Cultivating the Art of Leadership

There is a genre of business book called the "leadership fable" (think: Leadership and Self-Deception).

Patrick Lencioni's Death by Meeting is another such book. The core premise is that bad meetings, mis-managed meetings, in fact all the meetings we would rather not attend share two things in common:

• A lack of drama - avoiding constructive conflict and passionate exchanges creates boredom
• A lack of context and structure -- mashing different types of meetings together dulls the edge of each topic

Lencioni likes to ask us why we can sit mesmerized for two hours at a movie, when the content and the characters are entirely irrelevent to our lives, and yet we loathe regular one-hour meetings, when the content and characters impact us directly, and the format is interactive.

The first answer is "drama." A movie has conflict and unfolds along an emotional story line that moves toward resolution of tension among its characters. This keeps us interested.

In most business meetings, however, conflict, tension, and emotions are seen as getting in the way of moving through "the list" (the agenda, the action items, the reports, etc.) and being efficient. Lots of conflict stays subterranean, emerging in private conversations outside of the meetings where we had an opportunity to move toward resolution but opted to stay silent.

A lot of leadership work comes back to enrolling people around "why care" -- why care about the vision, customers, and, yes, even meetings. Lencioni talks about this as the equivalent to a "hook" or the "plot line" in a movie. Without mining for conflict, we can't move toward any kind of resolution.

When leaders talk about "increasing profitability," the conversation is not always framed in terms of market needs, strategic initiatives to be funded, or the competitive landscape that keeps changing. Instead, belt-tightening exercises can feel punitive if not placed in a frame of "why care" (the "drama" piece).

The second habit that creates such dreadful meetings is the lack of useful context and structure. Information is different from debate, which is different again from strategic reflection on priorities and goals. Lencioni argues that most organizations need four different kinds of meetings (yes, more meetings), each with its associated dramatic element:

1. The daily check-in meeting (news headlines (5 minutes)
2. The weekly tactical meeting (weekly sitcom, drama series - 1 hour)
3. The monthly strategic meeting (movie - 2 hours)
4. The quarterly off-site meeting (mini-series - 6 hours or more)

Even if you divide out the information sharing from the tactical resolution of project obstacles from the strategic initiatives and personnel reviews, to be effective, your meetings should clearly be in service of your explicit goals and objectives.

With the possibility of more initiatives than resources, it's always important to keep organizational goals and objectives in view, asking: "How are we making progress -- and how do we know?"

You may need to call a meeting, but a compelling plot line helps you stay focused on making progress and not just "getting through" yet another boring meeting.