the initial news was to the rest of the team during the first meeting. Done well, the second meeting will uncover issues the leader may not have considered, provide new insight into the value of the initiative or offer other concerns the team may have that need to be assessed before launch. All this new information then requires the leader to take some time to process the input and craft a plan that will be accepted by the team and effective at addressing all the issues at hand. The initiative should be improved to reduce risks, take advantage of additional opportunities or clarify questions surfaced during the second meeting. Simply asking the team what they think improves buy-in. Responding to their input makes them feel like a part of the solution, not like roadkill that just got run over along the way.

With a complete understanding of the team’s resistances and their perspective on the initiative, the leader is then able to craft a more compelling message to inspire the team to action. She’ll be able to address the issues felt by the team, enhance the value propositions and, above all, make the team feel listened to and included in the decision making process. This way, you build trust, stronger team alignment and a culture of thoughtful decision making.

Overall, presenting ideas and initiatives in a 3-meeting format has enormous benefits to the organization:

• Stronger team engagement

• More robust implementation plans

• Better cross-functional insights

• Strategic coherence and alignment

• Organizational resilience in the face of challenges

This framework taps into fundamental principles of change management and team psychology to support optimal outcomes. The three-meeting structure creates a natural progression from introduction to collaboration to commitment, which aligns well with how people actually process and buy into new ideas.

Results

Teams that can execute Three Great Meetings will maximize their chances of success at anything. The benefits are extensive, sometimes even existential. By avoiding information overload, giving people time to process, managing conflict, showing responsiveness to input and providing psychological safety, organizations can realize incredible benefits including:

• Reduced risk of failure or delay

• Fewer missed deadlines

• Expanded opportunities

• Lower employee turnover

It’s difficult to overstate the benefits of these outcomes. Using the Three Great Meeting framework regularly with agile methods and clear focus on customers is a recipe for success for any organization.

If you need help understanding, planning or executing Three Great Meetings, contact Ed Engler at ed@3pr.vc for details about meeting agendas, team education and/or facilitation.