5 Questions to Determine if a Meeting is Essential

Your days are full, and it can be hard to get everything on your list done. You were finally making progress on a task when your focus is disrupted yet again with a meeting reminder. You don’t know how you’ll finish what you need to do today, and it’s probably going to be yet another waste of time. Is this just the way things are, or is there a better way?

According to The HR Digest, professionals lose an average of 31 hours a month on meetings–which adds up to approximately four workdays, or a total of two months per year. That’s a lot of disruption, particularly if those meetings aren’t actually yielding much. The problem isn’t just an overabundance of meetings; it’s that so many of them turn out to be bad meetings. But you don’t have to settle for bad meetings that disrupt your work and kill productivity. Great meetings are possible with a little bit of forethought. Let’s look at one of the first steps in that direction: determining the necessity and nature of a meeting.

Here are five filtering questions you can use to coordinate essential meetings:

  1. Is this meeting necessary? There’s a well-known piece of literary advice for writers: “kill your darlings.” That is, don’t get too attached to the storyline, especially if it doesn’t serve the bigger picture. The same is true for meetings. It’s too easy to get caught up in a series of meetings that don’t matter. Keep the high-leverage ones that support important goals. Eliminate the rest, and your team will thank you.
  2. Are you sure you’re necessary? Too often, we blindly accept the never-ending barrage of meeting invites. It’s natural to think our presence in a meeting is always necessary, especially if we were invited. But that’s not always true. Guard your schedule, and only say yes when you truly need to be there.
  3. Who else should be involved? If you’re organizing a meeting, think through who absolutely needs to attend. Remember, smaller groups can align more quickly to drive a decision. Relevant information can be shared with the masses later through an email or project-management update.
  4. What type of meeting do you want? Consider ahead of time the type of meeting that will help you accomplish your goals. Establishing this early on will keep the purpose clear and the conversation from meandering, so your time will be productive.
  5. What’s the right format? Historically, in-person meetings have been the norm across businesses. But nowadays, we’re all meeting virtually in some capacity, and in-person meetings are no longer the default. It takes intentional thought to determine what’s best for your team, and what format will work best for what you’re trying to achieve. If that’s in-person, great. Otherwise, your preferred video-conferencing app works great too.

Take control of your meeting habits. Routinely ask yourself, Is this meeting necessary? If not, be decisive and eliminate the meetings that don’t matter or that inhibit your productivity. Make the best use of your team’s time and resources by focusing on the high-leverage stuff, and you’ll start seeing less frustration and better results.

Source: Michael Hyatt & Co. Blog

8 Quick Tips to Dodge Burnout

To perform their best, leaders must nurture their minds and bodies.

Twenty years ago, the sudden emergence of ESPN’s daily poker broadcasting sparked global debate. How does card playing merit coverage, given the absence of spherical objects and sweaty high-fives? The emerging consensus that cards, chess, and spelling all qualify made sense to me only when I returned to the dictionary. Merriam-Webster defines an athlete as “a person who is trained or skilled in exercises… requiring physical strength, agility, or stamina.” Like chess, leading change requires stamina and takes a toll physically, mentally, and emotionally.

Leadership’s daily demands create a high-stress work environment. In a December survey, 76% of workers reported burnout. These challenges are especially prominent among leaders, and even pre-date the pandemic: school principals, for example, are nearly twice as likely to experience stress symptoms than the general population. Managing change daily on tight timelines requires nonstop communication, often with overstretched team members and stakeholders. The work requires the pace of a sprint for the duration of a marathon.

For both athletes and leaders, sustaining performance throughout an intense season requires careful planning and consistent execution. For their part, leaders need good mental acuity and energy to support decision-making. Leaders benefit from a comprehensive plan that parallels the holistic benefits of an athlete’s support system.

These 8 strategies create the foundation for optimal leadership performance:

1. Be clear on your priorities.

Fulfilling a leadership role requires clear vision not only for the organization but also for yourself. What is most important in your life? What do you want to drive toward, and why? How do these priorities compare with your role’s goals? Alignment between what your personal mission and your daily professional experiences is essential for fulfillment and for preventing or mitigating burnout. 

2. Fuel your mind and body.

What you eat directly impacts the quality of your thinking. Intentionality here is especially important, as high stress levels can lead to cortisol hormone spikes, which increase appetite and emotional eating behaviors. As a school leader, I often skipped meals due to a busy schedule and forgot to drink water; on other days, I chose to eat something on the go. Processed foods are low in nutrient density; consuming foods dense with nutrients — such as seafood, eggs, nuts, seeds, fruits, and vegetables — and sufficient water is essential for brain activity. Slowing down lets your body absorb the nutrients in your food. If you make time to sit, connect with other humans in a relaxed environment, and chew your food fully, your brain serves you better.

3. Exercise sustainably.

Athletes must move their bodies to promote recovery and strong performance. Leaders typically fall short in one of two ways. Many don’t move enough; twenty minutes of light exercise can trigger the release of serotonin, which makes you feel more focused, emotionally stable, happier, and calmer. The movement need not be extreme: walking helps you think, improves your mood, and helps you sleep better.

If you have developed an exercise habit, evaluate whether it is supporting your goals. When an intense fitness class leaves you nauseous, exhausted, or injured, how does that help you? High intensity work, in fact, can promote brain fog. Is that actually what you want to do before your strategic planning session?  The ideal is somewhere in the middle. A balance of resistance training and aerobic work appropriate for your capacity and skills will best support you. Strength training has been found to improve sleep and cognition and to alleviate anxiety and depression.

4. Sleep.

For all humans, sleep is one of the most important things you can do, yet most Americans don’t get enough. Being underslept correlates with poorer decision-making and health. The really hard part is that, when you’re sleep deprived, your brain does not realize how sleep deprived it is. Take steps to ensure you are getting the sleep you need. Wind-down routines leading to a dark, cool bedroom help you bring your best self the next day.

5. Balance work and rest. 

It’s important to think about balancing work with rest and recovery, both in the short and long term: day, week, month, year. Most people enter unsustainable professional stretches, whether driven by a new project, understaffing, or significant disruption to work conditions. The rate of work at these times must be balanced by rest in order to avoid burnout. Periodic pushes may be unavoidable, but they must be balanced with rest and recovery. Don’t throw yourself out as the starting pitcher every day all year. Build a full bullpen by empowering your team around you. There’s a reason why leagues track player minutes and throw counts precisely. You have to periodize to avoid overuse and burnout. Conventional schedules allocate time for you to rest: use your nights, weekends, and vacations to unplug and recover. 

6. Regulate your emotions.

Athletes are able to regulate their emotions to bring out their best performance. Emotional stability brings out the best performance in you and your team. Practicing mindfulness, noticing your emotions in the moment, breathing, and building awareness of specific emotions all support your ability to lead. After practicing these strategies for your own emotional health, consider creating pathways to support your team in doing the same. Cultivating a space in which people feel safe to continually improve starts with you. 

7. Learn.

Elite athletes stay on top only by getting better each day. Modern teams have improved in recent years by drawing upon new sources of information, such as video and data analytics. Leaders, too, must intentionally seek out ways to learn. Dedicate time to reflect daily on what went well and what didn’t. Actively solicit feedback from your coach and your colleagues, and show your team how you have incorporated their opinions. Creating a culture in which your team learns starts with you.

8. Build habits and routines.

40% of our behaviors are habitual. Busy schedules do not allow for daily conscious choices in prioritization, rest, nutrition, movement, learning, and emotional regulation. Building consistent routines in each of these domains is essential to bringing your best each day. In the long run, consistency outperforms short, intensive bursts.

We receive and internalize complex messages about our bodies and our work. Optimizing for leadership performance requires aligning professional and personal visions with habits. As with professional sports, leading change requires discipline around the clock to maximize your results.

Source: Leading Well, Leaders as Athletes

3 Things Your Future Employees Want (and What You Can Do About it…)

When it comes to what talent management in the future might look like, a 2020 study points to three defining priorities among knowledge workers.

The last year has forever changed the way employees view and approach work, but one thing holds true: Businesses that want to attract and retain the talent they need to move forward must understand the top priorities of their future workforce. They must embrace new, flexible work models and cultivate a workforce that can design their own careers. Employees want to determine when and where they work. They want to work with a diverse team. They want to be measured on the value they deliver, not the volume they deliver. And they expect to be given the space and trust they need to do their very best work, wherever they happen to be. Companies that understand and embrace these wants and needs will not only boost the motivation and engagement of their existing workers, but will gain the attention of the brightest new recruits and take their business to new heights.

1. Employees overwhelmingly expect flexible options.

According to the study, 88% of knowledge workers say that when searching for a new position, they will look for one that offers complete flexibility in their hours and location. Also 83% predict that in response to the global skilled talent shortage, companies will leverage flexible work models to reach out to suitable candidates no matter where they live — yet, only 66% of HR directors feel the same. What’s more:

  • 76% of the workers polled believe that employees will be more likely to prioritize lifestyle (family and personal interests) over proximity to work, and will pursue jobs in locations where they can focus on both — even if it means taking a pay cut.
  • 83% of employees think that workers will be more likely to move out of cities and other urban locations if they can work remotely for a majority of the time, creating new work hubs in rural areas.

In order to position themselves to win in the future, companies will need to meet employees where they are.

2. Employees want to re-imagine how productivity is measured.

In the future, companies will need to rethink how they measure productivity because traditional metrics — and views that real work can’t get done outside the office — will no longer cut it. According to the study, today’s employees want to be measured on the value they deliver, not the volume. And they expect to be given the space and trust they need to do their very best work, wherever they happen to be.

  • 86% of employees said they would prefer to work for a company that prioritizes outcomes over output. What does this mean? New employees want to work for a company that cares less about the qualified work output they are able to produce, and more about the impact they can deliver to the business in a holistic sense.
  • But there is a gap here, with just 69% of HR directors saying that their company currently operates in this way, and only half of HR directors saying that their organization would be more productive as a whole if employees felt that their employer/senior management team trusted them to get the job done without monitoring their progress.

Forward-thinking companies will focus on closing this gap, and will design people-centric experiences that give employees the space they need to unlock their full potential and deliver transformative results.

3. Employees want to work with a diverse team.

One thing on which both employees and managers seem to agree? Employees want to work for a company that prioritizes diversity.

  • 86% of employees and 66% of HR directors assert that a diverse workforce will become even more important as roles, skills, and company requirements change over time.
  • Honest, accessible metrics around your diversity progress and remaining gaps are critical to ensuring that efforts to build a diverse team are measurable, targeted, and impactful.

Takeaway for Leaders

What should the major takeaways be for business leaders when it comes to the implications of these findings?

1. See the forest through the trees.

Without the restriction of location, business leaders must look at their recruiting from a broader lens and expand the potential to attract employees who can boost an organization’s creativity and productivity.

They might, for instance, dip into untapped pools of talent such as the “home force” and bring back parents who’ve put their careers on hold to care for children, or people who left jobs to tend to aging relatives. It could also mean looking to Baby Boomers who’ve retired, but who still want to work a few hours per week. And it could mean enlisting more part-time, contract, and gig workers — who make up a larger percentage of the workforce than ever — to take on more hours. And, of course, it means looking for global talent that may reside anywhere.

2. Prioritize learning and development.

New business models sparked by the pandemic and changes in customer preferences and needs have given rise to new roles and opportunities for companies — and their employees — to grow. Upskilling and reskilling will be critical factor in capitalizing on them. As the study found:

  • 82% of employees and 62% of HR directors believe that workers will need to hone their current skills or acquire new ones at least once a year in order to maintain competitive advantage in a global job market.
  • HR directors believe that ensuring that an organization has the latest collaborative technology in place to enable agile learning is the most important factor in recruiting and retaining the best talent, and 88% of employees confirm this notion, saying that they look for this when searching for a new position.

It bears repeating: Organizations will need to prioritize reskilling and upskilling to attract and retain the talent they need to make their businesses grow. Those that do will not only boost the motivation of their existing workers, but will gain the attention of the brightest new recruits and position themselves to emerge from the pandemic not just where they were, but in a stronger, better position to move forward.

The last year has forever changed the way employees view and approach work, but one thing holds true: Businesses that want to attract and retain the talent they need to move forward must understand the top priorities of their future workforce. They must embrace new, flexible work models and cultivate a workforce that can design their own careers. In doing so, they will not only boost the motivation and engagement of their existing workers, but will gain the attention of the brightest new recruits and take their business to new heights.

Source: by Tim Minahan via Harvard Business Review

The Workplace Question of the Decade…

Does the boss buy your time or your productivity?

In the pre-industrial age, when we worked from home (“cottage industries”) workers got paid by the piece.

As we moved to factories, it shifted. Many workers preferred a reliable regular paycheck, and owners decided to profit by investing in productivity and keeping the upside. When new machines show up, the workers don’t get paid more, but the boss makes more.

Now, as work-from-home promises/threatens to become a norm for many knowledge workers, the question is back.

Some bosses are demanding workers return to the office, and some managers have spent the last year forcing people to endure endless zoom meetings. The mindset seems to be that if your time is what got purchased, the boss wants to be sure you’re spending all of that time at work on work, not, who knows, tending for an ill family member or something.

But as it gets easier to measure productivity and contribution, and as it gets easier to outsource any task that can be described clearly, there’s a fork in the road:

If we’re not buying or selling hours, what, exactly do we measure and how are we compensated for it? Are workers ready or open to getting a commission, a profit-share or a per-piece price? And if we’re not selling our time but our contribution, does that further self-center the culture?

And if we are buying and selling hours, how does that work when surveillance capitalism bumps into workers needing flexible schedules and the trust that it takes to develop leadership and creative contribution?

Is it okay with you, the boss, if one of your workers dramatically increases productivity through some outsourcing or tech shortcuts on their own nickel and then goes home at 2 pm every day?

Is it okay if you have another worker who works until midnight every night but doesn’t get nearly as much done?

What about a team of five deciding to skip most of their meetings, coordinate through a shared doc and put the time they save into going for a walk or thinking about the next breakthrough?

If it’s truly about what we produce, how many people on the team are aware of how much they produce? What would happen if they were?

The theory of the firm was based on two key assumptions: That workers needed to be in physical proximity to each other, and that communicating with and measuring outsiders was simply too expensive to scale. For a lot of knowledge work, neither is completely true any more, and so we have to reckon with what the right size of a ‘firm’ even is.

The very nature of the factory and employment is completely up in the air. Instead of bragging about how many employees a company has, how big the office is, how many folks are in any given meeting… some leaders may start optimizing for how few they need to get the work done.

Source: Seth Godin via Seth’s Blog

Constructive Feedback through This Medium Isn’t Caring and Can Be Misconstrued…

I started touring colleges this past week with my oldest son, a high schooler who’s pretty curious about the whole college experience.

I was excited about the first college we toured; I felt it suited him perfectly. We’d watched a few videos on YouTube about the school and its programs, as well as attended a virtual tour. When we got there, the first impression of the institution was solid but, within minutes, I hate to say it, the cracks in the veneer began to show.

I won’t go into details (discretion is the better form of valor), but I will say that I went from a huge fan of the college to a critical evaluator of the institute and its programs.

I started to write an email to admissions to let them know a few of my gripes, quips, and disappointments. Once the note was complete, and before I hit “send,” I re-read what I wrote and decided to hit delete. My note felt snarky and the tone just didn’t seem right. The feedback I wanted to share didn’t seem helpful and it just wasn’t meant for an email.

I opted for a phone call instead. Rather than a one-sided note flung through cyberspace, I felt that a conversation would be a better medium – it’d convey my respect, interest in helping improve the admissions process, and share helpful insight into my observations. (The call’s scheduled for this week.)

This brings me to the point of this email. I know many of us like to share feedback with others via email. I get it entirely – it feels safer to articulate our words in text and hit send than to have a face-to-face where conflict or disagreement might ensue. But have you ever thought that constructive feedback through this medium isn’t caring and can be misconstrued?

Here’s the deal – email is great for admin. You’ll need, though, either a phone call or a face-to-face when the following criteria apply:

  • You have to say something that could be taken the wrong way
  • You have critical/constructive feedback to deliver
  • There are stakes involved in the dialogue
  • You don’t want what you intend to put in writing to be printed and/or forwarded
  • The other person might feel disrespected if you don’t talk to them directly

Delivering feedback in this manner can be difficult … I know. Sometimes it’s hard to follow my own advice. But there are times when we have to remind ourselves that we’re leaders. Leaders do the hard stuff because they recognize that when things are uncomfortable, they’re stretching, growing, and probably doing the right thing.

Written by Angie Morgan via Leadstar. Visit Leadstar to read the full article.