Making all meetings less boring and more engaging.

Why are most meetings not productive?

Have you ever attended a boring meeting with your boss or organization? Or worse — have you yourself hosted your own boring meeting? If you said yes, don’t sweat it, you’re not alone — in fact most leaders have, though not all of us recognize it. The most common contributor for this is the infamous “going around the horn” for updates. Going around the horn can be a good activity during a meeting, but when used for peer updates it leads to a meeting “for two” attended by many.

An Example

It’s Monday morning and you’re in your office on a leadership call with your peers located in six different cities across the United States. The call has been going for about 10 minutes, with laughs and jabs at each other, and just small talk. The boss then says, “Let’s get started and go around the horn and have each of you give your weekly update.” Since you always go fifth or sixth, that is your sign to mute your phone, grab a cup of coffee and walk to the break room and get that glazed donut you saw sitting there earlier. When you re-enter your office you hear your name being called out and also notice a peer had messaged you that you were being called on. So you promptly unmute yourself and say, “Sorry I didn’t realize I was on mute, stupid phone” and the conversation continues even though everyone knows what really happened, cause they all do the same thing too. Everyone tunes out when the boss is “going around the horn.”

Here are some observations and tips to think about when it comes to a leader using (or not using) “around the horn.”

Conversation for Two Attended by 10

When leaders go around the horn for updates, best practices and challenges, the leader is using this time to get their updates from each person in a mass setting so they can check their own box. This is one person getting information from many while the other attendees wait for their turn to also share this information.

Problem

The other participants are not listening or engaged, so they do email or text or go get coffee. The second problem is that by giving time for each person to give their updates it takes almost an hour of the meeting (or more). Yet the only real engagement of the team is in their few minutes of presenting. Not a good use of everyone’s time.

Justification

We, the leaders, justify this behavior because we say it benefits everyone to hear what their peers are experiencing so they can learn as well, since they most likely are having similar issues and situations going on. However, no one else is listening in most cases.

Goal

The goal is for all the peers to learn real “best practices and real struggles” that they will engage in and learn from. The only way to achieve this in a timely manner is to make sure the leader knows all the updates before the meeting and chooses the only ones that are truly beneficial for others and not just an around-the-horn update from all.

Principle of Great Meetings

Meetings are for employees, not the leader. The leader should get their individual updates in individual meetings prior to the team meeting through one-on-ones and/or reports. The best is a combination of both.

Solution

Conduct one-on-ones and have each direct employee complete a weekly report that consists of important updates, highlights, struggles, numbers, etc. The leader then uses that data to choose two, maybe three, people to share their stories in the beginning of each meeting.

This achieves four real benefits:

1. Leaders now know what will be shared with others and will know the message is in alignment with what they want the others to hear and need to hear.
2. It truly recognizes those that are doing the right things and gives them the recognition they deserve while helping others.
3. Other employees will want to do better, so they can be the ones sharing during the next meeting, at least those that want to be better and achieve more!
4. It only takes 10-15 minutes of the meeting, allowing the remainder of the meeting to be about teaching, coaching, and preparing the employees for their upcoming week.

“Don’t Throw the Baby Out With the Bath Water”

The biggest mistake leaders make to correct “the bad meeting” problem is they have fewer meetings, or they stop having them altogether. The key is not to stop having meetings, the key is to make bad meetings good meetings. Given all the new technology, it’s crazy to believe that our number-one problem in business is still communication, so the solution cannot be to communicate less, rather it is to communicate better. This is more important now than ever given that most employees are working remotely and can’t meet in person. This issue was around before the pandemic and it will be around long after.

Good Uses of Around the Horn

There are situations when around the horn is appropriate:

1. At the end of a meeting allowing each person to ask questions or give a comment.
2. Sales number commitments for the week or month.
3. The key is it should be a short statement that is meant for the entire team that will motivate, help, or ensure public accountability, but it must be a true value to the entire group.

Final Thought

By the way, even if you don’t fall into this trap, my challenge for all of us is to work on making every meeting we lead better this week than last week. This is not about gimmicks or tricks — it is about value and impact.

MANA welcomes your comments on this article. Write to us at [email protected].