Leaders, what can you do to ensure your meetings consistently help participants flourish?

/ mkessenburg

Photo by fauxels

International Christian school leaders, consistently use your meetings to help participants flourish! Why?

  • Because Christian education is all about getting others (including meeting participants) to flourish!
  • Because consistently using meetings to get others flourishing helps meeting participants get inspired, feel better, feel like they belong, and learn new things.
  • Because not consistently using meetings to get others flourishing increases the likelihood that participants will experience apathy, frustration, disconnection, and boredom.
  • Because consistently using your meetings help others flourish is a best practice.

Bottom line: Consistently use meetings as an opportunity to help others flourish by experiencing the 5 elements of flourishing: passionate purpose, resilient well-being, healthy relationships, transformative learning, and helpful resources. 

Photo by Ann H

Why don’t meetings consistently help participants flourish? What comes to mind for me includes:

(1) A dislike of meetings and a view that meetings just get in the way (instead of a love of meetings and a view that meetings are where things get done). Leaders, if you don’t like meetings as much as athletes like games, there’s a problem.

(2) Low expectations (instead of high expectations). Remember, you tend to get what you expect!

(3) Insufficient training (instead of thorough training). What training does your school provide in leading meetings? What training have you taken and implemented?

(4) No system-wide standards, processes, and/or templates (instead of clearly established, user-friendly meeting standards, processes, and templates). Enough said.

(5) Having meetings for things that could have been covered in an email (instead of having meetings only for things that require in-person interaction). Boring—meetings that cover things that could have been addressed by email are boring, boring, boring.

(6) Doing logistics, team goals, and strategic issues all in one meeting—what Patrick Lencioni refers to as “meeting stew” (instead of having separate meetings for discussing logistics, focusing on team goals, and addressing strategic issues).

(7) Lack of preparation by the meeting leader (instead of careful, thorough preparation by the meeting leader). No documented agenda (shared at least 24 hours before the meeting), no clear meeting outcome(s), and people at the meeting who don’t really need to be there.

(8) Insufficient accountability (instead of sufficient accountability). No follow up on the meeting action steps.

(9) Lack of focus on results, measurement of results, and assessment of results (instead of focusing on results and finding ways to get even better results). Meetings are about getting the meeting over with, not about getting results.



Meetings can be great, counters Mamie K. Stewart, author of Momentum: Creating Effective, Engaging and Enjoyable Meetings. Stewart covers a range of practical topics, including agendas, norms, roles, engagement, and notes. And she says that what helps meeting be great includes:

(1) Participants preparing for meetings, actively participating in meetings, and doing the follow up work.

(2) Using meetings in order to decide, ideate, produce, plan, align, and connect.

(3) Defining your desired outcome for your meeting. Try this sentence stem: As a result of this meeting, we’ll have ____ (a decision on X, a list of Y, alignment on Z…).

Stewart writes “When meetings are done well, they are a boost to productivity. Meetings are capable of catapulting work forward by providing a space for team members to make decisions, build relationships, share and enhance ideas, solve problems, think creatively and critically together, learn from one another, and move into alignment. Meetings have the power to foster great, collaborative environments that cultivate trust and unity” (p. 67).

What else comes to mind for me for why meetings don’t consistently help participants flourish? A lack of intentionally getting meeting participants to experience the 5 elements of flourishing during meetings. This isn’t hard to remedy, for example:

(1) Get participants experiencing passionate purpose by reviewing the mission and connecting it to the meeting outcome(s). 

(2) Get participants experiencing resilient well-being by getting participants using their strengths and by asking participants to share a win and a challenge.

(3) Get participants experiencing healthy relationships by encouraging vulnerability, transparency, and healthy conflict (where conflict is seen as the pursuit of the best idea).

(4) Get participants experiencing transformative learning by discussing an article, asking each participant to commit to an action step, and then having participants report on the results of their action steps at the subsequent meeting.

(5) Get participants experiencing helpful resources by using a documented meeting agenda that includes things like the meeting outcome(s), norms, roles, which of the 5 elements of flourishing are being addressed, specific items to be addressed (possibly framed as questions), including checking in and wrapping up.

Looking for additional ways to help others flourish during meetings?
(1) Check out Quick Win!

(2) Try this ChatGPT prompt: What can leaders do to ensure their meetings consistently help participants flourish in terms of each of the following 5 things: (1) passionate purpose, (2) resilient well-being, (3) healthy relationsihps, (4) transformative learning, and (5) helpful resources?

Photo by Ann H

What can you do to ensure your meetings consistently help participants flourish? One thing I’ve found helpful is starting meetings by asking participants to share a recent high and a recent low.

Here’s what else I’m learning from Stewart’s Momentum: Creating Effective, Engaging and Enjoyable Meetings:

(1) “Meetings can be a powerful lever for change. With better meetings, you may see an increase in employee retention, a decrease in sick days, and changes to other aspects of your business. As meetings become healthier, your organization becomes healthier” (p. 72).

(2) “When you’re running a decision-making meeting, it’s helpful to define norms specifically based on how you’ll make the decision and how people should behave once the decision is made” (p. 156).

(3) “Ideally, everyone in the meeting feels welcome and openly shares their thoughts. Unfortunately, most meetings are far from the ideal. When people aren’t comfortable, confident, or engaged in a meeting, the conversation suffers, diminishing the good work your meeting was intended to do” (p. 202).

Here are some blog posts related to getting others flourishing:

What about you? How do you feel about consistently using your meetings to help others flourish? Why don’t meetings consistently help participants flourish? What can you do to ensure your meetings consistently help participants flourish? 

Get flourishing!

Michael