Catherine McDonald  0:00  
Hello, and welcome to today's episode of the lean solutions podcast led by your hosts Shane Dunbar and myself, Katherine McDonald's, Shane, how are you today?

Shayne Daughenbaugh  0:42  
I am. Well, Catherine, thank you so very much for asking. I am loving the weather, I'm loving this opportunity to meet an internationally renowned writer. For those who weren't here earlier, Jeff was able to give us a little insight as to how authors can go international in the blink of an eye. It's amazing. Yeah, I'm excited to have him here with us.

Catherine McDonald  1:07  
Definitely looking forward to this. Yes. So today's guest is Jeff, Shannon, and, Shane, you're going to introduce him in a moment. And just before we get into that, just to let our listeners know what we're going to be talking about today. So we're going to be talking about meetings, meetings, okay, meetings, but particularly meeting leadership or meeting facilitation. And the topic of today is increase your engagement and productivity. And we are going to be joined by Jeff, who's going to tell us a little bit more on how to do that. So before the session, I was just thinking to myself, it's such a great topic. Meetings affect everybody. I don't know anybody who doesn't have meetings. And I was thinking to myself, what is what is some of the best meetings I've been in water, some of the worst meetings I've been in and why. So to just try and get my own insights clear before we talk to Jeff. So I was wondering, Shane, had you the same thoughts? Or have you any thoughts on what makes a meeting effective or ineffective? Right?

Shayne Daughenbaugh  2:03  
So in I mean, we're gonna we're gonna get into this pretty well here with Jeff here in just a hot minute. But two things come to mind immediately, meetings with intentionality are those those are gold, like if we know what we're doing, and we have a purpose. reoccurring meetings. That's where it starts getting sketched, just because it's it's people start to get lazy. And we know, it's just this meeting we're gonna have will just show up. And before we know it, we've spent an hour and we've gotten, you know, something that could have been done, you know, in 10 to 15 minutes, or an email. So, I think I think you're spot on that we have, we all of us have meetings, especially in you know, the industry that we're in with continuous improvement and facilitation and all of that, you know, all of that is about meetings. And while it does seem super simple to do meeting, well, you just you create an agenda, and you call everyone in here and you start talking. But I am telling you in even doing this for the many years that I have done this almost 20 years plus of facilitating and holding meetings, I still found a ton of information, some great stuff from Jeff. So I'd love to, you know, to jump right into. Let's talk about Jeff, for those of you that don't know, Jeff Shannon is a master facilitator with over 20 years experience specializing in corporate strategy workshops and offsite retreats. He designs and leads engaging me engaging meetings that drive participation, spark innovation, and achieve desired outcomes. Trusted by leadership teams across various industries, Jeff annually leads 60 to 70 workshops for major corporations, including Cargill, Deloitte, Macy's, he's also keynote speaker and author of practical guide such as leading engaging meetings, and hard work is not enough. Jeff, we are super jazzed to have you here on the show. Thank you so much.

Jeff Shannon  3:55  
Thanks so much for having me. Yeah. I'm thrilled to have this conversation kind of dive into meetings. You guys are talking about all the right things.

Shayne Daughenbaugh  4:03  
exciting, exciting. All right, Catherine, you start off. What do you got? Yeah.

Catherine McDonald  4:06  
So I suppose Jeff, just let's give us a flavor, I guess of you know, you do these 6070 workshops a year. You obviously have written books, which we'll talk about at the end. But why why are you in this sector you're in? Why are you in this job that you're in? Why are you so interested in meeting facilitation?

Speaker 2  4:26  
You know, it's funny. So it's about 2003. I'm standing in line at a cafeteria, no joke, stand in line, the cafeteria. This woman, Carla Morgan is standing in line behind me. We strike up a conversation. I'm at ConAgra brands at this time, and I'm a finance analyst in the Treasury Department. And she strike we strike up a conversation. She says, Hey, I think I'm gonna sign you up for this facilitation course. And I said to her, what's that? She's like, don't worry, you're going to be great at it. A few weeks later, my boss says, Hey, you're going to some facilitation. course with this Karla lady. And I was like, Yeah, I guess so sounds good. And in that course I took it was a two day GE designed course around how to facilitate meetings, workshops and retreats for leadership teams. And so then I was kind of one of those people who was an internal facilitator, they would call up when a, a team or a function had some something they needed to discuss or a decision they needed to make or some ideas that it needed generated. And they would just call me up and say, hey, you know, you're our internal facilitator for hire, because you've been trained. And then we need you to show up and leave this for us. And I got a little taste of it there. And then, you know, as years went on, I did a lot of different things in my career, I did business strategy, I manage the banquet frozen meals and Popeyes business. But I always had leadership development is one of the things that I was really interested in. And so I led the finance development program for a while then I led the brand development program for a while. And then one day, it was like, hey, it's time for me to go out on my own. I was like, well, let's do the one thing that people say is my, my gift or my talent, which is leading people in a retreat or a workshop. And that's what I've, that's what I've done for the last eight years.

Catherine McDonald  6:12  
That's awesome. Yeah, so you sort of fell into it, but you didn't really because your strengths were there. Yeah, yeah, I'm picking that up. So facilitation does require quite a few strengths, doesn't it? Like it's, it's sort of a fluffy word. But it's a very concrete scale, I think. And there's actually a set of skills involved in facilitation, would you agree, Jeff

Speaker 2  6:32  
100%, I, here's how I've my best description of facilitating a meeting, I think of it for me, I think of it as you are the captain of a pirate ship. Because you are in charge, right? You are the captain it is your ship. But at any point in time, the pirates could take over, right they, they want to do your own thing, right. So it's you have to create this freedom within a framework, that they've got a lot of room to breathe a lot of room to move and make their own choices, but it's still your job and your responsibility to be the to be the guide for them and help them reach their destination. It's, it's a transaction where it's all built on, like, they have to want to let you be the leader, right, and you have to demonstrate, so it's kind of this circular relationship. But if you if you lose them, or you take them off into a direction is going to be chaos, which is your you're always dancing, that line of control. And then and that tight and loose, right, the control and then the freedom. And as a facilitator, that's the most exciting part is how you get to your dance that line like you show up to a retreat or workshop with a plan and almost immediate, they give you something different, it's your job to adapt and improvise. Right? In the spirit of still getting to the same outcome that you were planning to get to from the get go.

Shayne Daughenbaugh  7:54  
I love that, that I wrote that down freedom within a framework, I think is a great capture, or kind of what what facilitation is about. But Jeff, let's let's talk about kind of like I mentioned before it and you guys have talked about it. It is a skill that needs to be honed it is it is something that requires intentionality, and effort and thought and whatnot. What are some of the gift repeat offenders or mistakes that most people make that you have seen, you know, in the, you know, the eight years of facilitating these things, but also the 20 years of leading meetings, that you've been able to not the ones that you've led? Of course, because no mistakes happen there. But a lot

Speaker 2  8:38  
of you do plenty of mistakes happen. I'm just good at fixing them. Real time windows?

Shayne Daughenbaugh  8:43  
Yeah. What have you seen that are just kind of like repeat offenders, common things that just kind of ah, I wish they wouldn't have done that.

Speaker 2  8:52  
Here's, here's an easy one. People try to cram in too many things. So oftentimes folks will say, hey, we want to we want to do this strategic planning retreat, we got 20 people, we're spending a lot of money taking them off to some fancy place. And then they'll show me the agenda, the things they want to talk about, and they want to talk about 25 things in an eight hour day. And it's like, you have no depth you, I get why they're doing it. They're trying to maximize the time away. But what they're doing is sacrificing depth for breadth. And what I tell folks is like, hey, in an eight hour day, you really only have six and a half hours. By the time you take out the breaks and lunch in the startup in the teardown, you might only have six. And so my suggestion for you is you have four things you get talked about. That's it. We want to go deep on those things that we talked about and really get the most out of them. So what are the most important things that we want to talk about? That would probably be mistake number one, mistake number two, is to take half the meeting, just informing people of things, which is basically I'm going to read you some slides for a half an hour. And then I'm going to ask if you have any questions and if you're still awake, maybe you do But odds are, you're thinking to yourself, Man, I want to get out of here and actually do something today. So that's probably make mistake number two, there's way too much inform. That's in the meeting. And I know why they do it. Because if they put it in the pre read, they don't think anyone will actually do it. I get it. I understand what's happening there. That would be the second biggest mistake that I see. A third mistake that I see would probably just be I think I talked about this in what undermines engaging, but I think a lot of times, the host of the meeting thinks of themselves as a participant, and not as the guide, that they show up to be a participant like everyone else, I just happen to be the one to schedule the meeting. And I think the standard for you, as the caller of the meeting, the host, the facilitator, pick your title, but you have a different role to play than what everyone else has to play. And I think oftentimes people who are hosting the meeting, don't see themselves in a different role. They're just like, Well, I'm just like everybody else, I just happened to be the one to schedule it, which then gets in the way. So yeah,

Shayne Daughenbaugh  11:01  
that was good. It made me think, just actually, a week ago, I was facilitating a workshop for one of my clients. And it was just a one day workshop. So like you said, by the time you're done with all that, you know, the lunch and all of that it was supposed to be about an eight hour day, but you crunch that down to about six, six and a half hours. And I barely got through two topics I knew, like we just had two topics I knew that's what we want to do the first half of this, we're going to talk about in depth. Second half of this, we're going to talk about in depth, and I overestimated how much time we'd really be able to the second half. It's kind of like the second half of your gas tank. Like if the first half takes this long to use up the second after the Will It never does

Speaker 2  11:42  
No, never. It never does. Nope. No. So totally, totally appreciate those. Those

Shayne Daughenbaugh  11:47  
are great.

Catherine McDonald  11:48  
Yeah, good learning. And that I think, and it's, you know, I think it's probably a mistake we've all made starting out in leadership roles or in lean or whatever it is, we have so much information that we want to give that we just forget to put ourselves in the other people's shoes that they don't need all this information, and they will not remember it. They will not remember everything you tell them. So you give them fewer points, and they're more likely to remember them and you build on that. That's very good advice. Really good. Jeff. Love that. So. So that's, I suppose the mistakes that are made. So what do you think then? If I was to ask you water, let's say the most important points to remember for meeting facilitation? Would it be the opposite of the mistakes you've just laid out? Or would your answer be a little bit different,

Speaker 2  12:32  
I think it'd be a little bit different. Here's here are three principles that I live by, when it comes to this that I often share with folks is, the first one is you got to play the guide role. So that one is a little bit better. But you got to play the game, you have to think of yourself as the guide, and your job is to help people reach their objective. Well, it's really important than to know what their objective is, what are they trying to do? What is our desired outcome. And it's my job as the host, the facilitator to lead us to that it's not there to do the work. My job was to assemble the right people, so that they could do their best work. I think of it as I'm holding the container, right? The captain of the pirate ship doesn't do a lot of work, they make choices and decisions and do and guide people. Right, but you hold that container. That's number one. Number two, there's no such thing as quiet people. You just haven't engaged them, right, the law of reciprocity. If you want people to engage, you have to engage them first. If you're just sitting around saying, Well, I asked a question and they never answered it. What happens is you didn't really engage that person in a way they need to be engaged, and it's on you to come up with a lot of different ways to engage people. Now, engagement doesn't always mean talking, standing up doing something, sometimes it could just be self reflection, writing something down on a note, that could be engagement. And so you have to engage the people who are quiet. The reasons people don't talk in a meeting or participate. Two reasons. One, it's not worth it, because I don't know what we're trying to solve. Or two, it doesn't feel safe. The last time I did it, it didn't feel very safe. So your job is as a facilitator hosted, make sure everyone knows why we're here knows what problem we're trying to solve, and then make it really safe for everyone to contribute. And sometimes that means you got to shrink the room, make the room smaller, put people in small groups, make them write something down. There's a lot of different ways you can drive engagement and get more people participating in the conversation. It may not sound like just talking right, which is my easy mode. But it comes in different forms. That's the second thing. And the third thing I would say is 80% of what makes a successful meeting happens before the meeting. Now, where did I get that number? Yeah, I made it up. I completely made it up because I've just tried to emphasize that if you are hosting the meeting, your value comes most of it is going to come before the meeting. If you do all the prep work, you do all of the designing you get the right people get the tables in the right way design the right activity, set a clear objective have a desired outcome. All you have to do is show up To be fully present and visible, that's my motto when I'm the host, I'm the facilitator, I'm fully present and invisible. It's not my job to shine, it's not my job, to come up with the best idea, it's my job to extract the best ideas, I'm working with people in the room to help solve whatever problem we're trying to solve. Right.

Shayne Daughenbaugh  15:19  
This, you know, as a continued continuous improvement practitioner, you know, those things you just mentioned, are things that I see just on the regular that necessary the necessity of defining what what are we trying to accomplish here? You know, if you're talking about Lean Six Sigma, that's, that's the Define Phase of what's what's really the problem that we're addressing? What are we trying to get out of this. And the other thing that comes across really strong that resonated with me, is when I'm going into facilitating, and it may not be a meeting, this may be like a project, you know, something that takes three to five days or three to five months to do. But it's not my job to do the work, even though and that's not to sound lazy, it's my job to engage the people that know what to do. I'm not coming in to tell you, Jeff, here's how you should run this, you know, here's, here's some of the problems that you have, I may be able to help point some of those things out. But really, I my expertise comes in just trying to engage, you know, engage, engage the people that know all about this process, or know about all the work that we're doing. So what you're saying should resonate really deeply. With with our with our audience, wouldn't you agree, Katherine? Oh,

Catherine McDonald  16:34  
100%. I've just seen it. So many times, we've been in meetings, and there's a couple of people who talk and the rest are quiet. And you just, if that happens, you leave feeling you've done those people a disservice. You know, you just it weighs on you and you want everybody to be engaged and involved. And when they're not, it does feel like you've I've done something wrong. And I think your techniques are amazing in terms of how you involve quiet people. I love that idea of maybe just building in, let's say a little bit of individual work, intergroup work. So take a moment, let's reflect let's write it down. Let's have a discussion. That's feedback. Let's just bring in their voice. Whatever way you can. I just think it's so important. Because we have a meeting and there's 10 people that we want those 10 people to go off clear on what's happening. Unclear on actions or whatever they are, we don't want to people, we want everybody. And you know, if you've just got the loud voices, they take over and people just remember what the loud people said, you know, so, yeah. So on that. I like the technique for and Barling quiet people. Jeff, what's the technique for managing the maybe the louder voices when you need them to maybe ease off a little bit?

Speaker 2  17:46  
Yeah. And so for me in that situation, because it's, those people are pretty obvious right away, they'll identify themselves, I'm always working with people I don't know. So you may know the folks you're working with, I've often just walking into a room cold, meeting a bunch of people. And it's pretty clear who the people who are going to be the talkers are. Now everyone can be a contributor, but there will always be someone who's the talker. And that's fine. I embrace that person. Love that person, I'm glad they're in the room. For me, I add a little bit more process a little bit more structure to how we do it, I put that person in a group. So now they're they're only monopolizing that small group of people. Right? If I had 512 people, I put them in groups of three will, at worst, they're only over talking to people, not the remaining nine people. And then I constantly move people around. So maybe if you were with the the talker, and this I don't want to make it a negative, I'm just managing, I'm trying to bring everyone to more of an uneven playing field. So I don't want to sound like I'm trying to turn someone down or anything like that. But your your circle of influence can only be with the group that you're talking to. And so if I have an open ended 12 people talking at once, that person will dominate the conversation. The other thing that I do is I, I tell people at the beginning, hey, especially on a zoom call, or virtual call of some kind, I tell people in the beginning, hey, I think we all recognize that virtual is awkward. There's often long silences, it's hard to know if people are engaged. So here's here's a commitment. I'm going to call people by name to get you involved in the conversation. It's not to call you out. It's just to make sure that I'm giving you enough space, if and in my agreement with you is that if anytime you don't have something you want to say, then just say pass and I will not be offended. And so what I often do is say, you know, maybe Shane's the talker, and I haven't heard from Kathryn in a while. And we had some ideas and Shane did a lot of talking. I haven't heard Katherine, I will just say Hey, Catherine, I haven't heard your voice. I'm sure you've got an opinion on this. Anything you want to say? And it's at that point, it's up to you to decide if you want to say something or not. What I've noticed almost every time someone says something, it's very rare someone says past now every once in a while someone's like Jeff, I'm sorry. My kids were distracting me. I don't know what we're talking about. No worries. Moving on. I'll come back to you later. I know you're engaged in this just thanks for saying something and then I move on. back onto the other person, when I call you out that kind of tells Shane, I'm not looking for Shane to give me an answer right now. Right? He knows he's like, Oh, he's talking to Katherine. I'll hold my tongue here for just a minute.

Shayne Daughenbaugh  20:11  
Right, right now in your book leading engaging meetings, you talk about things that five things that undermine engagement. And the last three really struck struck me, lack of discipline, nothing at stake, and coming in hot. You know, can you kind of just really briefly explain what those are, and then what the antidotes of those might be? Lack of discipline, nothing gets taken coming in hot. Yeah, so

Jeff Shannon  20:39  
lack of discipline is just as it sounds, right, we're starting late, we're ending late. There are no rules of the road, people aren't clear on how they behave. It's basically whatever our culture is, and whatever we've done in the past, that's how we're going to operate here. Okay, that's that one. nothing at stake is I don't know what we're here to solve what problem we're here to solve. You haven't defined the problem for me, I love I think it's Einstein, a problem well stated as a problem, half solved. And as the host, the facilitator should be right at the upfront, here's what we're here to do. Here's the problem we're trying to solve, which gets at why a standing meeting can be difficult. Because there's rarely a problem to solve. We're just meeting to stay connected, right? Staying connected, there's nothing at stake, we want the stakes that matter. We want it to be meaningful. When we have a meeting when we come together, and then coming in hot. Oftentimes what that is, is just I mean, everyone's coming from one meeting to the from the last meeting, almost everybody almost always just racing to get in the room from the last meeting, including the host, including the facilitator, they're rolling in just like everybody else. And they're like, oh, yeah, why are we doing this meeting? It's like, I don't know, man, you scheduled this pitch your job, there's a higher expectation for you as facilitator or the host of this meeting, to like, be there and set up. I always tell people hey, meeting starts at nine, I will be there at eight at a minimum. A friend of mine, a fellow facilitators, we practice in private perform in public, we never, ever let people see us getting ready. Right? You don't see me walking around setting the room moving the table music's on tables are set, I'm standing there saying, Hey, Shane, how are you? So great to meet you, Catherine, thanks for coming. I'm really glad you're here. You're the right person for the job. Right? I'm prepared. It demonstrates that and what I'm trying to do is communicate, hey, you're safe in my hands. I'm going to I'm going to demonstrate my respect for you by taking care of you in this meeting, I'm going to make this meeting valuable for you. That's my way of showing you respect, because you're giving me some of your most precious resource, your attention, right. And so, so when I think about lack of discipline, I mean, come on, let's just end on time. I mean, if we just if we all just ended on time, we could solve a lot of problems. And let's be honest, are we really producing like it's marginal? Returns? That final five minutes. It's just sloppiness. It's just sloppy and five minutes. If we're five minutes long, I've ruined your day, I've thrown you off. You can't go to the bathroom, you can't get something to eat. You're cranky and tired now. And you got to go to the bathroom. Right when you get to your next meeting. But if I in five minutes early, what a gift. What a gift. What a differentiator. You're the one person who respects me enough to know that I need to transition to the next room. That's it. That's lack of discipline. How do we get Can we just focus on that? I think starting on time is really important. Having some time bound structures, I put a clock on the book, because the clock is the determining factor. Whether this was valuable or not. The book designer was like why you want to put a clock on there. And the clock is one of the single most important things when it comes to an effective meeting. Because everyone's looking at it. Always. Right. Right? Nothing at stake. What was that one? Now this deck is really just, you want to you want to raise the stakes on people. I always tell people like, Hey, here's the pre work, I need you to have done this before you walk in the room. And then I put in warning. To be clear, I will not be reviewing this. When you walk in it is assumed that you read it do not show up and have not done the pre work you will be the only one. That's me raising the stakes. That's been making it matter. Right. That's just one way of raising the stakes on that. I also use many presentations. I tell people, Hey, tell me what your group talked about. You have 90 seconds to present this to me. This is not a freestyle free flowing stream of thought I need 90 seconds. And that's it. I will I will stop you. At the end of this. That raises the stakes for people people get much more focused when I put a time down on it. I think coming in hot is I think is what I said. You need to prepare all the participants in advance. You need to be prepared in advance you need to show up early to make it more meaningful for the people in the room because they're looking at you and going well. If you're a complete mess well then it's okay for me to be a complete mess.

Catherine McDonald  25:31  
meeting culture, yeah, hopping from meeting to meeting and then people hopping off one call saying I'm sorry, I have to go to another call and not you know, being at the end of the meeting and missing the actions, the most important piece or, you know, there's a yeah, there's a culture of that out there for sure. So, Jeff, all of that makes so much sense, you know, in terms of what we want the idea, but how do we do what we need really is our internal managers and leaders to be able to do this, to be able to have these kinds of meetings to be able to develop these kinds of skills, we can't have you at every meeting, unfortunately, because you know, the world would be a better place. But how do we? how do organizations go about this training their leaders and their managers to be able to be so efficient and effective and keep their meeting so structured, as you say, we'd yet build in that flexibility to make them really powerful as well? How did how do we get this out there to organizations?

Unknown Speaker  26:24  
For me, I think start treating it like a valued skill set. Right? We send people to presentation school, right? Hey, you aren't good at presenting, we're gonna send you to presentation school, we're gonna give you some structure, some rules, some technique, we're gonna give you some time to practice, right? You got to build out your, your, your Batman tool belt, when it comes to presentations when it comes to right project management and your lean your six sigma, right? Like that's a training program. It's a methodology. It's a philosophy, it's a way of doing it. If you follow it, it is proven to work, it will make you and the team more effective. But we don't treat meetings that way. Do it, we just will meetings are just things that we have. And we all just have a natural ability to do it. I will put it right up there with writing emails. It was like, Well, you've written a letter, right? Okay, well, then you know how to write an email. That's not true, that emails are not letters, right? They're not textbooks, they're not letters, they're emails, and there is a particular style and way of doing it to make it more effective. And I think we got to treat meetings as a way of influencing people, because here's how I think about it. If you can't run a meeting, why would I trust you to run a team or a department or a business? But you can't run one meeting for an hour? In an effective way? Why would I give you millions of dollars and a budget to go run a team because what you're telling me is like, you're not going to be good at managing that either. And so for me, it's it's an absolutely a differentiator for people as a skill as important as your ability to present your ideas, right? That's always the one people make as a big deal is like, Are you a good presenter or not? Are you do you have executive presence? So it's like, can you run a meeting effectively, which is the area where I spend the most of my time, this is a great way to demonstrate your skill and aptitude.

Catherine McDonald  28:12  
That's still so it's just it's all simple. But it's so insightful. At the same time. We just don't train people in it. We give them all the other tools. We expect them to go out and use the tools. We don't give them the actual basics in terms of how to facilitate effectively, because that's what they'll be spending probably most of their time on. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker  28:29  
most people spend 60% of their time in meetings. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. We're worried about all these other things that it's like, Well, how about how about being really good and effective at the meetings we have, because that's where we spend all of our energy.

Shayne Daughenbaugh  28:43  
Now, you mentioned that that skill as a differentiator. One of the differentiators that I picked out that I was like, Man that is so powerful out of some of your content is this idea of do only what we can do together in a meeting do only what we can do together. Please like share a little bit more about that because I think that is a huge differentiator for an effective meeting and engaged meeting. Talk to us more about that.

Unknown Speaker  29:10  
Yeah, that's that's actually a phrase from my friend Mike Boyer. He, he was a client. Yeah, thank you, Mike. But he he said it kind of offhand. And I was like, Yeah, that's it. That's, that's what I've been trying to say. As a way of communicating it. Let's go back to like, what, let's go back to the very first meeting ever, the first one ever in human history. So I'm picturing this. I mean, I wasn't there. You weren't either. But I'm picturing some caveman and cavewoman and a group of others and someone said, Hey, team, we all been trying to kill these, you know, these beasts alone. What have we all got together and killed one really big Mastodon, and then we can eat for months. And if we just work together, we'll kill something much bigger and we'll all benefit from this. That was the original reason we had a meeting. Cavemen and women didn't like it. Hey, let's, let's have a standing meeting every Tuesday at nine o'clock, we'll just come and we'll just kind of check in, and we'll just tell you about what's happening in the world. Right, they wouldn't have had time for that. And so like kind of setting our bar is like, only that which we missed, that we can do together, that's it needs to be multiplication. Most meetings are subtraction, not even addition. Right? That's how people would describe it as subtraction, or addition, or multiplication from in terms of value, they will all say subtraction, they need to be multiplication. And so how do we do that? What I'm saying is like, yeah, do more upfront work, you need to have the courage to attend fewer meetings. And to schedule fewer meetings, you want to make those meetings meaningful. And I get it, we have, we have to run a business, we got to run our teams, that kind of thing. But like instead of having a weekly, half an hour, have a bi weekly one hour meeting, because five minutes is set up five minutes to tear down. It's the same on a half hour meeting as it is a one hour meeting or a two hour meeting. But we get more meat for the setup and teardown because, you know, we got to start up a little small talk, get it loose how the kids yadda yadda, yadda. And we burned seven of our 30 minutes and our one on one talking about nothing, when both people would rather be doing something different. And so so to me, it's like how do we raise the bar? On what deserves a meeting? And here's the litmus test. Can you define the problem we're trying to solve? Can you tell me what the meeting objective is? How, what are we trying to do in that meeting? And can you tell me what the desired outcome is? If it's just a state of connector? That's too low, too low a bar? Alright,

Shayne Daughenbaugh  31:36  
got it. Yeah, I appreciate that. That that principle resonates with me. It goes way back when I was a when I was a pastor, and the concept of don't do for other people, what they can actually do for themselves, instead encourage them to do the work so that they're engaged with their participants. So you know, as I read that, I was like, oh, man, that I didn't even think about that, that applies here in meetings as well. Like, if there are things that were that are on the meeting agenda, that could be done, you know, outside the meeting before the meeting, or after the meeting, that's when it should be done. The meeting should be for the work that requires all of us that we could not do outside of the meeting. I was like, oh, man, like that's an application of that don't do for them what they can do for themselves, do only what we can do together. I think that for me, that was like, it was just a game changer of like that is a differentiator between a really good meeting, and a pretty okay, meeting. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker  32:34  
yeah, yeah, I mean, just something as simple as, like, you'll, you'll have some cultures, they'll do the, hey, we got 25 people in the room, let's go around the room, everyone say their name, say what department they're in, and how long they've worked for the company. And 45 minutes later, of like, I don't remember what the first person said, I have no idea what the third person said, I was completely zoned out waiting for my turn. Right. Like, that's not work that we must do together. But there are a lot of other ways like hey, get into small groups. If you don't know everyone introduce yourselves, now's your chance, move on, get to work. Like we're we're here to work not to sit on our hands and relax or watch a screen or listen to someone go on and on and on. Like, I call them workshops for a reason. Like we're here to work, if I'm in the room, we're working, we're doing something we're going somewhere. It's a higher standard we're trying to get to.

Shayne Daughenbaugh  33:26  
And it made me think of as Chad Littlefield if anyone has read or seen some of his stuff, he always talks about the connection, before content is still important. Like what you're saying is like don't make it widescale the whole room and we spent 45 minutes. But what are some things that like, let's, let's talk about just a little bit of some tools that you have used to start the meeting before the meeting starts, you know that to where you get people connected? Because that's why we ultimately, that's why we entered have everyone introduce, we're hoping there's some kind of connection, that's just not the best way of going about it. Like I'm not shaming people that do that. But there's got to be a better way to do that. So what that I that talk about that principle of starting the meeting before it starts, you go, what do you do when you're there an hour early? And someone shows up? Half an hour and 15 minutes before any like, oh, okay, well, we're not really getting into the stuff. But yeah, yeah,

Unknown Speaker  34:21  
a couple of things. I always know, the meetings I lead, the stakes are higher. A lot of money is being invested in this meeting. Okay, so I'm going to start with that the stakes are higher, you can't do this for every weekly meeting. Okay, so, but for me on the bigger meetings, I send a preview a video that says, Hi, I'm Jeff. I'm thrilled to be your facilitator for our upcoming strategic planning workshop. This is what you can expect and how to prepare for the meeting. And then I send an email with those details bulleted out to make it super easy for you to show up. The How to Prepare always involves me asking you to do something now. That thing needs to be meaningful and it will be used in the room for instance, if we're doing strategic planning, I'll ask you to fill out a SWOT survey. Why would I sit in the room and spend two hours trying to get all of that out of people when I'm like, here, thank you, then four minutes answer these four basic questions, I will synthesize it and give you back a piece of paper that summarizes what everyone said, Let's just accelerate that. The other reason I asked you to do something, is because I want you to comply when the stakes are low. The more you comply early, the more likely you're going to comply with my instructions later in the session. So if you've done some of the work, you already feel like a winner you walked in, I did my I did my work. Great. So nice to meet you. The other thing that happens is the reason I send the video is I can't tell you how many times I people walk in the room and say, Hey, I'm Jeff, what's your name? Well, I'm Katherine. And they go, oh, yeah, I know who you are. You're, you're the guy from the video. So we've already made that connection. They already like, oh, you seem like a trustworthy human being. Right? So So I do that ahead of the meeting, when we get in the room, I always do a warm up, always. And this is my secret. Even people who say they hate warmups will still benefit from a warm up. Because my only objective is to get you to write something and say something. Because at this point in the game, it tends to be trivial. It's nothing big. What do you want to get out of this meeting? I really don't care about the answer. It's not important to me. In fact, I don't even have them explain it to everyone, I have them talk about it in a small group. So it's faster. But all I want you to do is write something and say something out loud. So you've done that behavior, when the stakes are low. Reverse that will say I wait until the 59th minute of a one hour meeting say, Hey, Shane, haven't heard from you got anything you want to say. And all you're thinking of is, heck, no, I want to get out of here, I got nothing. I need you to do it early. So you're more likely to do it later. I always go through agreements, I tell people, hey, for this meeting, we got to have a few rules of the road. Some expectations, and then some expectations of me if we're doing a creative meeting, I say Don's better than perfect. And I misspell perfect with a que. And people get really bent out of shape that I missed. Someone actually thought I did it on accident. So when things are like Dude, did that on purpose, he's making a point. And, but like, I like to let them know how the how the game is going to be played. I tell people, you know how they can expect me to behave in that meeting. I tell them hey, let's it's okay, if you disagree. Here's one of them. I say consensus is not required. Because where I tend to operate, we live in the Midwest. And it's like consensus at all costs, we are trying to be as agreeable as possible. And like, let me tell you something, agreeableness does not lead to the best idea. It just leads to support for the first idea. So if you hear something you don't like, please, please, please disagree with it and present us another idea to go with, I tell people exactly how I want them to behave during the session. Yeah,

Shayne Daughenbaugh  37:49  
my version of consensus is not required is I don't want you to be polite. I want you to be professional. Because politeness, it's that same idea that, you know, we don't all have to agree with everything. And don't worry about having your idea coming out. Like, and I'm working with adults too. So it's not like we're gonna start you know, there is an understanding of just general, treat people with respect and humanity. But let go of that Midwest. Nice. And let's get down to business because that's what this is about, roll up your sleeves and be ready. Yeah, definitely. Excellent.

Catherine McDonald  38:25  
Setting expectations makes people feel safe, not me here on expectations makes people feel I have no idea what to expect what to say. And I'm not gonna say anything, because I've no idea what the expectations are. So when we put that bit of structure, and we do that piece of work, definitely it affects safety. And like you say, Jeff trust. So that's, that's the start of the meeting. And that makes a lot of sense. Like, you know, in terms of even why things are called icebreakers now, like it is it is actually breaking that ice to get people breathing and and talking at the start, because that sets the scene, like you said, so that's the start of a meeting. What about common talk? We know the body of the meeting, you've talked about that in terms of all the the principles that you've talked about? What about the end of the meeting, because I always think that's also a really, really important part to get, right. So, I mean, what I would normally do in a meeting is I would go around the room, and I would ask the people, the participants there to talk about the actions they've taken on rather than telling them and, you know, relaying them to everybody to make sure that people are clear, and that again, it's not me telling people what to do. But there's far more to it, to end the meeting, particularly to end the meeting on a high note to keep that motivation to help people feel committed. So Jeff, what are your thoughts on ending a meeting? How can we do it more effectively?

Unknown Speaker  39:47  
So a couple things. One of the things I will do is just different circumstances. I might ask everyone, if it's learning and development, let's call it that if that was the objective was teaching a I'm just learning development, what I'll do is I'll say, Hey, everybody, Greg posted on a Sharpie. And I'll say, what I want you to do is I want you to write down the answer to this question. What was most useful for you? That's it. I got that from Michael Bungay. stainer and his the Coaching Habit book that everyone should read. And but that's a great question in a workshop too. Because what happens is everyone will pick the one thing that was most impactful for them. And then, hey, I'll either depending on the time I haven't saved as a large group, or depending on the size of the group, or I'll have stayed in a small group, because it's affirmation that this was useful for them, I want them to pick out the thing that was useful, right? It's harder, it's harder to do that than it is to pick out hey, what was the biggest waste of time? Right, you'll get a bad answer, you won't you won't get an answer, you're like with that. The other thing that I'll do is, I already have the clothes planned. I know how I'm going to close this meeting with my meetings, they tend to be longer tend to be bigger. I have a story that I have set up in my pocket, right? So we might do that testimonial on a team, like a culture workshop or something like that, or learning and development. And I'll say, Hey, Catherine, Catherine is going last, Katherine's the host. So before I pass her the baton, and I've already told Catherine Hey, you're the host, you get the final word, do not drop the ball, I'm gonna do something and then I'll hand you back in Baton, be prepared, here's my I give them I actually give people a script to give them ideas of what they should be talking about. And so then I will tell a story. And I'll pick some story out of the air that I collect stories, and I will tell the story that kind of rides along with the impact that we're trying to have with that meeting. And that's all right. And with that, I just want to say thank you for your time today. I'm gonna pass the baton back to Katherine. And then that's your moment, to give us some words of affirmation, remind us. Hey, thank you for giving us your time. Right? I know, I asked you all to be here. But man, you showed up and you delivered in this way, Shane, particularly you You did this? And Gina, you did that. And it was great. And Bob man, I was inspired when you said this, you've taken notes throughout the whole meeting. And so you can give people recognition. At the end of the meeting of the behaviors. You want to see them repeat next time. Right, what a missed by leaders to just go. Alright, thanks, everybody. Make sure you go back to your desk to get back to work. Right. I've had Pete don't forget to fill out that survey. Yeah, don't forget to fill out postworkout survey. Right? It's like no, this was your chance to, to lead. So so that's, uh, that's how I end the bigger stuff. Other endings can include. What are other endings? I'm, I'm blanking on the moment as I'm standing here. Cuz I got excited about the story piece of it.

Catherine McDonald  42:33  
That's amazing. Yeah, no, I love that. I mean, we just don't do it. I mean, no wonder people don't feel like coming into work. I mean, we make it so boring. Sometimes we just that injection of energy, that appreciation that recognition, it costs nothing, we just need to go and do and actually appreciate people in the first place, and then tell them, we appreciate them. So just, it's just that injection that's really needed out there. I think in organizations at the moment, it's just missing. Really,

Unknown Speaker  43:03  
I think there's two things here principles behind this number one is the peak end rule, they will remember the high point the meeting and the ending. So that's number one. That is why you should invest some time in it, it doesn't have to be a long time, it could be the final five minutes of a bigger meeting or three minutes, whatever it's gonna take. But you are the host or the facilitators meeting, you own the ending. So land the plane, right landed, you have a plan of how you're gonna do that. So that's important. The second thing is the other principle that I always follow is like, they will remember what you said they will only remember how you made them feel. I think that's my Angelou, who might have said that, but I think that's so true, is how do I end this in a very human, empathetic, appreciative, recognizing way that lets people know that I value them their ideas, and their efforts, like I want that to be the last thing they remember when they walk out of here is like, Wow, I feel really appreciated. They may not be 100% Confident what they produced. I'm okay with that. But at the minimum, you showed up today, you had a choice. You didn't have to show up and actually show up, you could have just been a warm body in the room. And I want to make sure people end with that very human experience, because that's what I want them to feel when they walk out or so the next time they come back. I was like, Oh, I have no problem doing work for Jeff. Because he appreciates me. Right? That's that's how I think about it. That's

Catherine McDonald  44:26  
amazing. Yeah, you just you say it so well. And you're so right. So right. So we're we've probably nearly come to the end of the show. I'm just wondering, Shane, have you any last questions you want to ask Jeff?

Shayne Daughenbaugh  44:36  
I just so we've talked about at the very beginning, we actually started talking about hey, this is actually a trained or trainable skill. I know Jeff, that you have in person but also do you not have like virtual workshops and trainings? And if so, tell us where we could you know For some of our listeners that are interested in either your book, or the training you provide anything like where is that? Where can we tap into that?

Unknown Speaker  45:07  
Yep. So the book is on Amazon lead engaging meetings.com is the website, lead engaging meetings is the title on Amazon? Jeff at Jeff shannon.com, that's my email address, I'll just give that out to you. It's pretty straightforward. Or you can just go to Jeff shannon.com For facilitation. So if you're looking for a workshop or retreat or something like that, that would be where you find me. Part of the book is, if you went out and bought on Amazon, today, there's a 60 minute course, digital course that you can get free access to, which is not me telling you what's in the book, it's actually me leading a real workshop with a real client. So you can see me doing these things rather than just me telling you how to do it. In red, that doesn't tell you anything, like I was able to get a real client to let me film our workshop as they develop leadership tenants for their organization. It was a really cool experience. And I think just seeing someone in action, do it. And is it perfect? No, it's human, it's real. But you kind of get a sense of like, oh, that's what he's talking about. With all these tips that are in the books, I tried to demonstrate it, not just tell you what it is. That's

Catherine McDonald  46:15  
amazing. That's such a good resource. I hope everybody goes on. And yeah,

Shayne Daughenbaugh  46:19  
and I will also add, because you didn't mention it, you're just your LinkedIn, your the content you put out there is some great, you know, nuggets here and there. And just quick, short things that that enhance and read, you know, kind of bring back to some of the principles that are in the book and some of the stuff we've talked about today. So that's another great resource. That's what that's what I wanted to end with. So I consider this a we're ending on a high note of Katherine, what about you? Do you have any anything? And then any last words, I'd love to hear any last words from Jeff as well? If he had any one last thing to give to our listeners?

Catherine McDonald  46:54  
Yeah. Cool. Cool. Jeff, Go On you go. Any last words you'd like to give before? Before we wrap up? Any last thoughts? Anything we didn't cover?

Unknown Speaker  47:03  
Yeah. Can I end with a story? Yes, I love stories. Alright, so this story comes from my other book, hard work is not enough. So I went as dorky as this sounds, I went to a keynote speaker school in New Jersey. And as part of this program, you had to prepare a five minute speech, and you're gonna be with all these other people who wanted to get paid for speaking, okay, so. So I know the stakes are high. And a lot of people are pros when they go to this. And so I have practiced my five minute speech. And I go to the class, and they got all these modules. Well, one of the modules was storytelling using your body. And this woman, she, so I'm about, I'm six, five, this woman's probably five foot tall. She's up there in years, she works at the she's one of the books that works at the Yale School of Drama. And she is like, so beautiful and graceful, like her feet never really touched the ground, you know, you know, those people who just moved so beautifully, not like me. And so. So she's going to teach this class and you know, you're going to have to rehearse. And sure enough, she calls my name first out of 30 people. So I go up on the stage, and I get up there, and I start doing my talk. And I'm trying to like, move around a lot. And she, she goes, whoa, Jeff, let me stop you right there. I'm like, Oh, no. And she walks up on the stage. And she stands almost on my feet. And she looks up at me. And she says, Jeff, how long have you been that tall? And I was like, and it was kind of like a gut punch? Because I was like, Oh, well, I've been this tall since the seventh grade. And she's like, Yeah, I could tell, it seems like you're kind of trying to hide in the back of the picture, you know, in the back row, or no one sees you, you're trying not to take up a lot of space. She's like, but you need to know something. I didn't put you on the stage to be average. I put you on stage to be extraordinary. I put you on stage to change the way people think and the way they operate in their lives make their lives better. And you can't do that, when you're trying to be average, and to be average. And so I just leave you with that. Like, don't be average. Like stand out, differentiate, be your full self. That's where you're going to have the greatest impact. Never ever underestimate how you can influence the lives of somebody else.

Catherine McDonald  49:12  
That's amazing. I love it. Well done. That's so great. Jeff, thank you. Thank you so much for sharing that and thank you for your just your energy and your enthusiasm and it's just been so enlightening. I have to say it's been amazing meeting you and definitely follow me on LinkedIn. I got to look into everything you have out there, Shane, I can see you nodding away there's all thanks Shane as well for a great for a great podcast session today. And guys, we better wrap it up. But listen, everybody go out there follow Jack read his book, and we will see you the next episode of the lead solutions podcast evening everyone. Excellent. Thank you.