It’s Stephen Hunt from Hunt Hospitality International. Today, I’m going to be discussing with you the topic of ‘Rules of Engagement for your meetings.
Now, my executive team and I came up with these rules of engagement, we all read up a book by Brene Brown, it is worth looking Brene up. She’s a very, very successful sociologist. So we all read the book, and we cherry-picked from this book, the really important points for us, for us to have very productive meetings.
Now, I’ve been to many, many meetings, and most of them go for too long, and take up too much of your precious time. So what we’ve done is condensed all the really good things into our meetings, and we’ve come up with the following list.
So firstly, quiet space, phone off, nondisclosure. So all the meetings that we have with our team are all any information that is brought, if you don’t want that information repeated, you say, I don’t want this discussed outside the meeting. So, therefore, everyone is not in the position, or should not record any of that discussion. So nondisclosure. Cohesion is important, you want everyone involved in the meeting. So we want to have a proactive meeting. Some of the things to do with being proactive and cohesive.
All of the agenda items are sent out to all of the attendants well in advance. And what I try to do is send some notes about what I’ll be discussing, so that by the time I’ve been to the meeting, everyone has an understanding of what I’m going to be talking about. And I encourage everyone else to do that, which makes it a far more cohesive and faster meeting. Listen, the way you want to be heard, this is crucial.
So you need to be active listening, everybody should be taking notes. And at the end of the meeting, you delegate certain tasks and timeframes. And you have a minute taker, but if everyone’s taking notes, everyone’s paying attention. And active listening involves asking questions. Can I get some clarity on that? Can I come back to you on that? And finally, probably one of the most important rules that we have in our meetings is this.
If someone comes up with an idea, you cannot sh** can that Id unless you’ve got a better idea. Or you can ask and say “Can I get some more clarity and information on that?” So what it means is there are no naysayers in the meeting. It’s a productive meeting. That’s moving forward.
Thanks very much, guys. Please contact me at the “Contact” link on the top side of this page and I look forward to talking to you again soon.
