A SURE-FIRE LISTENING EXERCISE THAT KEEPS MEETINGS MEANINGFUL

In organizations worldwide, people meet to share information — for some reason or another. Generally, these interactions must be effective, because we continue to schedule and attend meetings in person, on the phone — and to a certain extent, via e-mail.

But what happens when this "sharing" becomes a passive exercise where we read a laundry list of current activity, with other meeting attendees metaphorically drooling in their sleep? Some meeting attendees disengage, others feel that their time is wasted, morale sinks, and they don’t necessarily get the exchange of information and ideas that would help them do their jobs better.

Effective listening can help turn meaningless meetings — and the zombie-like participants — on its head. How? It can spur questions, serve as a catalyst for ideas, redirect a monologue into a dialogue, clarify action items, and result in a more invigorated team.

While listening skills take time and effort to learn and enhance, here’s a quick tip that will shake up the normal drone of a meeting and force participants to listen before they speak. A side benefit? It’s fun.

Tip:
At the beginning of your meeting (preferably a staff meeting, where people are more comfortable, and thus likely to be open to an exercise such as this), propose and get agreement from everyone to do the following:

• Throughout the meeting, each participant has to start his or her comments with a question.

• The question must be genuine (as opposed to a joke), and in relation to the discussion — rather than asking, "You don’t say?" just to get off the hook and dive into a topic most important to him or her.

The difficulty of this exercise helps shine a light on the rarity with which people inquire to find out more about a person’s contribution, intention, assumptions, etc., and how purposeful a meeting can be if participants have a higher common goal such as sincere listening.

Second-generation tip:
In everyday interactions, look for ways to ask a question before responding to a person’s comment. Notice what you learn about the other person — and yourself.

Hungry for more tips? Visit the IvySea Brain Food Cafeteria