The way your voice sounds is important in face-to-face meetings, but doubly so in telephone meetings because people can’t see your expressions, gestures or other body language. To convey emotions and intentions, you’ll need to use your voice. Luckily we are equipped with many vocal tools.

• Volume: How loud you talk. Too loud comes across as harsh or aggressive. Too soft can be hard to hear and create the impression that you are timid.
• Rate: How fast you talk. Too fast is hard to follow, especially when language barriers exist. Can also create the impression that you are trying to pull a fast one. Too slow can be boring. You might also create the impression that you aren’t very bright.
• Pitch: Creates emotion and interest. It gives your voice a melodic quality that can, if used well, make you easier to listen to.
• Timbre: The sound that distinguishes one voice from another. While it’s difficult to change, you might have to work on it if your natural timbre creates misunderstandings. For example, your voice sounds sinister or whiny.
• Emphasis: This is bringing attention to specific words or syllables to make your point more clear.
• Enunciation: This is the clarity with which you speak. It helps the listener distinguish one sound from another so that they can hear the specific words. This is far more important in telephone conversation than in face-to-face interactions.
• Silence/Pauses: The space between the words can add meaning. Use them intentionally to create a powerful impact.

It’s often the case that how you say it matters much more than what you say. If you are on the telephone, you need to pay greater attention to your vocals.

Last week I went to an organization that requested a one-hour workshop on resiliency. It was promoted inside the company as a short, lunch-time seminar for anyone who was interested.

This topic has been very popular as of late. With a rash of downsizing, salary cuts, hiring freezes, re-orgs, and process changes; employees tell me they are pretty stressed right now.

Besides the HR person who booked it, only five signed up for the workshop. Of those, only one other person showed up. The three of us had a fun and meaningful conversation on the topic. I quite enjoyed myself and believe the other two found the workshop to be a valuable use of their time.

Afterwards the HR manager and I were scratching our heads, trying to figure out the reason for such low attendance at this workshop and others like it that have been offered during the past couple years.

Since I’ve been reflecting on this problem, I thought other leaders with training responsibilities might be interested in a list of the possibilities. Can’t say which apply within this organization or yours, but I bet many of the following problems contributed to the low attendance.

1. Poor publicity.
2. Everyone is too busy.
3. Everyone thinks he or she is too busy.
4. Everyone wants to be perceived by others (especially the boss) as too busy.
5. No encouragement from managers to attend.
6. Training is considered a perk rather than a necessity.
7. People believe they already know everything they need for their jobs.
8. History of boring, poorly delivered workshops.
9. Topic isn’t obviously relevant.
10. Offered on employee’s free time (i.e. lunch hour).
11. Scheduled at bad times of the month or bad times of the day.
12. Everyone’s afraid that attending is a sign of weakness or deficiency.
13. No incentive for attending.
14. Fire-fighting culture that doesn’t value prevention.
15. Leadership has strong bias for short-term results.
16. Isn’t mandatory.

That’s all the ideas I can come up with. What would you add to the list? And more importantly, what have you done to overcome some of these?

Photo by Max Wolfe

All or Nothing

The “all or nothing” approach means that everyone agrees on the “right” answer. If they don’t all agree, the team does nothing. The process is slow and can be quite painful. Since not reaching a decision often feels like failure, the majority pressures the minority to conform so that they can all feel “successful.”

This approach is good when doing nothing is preferable to making the wrong decision. In a capital murder case, all the jurors must agree to a death sentence before it is imposed. The system was created to minimize the chance of killing an innocent person. In business situations, such dramatic circumstances are few and far between, meaning that this approach is seldom a good choice for the team. In those rare situations, this approach might be just the thing that prevents the company from making a “fatal” decision.

Majority Rules

Most people are comfortable with the idea of voting to reach a decision. It’s democratic, expedient, and generally considered to be fair. Unfortunately it doesn’t always produce good results. Since it’s so easy, groups often jump to this method rather than doing the hard work of wrestling with the issues. By giving everyone an equal say in the decision, it discounts expertise. It can also hurt a team’s cohesiveness because after the vote the team is now split into winners and losers. Instead of supporting the decision, the minority usually continues resisting the decision, making implementation difficult or even impossible. Voting is seldom a good approach for a decision that really matters.

It is an excellent choice when the group needs a quick decision and the outcome isn’t going to have any serious consequences. Choosing where to hold the next meeting, narrowing a long list down to the top 3 – 5 options, or selecting food for a company event might be a good decisions for voting. In each situation, making the perfect decision probably isn’t worth the time and energy.

Authority rules

In this approach, the group defers the decision to an authority. This might be the meeting leader, a perceived expert, or anyone else the group thinks could and should make the decision. This approach is quick and painless for the group. The problem is that the authority may not be an expert and end up making a poor decision.
Like the “majority rules” approach, this works well in situations when no one much cares about the outcome. It should also be considered when the issue is strictly personal preference, and one person’s preference is as good as another person’s. Finally, it a great choice when the decision requires expertise the group does not have and a true expert is available.

Consensus

The approach best suited for making most important decisions is consensus. A group has reached consensus when everyone can and will support the decision. This doesn’t mean everybody agrees on the best choice, but they have found a choice they can all support. Consensus promotes hard thinking that really gets at the issues. It’s slow and often painful, but when the group finally reaches consensus, it has developed a solution that will have the support it needs to be implemented. Since consensus requires so much energy, the group should agree that the outcome of the decision is worth the effort. Here are a couple situations that would be ideal for using consensus: 1) Changing the organization’s structure, 2) Developing a strategic plan, 3) Designing a new product. In each situation, people probably do care deeply about the outcome, and their support will be required to successfully implement the decision.
All four of the decision-making approaches can lead the group to a decision. The important thing is matching the approach and the situation. Choosing the right approach will help the group avoid doing the wrong things, speed through decisions that don’t warrant the time, and focus efforts on those decisions that will have the greatest impact on success.

We’ve all sat in meetings that suddenly go off track. One of the participants tosses out an idea or asks a question that has little to do with the topic at hand. Before you know it, the group has diverted off topic and is dealing with the question before them.

Many times the person who took over the meeting did so unintentionally. In other cases, the people know exactly what they are doing. They knew that what they want to discuss is not on the agenda, but don’t care.

In either case meeting hijackers are a real problem.  They keep groups from achieving their meeting goals and can be a drag on morale. This is how to deal with them.

The minute the hijacker tries to take control, stop things by acknowledging the comment and suggesting the group review the purpose and agenda to determine if and where the hijacker’s issue fits into the agenda.

Provide the group with a written agenda in advance. If there is a piece of paper that states the order of business, people are far less likely to hijack the meeting.  And if they do, it is more likely that others will help you get things back on track.

Finally, ask for input prior to the meeting. In addition, quickly poll the meeting participants at the onset of the meeting to see if  any new burning concerns have arisen since planning the agenda.  That way you can anticipate what might come up and be ready for it.  Better yet, you can amend the agenda to deal with the issues that are most important to people.

There are plenty of times when employees should be learning skills that the managers have already mastered, or at least should have mastered at some point along the way. Here’s the problem, employees don’t see it or believe it. Sometimes being a good manager means going first, even if it’s something you’ve already seen.

As a trainer I sometimes show a video. Trainers rule #1 when showing a video: Watch along with the participants. It helps create the impression that this is an interesting and worthwhile video. Also know that I’ve seen some of these videos more than 100 times…I could be the understudy for any of the actors. And still I watch because it supports the learning process.

If you are a manager, be aware of your actions. Your employees are watching and what you do (or don’t do) makes a difference.

It’s tough being in charge.

People familiar with continuous improvement principles know that the last step in any activity should be an evaluation of performance. Meetings are no different.

Use the last couple minutes during a meeting to evaluate the group’s meeting performance. Then apply the lessons learned to future meetings.

What are you trying to learn during an evaluation? Here the some of the basic questions the evaluation should address:

• Was the meeting well planned?
• Did we achieve the planned objectives?
• Were the right people involved in the meeting?
• Did people come prepared?
• Did we manage our time wisely?
• How well did we manage the interaction between participants?
• What did we do well that we should keep on doing?
• What did we do that we should avoid doing in future meetings?
• What didn’t we do that we should have done?

There are lots of ways of quickly evaluating the meeting. Here are several simple options.

1)  Draw a line down the middle of a flip chart or a white board. On one half write the word “Keep” and on the other half the word “Change.” Ask people to reflect on the meeting and yell out things they think should be kept or changed for the next meeting.

2)  Each person gives the meeting a letter grade (A-F). After recording the grades, ask people for one or two reasons they graded the meeting as they did.

3)  Distribute a short survey card at the end of the meeting that asks people to comment directly on the evaluation questions.

It doesn’t matter how you collect the information. It only matters that you do collect and use it. The insights gained will lead to better meetings.

Some people can be awfully quiet in a group. In meetings they sit there and don’t say a word. If you invite them to say something, they look uncomfortable that you are talking to them. As a person who leads a lot of meetings, I’m often unsure about how best to involve these quiet ones without being disrespectful. I try anyway.

Here’s the approach I usually take when faced with people who are noticeably quiet. It involves five steps, taken in order.

• Observe to figure out what I can about them. I’m trying to determine if they are engaged or not. I want to consider if perhaps they are remaining quiet in reaction to an intimidating or highly verbal group. I might try to gauge their emotional state.
• Call on them subtly and see if they respond. I might subtly direct a question to them using eye contact or a hand gesture. If they choose to ignore my subtle invitation, I can move to someone else without calling lots of unwanted attention to this person’s choice to not respond.
• Call on the person by name. The trick here is to ask a fairly simple question for which there is no wrong answer. Preference questions work great. Suppose the group is debating two options, you could say something like, “Joe, which option are you leaning towards at this point and why?”
• If nothing seems to be working, I would normally talk to the person in private at a break or after the meeting. I would express my desire for everyone to share his ideas, share my observation about his lack of involvement, and then try to engage him in a conversation about reasons for his silence and ideas for helping him be more engaged in future discussions.
• My last course of action is to remind myself that everyone is different and just because someone isn’t talking doesn’t mean the person isn’t engaged and may even be contributing to the meeting in some way that I cannot recognize. If he has something to say and wants it said, he can and will make the choice to say it.

Photo by Billy Rowlinson

The next time you’re asked to lead one of these sessions, use the following techniques and strategies to unleash the group’s creative spirit.

Prepare the Group

Begin with the assumption that people have other places they would rather be and other things they would rather be doing. Assume they are distracted. Knowing this, you need to prepare the group and help it focus. Here are several techniques.

• Engage them in an activity. The trick is to make it interesting enough that the participants can’t help but pay attention. You might ask them to solve a puzzle, listen to a song, or play a silly game. Laughing and smiling are two indicators of a group that is engaged.

• Set the stage. Adults typically aren’t willing to do anything without a good reason. Spend a few minutes explaining what you want to do, why you want to do it, and how they might benefit by participating.

• Create a safe environment. If you are asking participants to be creative, you are also asking them to take a risk. It’s your job to minimize the risk. Start by first identifying the specific concerns. Then agree on ground rules to protect participant safety. Examples might include: “The person who submitted an idea will never be tied to the idea.” “You do not have to believe in or even like the ideas you submit.” “Offering a suggestion doesn’t mean you will get stuck with all the work.”

Separate Generation from Evaluation

People are afraid to throw out ideas because they think someone will criticize them. This severely inhibits creativity. The way around this is to focus on generating new ideas without any evaluation. This is easier said than done. Here’s how to keep the criticism at bay.

• Speed. Don’t give people time to think. Idea generation is a spontaneous activity. Evaluation requires thinking. If you want to create a list of ideas, give yourselves a time limit and then use the limit to increase the sense of urgency. Setting the pace with music or with a timer can also keep the ideas popping without time for evaluation.

• Quantity. Give yourselves a goal for the number of ideas you want. Keep pushing the group toward the number, and they will quickly forget about the quality of the ideas.

• Build on ideas of others. Allow people to add their ideas only if they can build on the current idea with a statement that begins with “Yes, and…” This forces listening, and what they hear stimulates new ideas.

Create a Fun Setting

Business meetings need not be boring. If you can accomplish what you set out to do and have fun in the process, you have just created a magical experience. Here are some easy techniques for adding fun to the creativity session.

• Take advantage of all the creativity research. Although some people will see it as corny; incorporating toys, colors, music, and movement into your meetings can serve as wonderful creativity stimuli.

• Create drama. It doesn’t take much to “stage” the meeting so that it’s more interesting. A big, ticking timer does wonders in helping the team pay attention to time. Splitting into sub-groups for some friendly competition (e.g. seeing which group generates the most ideas) usually notches up the energy. And there’s nothing like role playing specific scenarios and acting out case studies to put people into a creative mindset.

• Get comfortable. Creativity is fun and free-flowing. It’s hard to achieve this in a formal environment. Find a comfortable setting, and encourage the participants to dress and act informally.

• Add fresh perspectives. Invite people to the session who have no formal “expertise” in the topic. Rules and assumptions do not limit these folks. Their questions, ideas, and challenges will help the group uncover dangerous assumptions and push the group to explore uncharted territory.

Successfully leading a creativity session doesn’t require bizarre and wacky behavior. You don’t need to be an artist, musician, or one of the other so called “creative” types of people. Ideas don’t need to be forced out of the group. They want to burst forth all on their own. You just need to make sure that nothing gets in their way.

Think about a task that you have to do, one that you don’t enjoy but feel is necessary. For me cleaning the house and exercising both come to mind. Consider for a moment the amount of energy you put into doing this task, the satisfaction you get from completing it, and the quality of the results.

Now contrast this with something you enjoy. For me this could be making a presentation for a group. Again consider your energy, satisfaction and results.

Last reflection item. Think about the tasks that make up most of what you get paid to do. How much do you enjoy them? Of course every job has some bad parts, but when you think about what you spend most of your time doing; can you say that you genuinely like it? Let’s hope so.

But what if you don’t? Many of us have probably at one point in our lives found ourselves in this situation. With it comes what appears to be the hard, cold facts. You need a job; this one pays pretty well, and you’re not sure you can make a comparable living doing something that you actually like. They might be facts or they might be fears and insecurities finding a voice in you.

If you are currently stuck in this place, it’s time to start exploring your options. The way I see it, you have three of them. You’ll need to figure out which one makes the most sense for you.

• Hang in there and collect the checks. This is generally considered the safest option. After all, it pays the bills, and you know how to do the job. The trouble is that you aren’t happy, and what’s happiness worth to you? Also, what effect is your lack of enthusiasm having on the results, your co-workers, your family, your health?
• Figure out how to reconfigure your job to better match your interests. This option isn’t easy. It takes some creativity. It requires a flexible employer. It takes some courage to explore the options. After all, by asking for what you want, aren’t you also implying that you are currently unhappy in your job? Most would see this as a dangerous thing to admit. But with a little finesse, it’s an option that should be on the table.
• Look for a new job. The saddest story I hear is from people who have been working in one place for 20+ years and don’t like the organizations or the jobs. When I ask them why they stayed, they almost always look at me like I’m crazy. Apparently the reason is obvious. They didn’t have a choice. Oh really? I don’t buy it. There are plenty of ways to make a living, and I’ve got to believe that there’s something for everyone. Your job is to figure out what that is and then take some initiative in making it happen.

I can’t say what option is best for anyone. After all, it’s your job and your life. Only you can know what’s right. My only bit of advice is that you give serious consideration to all the options. Once you’ve figure it out, develop your plan and take some action. Each of us is loaded with potential, we just need to find the right environment to unleash it.

The second, while typically louder and nastier, is actually easier to deal with. The reason is that you have lots of people who don’t appreciate the behavior. There is strength in numbers. If collectively the group provides the bully with unpleasant consequences, the person may decide that the bullying behaviors aren’t working and try something new (and hopefully less nasty).

The first is the bigger problem. If you are on the receiving end and are the sole target for the bad behavior, you may feel more vulnerable to attack. In these cases, you have three actions you can take in the following sequence.

1. Talk to the bully. Be direct and respectful. Describe the behavior. State clearly that you don’t like it and that you want the behavior to stop. Hopefully for many people who weren’t completely aware how their actions were affecting you, this conversation might be enough to stop the behavior. As an option, you could add a final component to your message. And this would be stating what action you will take next if it doesn’t stop.
2. Report the behavior. If the person is too scary to confront or you have already done so without a positive result, it’s time to tell someone who can help you. In most cases, discussing the matter with your supervisor is the logical first step. Alternatives include an HR rep, union rep, or another trusted manager. It usually helps to have details about the behavior: What, when, how often, impacts, etc. This sort of documentation makes it easier for them to take action on your behalf.
3. Remove yourself from the situation. Sometimes the person just won’t stop the bullying. And in some of those cases, people aren’t able or willing to help you. It’s then that finding a way out becomes a viable last resort. This could mean asking for another assignment or to be physically moved to a work location that’s farther from the bully. It could mean transferring to another department. If all else fails, it could mean looking for work in another organization.

Bullies do a tremendous amount of damage. Typically they won’t change their behavior without some sort of intervention. If you are on the receiving end of this bad behavior, it’s up to you to get the ball rolling.