532 | Three Rules For Leading Effective Meetings

Chris LoCurto 0:00
For some leaders, meetings can be something they look forward to. For others, especially those caught in the leadership Crazy Cycle. It's completely something else. We're gonna dive into that coming up next.

Chris LoCurto 0:23
Welcome to the Chris LoCurto show where we discuss leadership and life and discover that business is what you do, not who you are.

Unknown Speaker 0:35
Welcome to the show, folks. I hope you're having a fabulous day wherever you are. On today's show. I am joined by two amazing men former shoe model Joel Fortner. Welcome to the show, Joel. Yeah. Thank you. It was a successful run there for a while. It was good back in the early 80s. Right. I love your model's successful run. Right job Joel, current star of the Milan runway. Brian, Alex. Welcome, Brian. And I'm not telling what I'm modeling. But I'm the star of the show. That's right. So we've got some really fun things lined up for today's show. What is it? It's another three-rules episode? And what we're talking about today? Is our meetings unnecessary evil? Are they vital to communication? Are they actually helpful to the team I know a lot of people who listen to this are going I stink in hate meetings meeting sucks? Well, for some leaders, you know, maybe if you're a high I or maybe if you're high political meetings can be something that you look forward to.

For others, especially those that are caught in the leadership Crazy Cycle. As we said, it can be something else. There are lots of reasons why meetings should be important to leaders. But here are some more reasons why meetings are important for you and your team. Leadership happens. Getting people together, reinforcing and training, people getting developed, celebrating wins, getting testimonials, discussing culture, seeing your team grow, discussing the mission, the vision, the values, learning, as a group together discussing, understanding, taxing the collective intelligence. But this is not every leader's mindset or thought process. So the question is, why is that? Why is there tension when it comes to meetings? So for this, I would like to go to the former shoe model. I don't know why Joe's shoes, but hey, there you have it. Joel Fortner, we're talking you are talking about like baking where you like, you know, the the the shoe what is it called the shoe dough that they make? What is that I'm talking about? No, I don't know. This is just gonna be a nice thing. It's just gonna be an us thing. Anyways, guys, when I'm not effectively leading people in my life, you're baking, to watch the Great British Bake Off.

And these things are so inspiring to me. It's such a great show. But you know, seriously on this meeting, I'm like, Why? Why did meeting stink in some people's minds? I think that a lot of leaders can have an assumption that meetings are easy. And like these are like, Yeah, we should do that we should meet that's easy. That's no problem. And they're not trained words, legitimately not trained on how actually to lead meetings? Well, we get together an expectation is we I guess we're going to talk about this thing. And the expectation or the assumption is it's going to go well, not factoring in it's a bunch of different people with different personality styles. Not everybody wants to be there. Maybe people don't even know why they're there. Maybe they're the wrong people in the room and all these things that come on. But I think we can have expectations that meetings are supposed to be this easy thing or and then long ago in our life, we realized this stinks. This isn't going very well. I don't like this. I don't like leading them. I don't like arguing I don't like conflict. Do we really need to have meetings to be successful? I listen to this one thought leader out there that says I don't need to have meetings. So I'm going to subscribe to that. And let's just move forward. I think it is amazing how, you know the thought of how can we get away with not having meetings, you have both sides, like you just said, You're right. You've got those that love the meeting process. You have folks that you know, like me, I love to tax the collective intelligence. I love to find out what I'm missing. I want to gain a quality perspective. So for me, meetings have an incredible purpose. But I think so many folks are set to meet

Unknown Speaker 5:00
hangs up because they believe they're supposed to. And then they have no mission for the meeting. They have no clue what it's supposed to look like, they have no clue why people think it's so great. And then here's what can tend to happen. The dollar signs that the leader, or the business owner who starts calculating the payrolls sitting around the table of people who aren't giving good quality input, you know, of the dude who's over in the corner, who's doodling on his notepad, because he doesn't understand that personality style. You know, the folks that can't possibly give input because they weren't prepared ahead of time. And somebody's calculating the payroll around the table, go and forget this. This is stupid. If I wanted this, you know, I just give people time off.

Unknown Speaker 5:43
The frustration is not because of Meetings Suck. You know, it's funny, we do. So many strat plans, and in there, we'll find out we'll have a new leadership team that comes in and they struggle with meetings, and I'll say, hey, there's a great ebook out there by some guy. I don't know what his name is. But oh, yeah. Chris Accardo called why your Meetings Suck. And it's like, nobody sitting around the table has read that thing, right? And there's information on how to fix it, what to do with it. But here's the funny thing, how many people actually go find it? How many people go, I'm struggling with meetings, I'm finding out that, you know, I feel like Meetings Suck. But um, instead of doing something about it, I'm just gonna stop doing meetings. And then they end up affecting the whole company. So yes, there's definitely tension there. But the tension, isn't that meeting suck as a whole. The tension is you're not doing meetings correctly. So with that, the stage of Milan, I don't even I

Unknown Speaker 6:48
don't even know what that means.

Unknown Speaker 6:51
Mad.

Unknown Speaker 6:54
Oh, man, well, yeah, I mean, we're kind of dancing around the issue here, we're walking around the table, let's sit down at the table. And we're going to deal with a couple of rules. But you know, some of the things that come to mind. I mean, there's got to be a personality that comes into play, you mentioned, you know, high, high political, the motivators there. I'd love to dig into that as we get into some of these rules. But, you know, some people approach it with this high optimism, oh, it's gonna be great. Do not plan to show up. And, you know, for them, it's great, because it's a social event. And for others, you know, your DS, your C's, they dread or they're like, uh, you know, I do I have to give input here, you know, and so a lot of leaders approach the idea of meetings, it's a battle of the wills, it's it, you know, a lot of excuse making that happens, blame-shifting rabbit trails, wasted time, you know, wasted payroll like you're saying, and so the core question that we're trying to answer today is, Can meetings be something that leaders actually look forward to? And, you know, for that matter, their team members? And, you know, we're not saying it's got to be a party every time and you've got cake and ice cream? And you know, balloons everywhere, but what would make it effective? Can they be helpful? Can it be even energizing? And hopefully, we'll get that today. And so moving into the rules, if this is your first time hearing about the three rules, we just, we make up three rules, kind of arbitrarily. And we try to agree, disagree reframe the question, reframe the answer in a way, in line with how we do business here, at the point main group, and so looking at this through the lens of the first rule, here we go, how to make your meetings more effective. Number one, a new mindset. And this is not the emperor's new clothes. This is like really having a change of opinion about why meetings matter. And so if we were to substitute the word meetings, for high-quality in-person communication and discussion with positive and effective outcomes, then it tends to take on a little bit of a different light. And so starting with that mindset, let's unpack that. Okay, mindset. Let's say we agree on that. What would that new mindset look like? What does that entail? You know, I think the mindset and perspective that we need to have is remembering that meetings should always be attached to a strategy or to a purpose.

Otherwise, why are you having the meeting? That meeting should be like they're always in context. If you don't need the meeting, Chuck the meeting, if you have the standard meeting, and you don't need it that week, Chuck the meeting, we don't need to do it. We shouldn't just meet for meeting's sake. But what we should look at is say if you've got really clear, I make a really big picture to small hear if you've got a really clear mission, and you've got a clear vision or you've got clear visions, meaning destinations you're trying to get to and you've backed out and you've developed strategies

Unknown Speaker 10:00
for how to get to those things and implement those things, you should have also discovered, what meetings do you need. What's purposeful? When are your checking meetings? When you're one in one meeting? When are your team meetings? When are your strategy review meetings? When are your progress meetings, whatever the meetings are? The point is they exist within mission, vision, and strategies, rather than we're gonna have meetings, why meetings are tactical, they're very tactical and meant to move things forward and to facilitate accountability and COMMUNICATION AND, and OR to solve problems. Yes, one of my favorite meetings I had recently in the last few months was that proverbial, I had a meeting to talk about it meeting. And so that sounds like oh, my gosh, you did that's even worse. Let me reveal what I was doing. We were having a quarterly planning meeting months and months ago. And this was a thankfully rare time when a meeting did not go well. And then it's well, that's not acceptable for a meeting to not go well and not talk about it, we're going to debrief it.

And we're going to find out guys what happened. And we're going to talk about communication. And we're going to have a meeting to debrief a failure. It wasn't a meeting to debrief and let's talk about a meeting because this was about culture, this was about communication because we had a meeting that was set up as part of a strategy. And that key meeting did not go well. Well, we have a strategy that we're still trying to implement, we still need to move things forward. So we need to have a meeting about this meeting. But the biggest point is like don't just have meetings that set in without a context. So go to other types of meetings like leadership meetings, if it's not part of a strategy of saying, Well, why do I have these leadership meetings, I need to have one on ones because it facilitates empowering, and setting up that team member for success, it facilitates great communication point is there's got to be context. There's got to be a purpose. Yeah. Okay, so pop quiz, hotshot.

Unknown Speaker 12:06
Can anyone name the movie I Don't Know, pop quiz, or Hotshot? It was speed it was dead. What's his name? Dennis. Something, Dennis? I don't know. Anyways, so here's the question.

Unknown Speaker 12:19
What is the number one purpose of a meeting? Just to waste time? That's it. Communication notes communication, choice. Communication. It's, it's, it's there's no other reason. There's nothing else. There's no point. I mean, except for the cake and ice cream thing, which I didn't know.

Unknown Speaker 12:44
I mean, really, the meeting is just the context for the communication indications, instead of instead of a an email or a text message, or the other media that we could utilize for that, hey, go listen to this or go do that, you know, it's it sets the context for your communication. Correct. So here's the deal. In every meeting, the number one purpose, and the number one mission is to communicate.

Unknown Speaker 13:17
Now, what it is to communicate that is there's a variable, you know, number of things that that we could be communicating, we could be brainstorming, we could you know, we have something super important all that stuff is is ancillary. Right? That's the second part of the purpose of a meeting, right is what is the context of the meeting,

Unknown Speaker 13:38
the thing that people run into, and Brian, you kind of pointed this out from the person sitting in the meeting, but let's talk about the person leading the meeting. If listening to this episode, a high D goes, Aha, see, I don't need any meetings, then you completely miss the point. The point is to not have crappy meetings. Instead, you're supposed to have really good meetings that are purposeful and communicate what you need to communicate. So here's the deal. If Meetings Suck for you, then you can have a tendency of just not having meetings, and then you create a bigger issue. People don't know what the heck is going on. They don't know what's happening. They don't know what they're supposed to be doing. They don't know if they're winning. You know, all of these different meetings, you can have a meeting to brainstorm stuff, which should be set up properly. well in advance, especially according to the personality style in the room, you don't just call that meeting and expect people to brainstorm. You could have a meeting to celebrate wins. Why? So you get the team fired up to keep winning. There's all different types of purposes for meetings. The problem is if we look at a meeting as a meeting as a meeting, and we say meetings have sucked for me, I'm just not going to do them. Then we break down communication in our business, the number one issue number one Number

Unknown Speaker 15:00
One number one issue and all the businesses that we have ever worked with is a lack of high levels of quality communication. But number one issue. So you have to look at this as a leader and one, check your own personality style. If you're a high D or high C, you probably hate these times, you know, you hate being in these meetings. And you have to ask yourself, what makes it purposeful? Why am I doing this, because somebody needs to know something, somebody needs to be communicated well, with something so that they can go and run with it. Or they can go be a part of it, or they could go share it with their team or so big key is change your mindset that meetings are powerful tools in your tool belt, that if used correctly, if set up correctly, actually inspire the team actually helps the team to move forward actually helps the team to know what's going on. Because here's the converse, don't communicate anything with your team, and guess what's going to develop fear? Fear is going to develop because the team doesn't know what's going on what they're supposed to be doing, and how things are getting done. And then guess what people are gonna think that the ship is going down, and they're gonna start rejecting, right, they're gonna jump off the ship.

So do not have the mindset that because meetings have sucked, I'm done. Forget that stuff. Because that's just dumping it on your shoulders, you're going to create a culture of fear, and you're gonna start losing quality team members. How's that? For mindset? It's mindset. Yeah. And it's fear, it's frustration, it's a sense of the ambiguity for some personality styles is, you know, just torture, you know, and, and so that we've already bled into Rule number two, set the strategy. So set the strategy set, the purpose of that meeting, because if we have no expectations for our meetings, we will hit it every time. You can't have healthy outcomes, effective meetings. Without a clear purpose, you don't get a clear purpose without purposefully sitting down to set the strategy. Maybe that's where you are, maybe meetings have sucked, and you need to sit down with the leaders and say, what do we hope to accomplish? In having this team meeting? Maybe it's, you know, Joe as you said, it's okay, there is no need for this, because we've determined that that purpose does not exist, cancel the meeting, create a new one, if and when you've got purpose behind it, and having set the strategy, then now you have to think about what are the necessary steps that will get us there. And when it doesn't work when there's failure? Like you said, joy, you got to have a debrief, and you look at the failure go, what happened? How did it have Why did it happen? How do we prevent it from happening? Again, we go through our process, but we've got to set the strategy. Any other comments there? We've already talked about rule two without introducing it. But there it is. You got to set the strategy. Any insight into how to do that if people are stuck there? Yeah.

First, I think we have to define what strategy is for so many folks because something that gets convoluted all the time. And I don't understand how is mission vision strategy, or even goals. Right? So we just like to simplify it and say, Hey, everybody, go with what we're saying for right now. And we'll all be on the same page. So the mission is your purpose for anything? Whatever it is. That's your purpose. Right? Why does this exist? So why does this meeting exist? Why does this company exist? Why does my marriage exist? Why does my relationship with God exist? That's your purpose. What's the purpose of this thing? Vision is the destination you're heading to, you should have one mission per area per thing. But you can have 700 destinations because you're constantly going to the next destination. The next one, the next one. And so we very briefly, I'm gonna I'm rushing through this to not make this a four-hour long episode. Everybody's been to the beach or can understand what it's like to be at the beach. You can envision the beach being there, what it's going to be like the games you're going to play the cooler you're going to take down to the beach if you're going to bring an umbrella if you're going to lay out the beach towels, or if you're going to rent lounge chair, whatever it is where you're going to go eat at nighttime, where you're going to stay. That's the destination that we're headed to is the beach. The strategy is how we get to all the steps that it takes for us to get to the beach. And goals are things you can hit along the way. Right? So if we use those definitions, and you're sitting down to one, you have a mission for your meeting. Here's the purpose. The purpose is that I want to brainstorm a new product idea. Let's say that that's what we're doing right? I want to brainstorm a new product idea. What is the strategy?

Unknown Speaker 20:00
CI. To accomplish that? Well, the first thing you have to do is figure out who needs to be in the room, you have to decide who should be a part of this brainstorming session, what a lot of leaders will do is pull the whole team in, I have a whole team, we're stopping during this time of the day, and we're gonna go brainstorm something, they pull everybody in the room, they throw an idea on the table, they're the SS, and C's have no input whatsoever because they haven't had time to process. The i's are jumping, and given all the ideas of how it's going to work, or you know, what they could do to make it better. The DS are telling you, that's probably a really bad idea. You know, I don't know, they're ripping that apart. It's a it's just a free for all. And it's a mess. So what's the strategy? You've got to start by? Who should be in there? What are their personality styles? How are they going to respond? Right? If you've got season SS coming to this room, you've got to tell them and I would tell this to everybody involved, Hey, guys, we're going to have this meeting, it's going to be this far out. Because it's brainstorming for the love, don't book it an hour from now, we're going to do it in two days, here's the thing, we're going to brainstorm this type of product idea, give me three ideas on how to make this work, give me three ideas on how this is going to fail. Give me three alternative ideas, you know, some give them the ability to process through come up with stuff so they can step into the mean, these are the things that you need to do. And of course, there's a lot more stuff, you know, make sure that you're putting a good quality time on the calendar, you're not jacking up, you know, super productive time, make sure that you're communicating clearly in the email, the calendar, invite, yada, yada, yada, there's a whole ton of stuff that you can do to set that strategy. So here's, here's what we're walking in. If we again, there's a lot more, if I laid it all out, we're walking into this meeting, completely prepared

Unknown Speaker 21:56
to start a meeting. And for the eyes in the room, we're going to spend a couple of minutes just talking about how the week has been or how their weekend has gone, or you know what's going on their life, we can have a couple of minutes of just just discussion, free the room up. And then let's hit this thing. And we know what's going to happen. We've got an order of how we're going to process through this. We're going to get the best information we can with what we've done. Here's the converse of this, what people do every day, every week, on a weekly basis. We tell people we're having a meeting, we don't tell them what it's about. We show up in the room, we drop an idea on the table, and we expect greatness.

Unknown Speaker 22:37
How can we possibly expect greatness when our strategy is show up? And then I'll surprise you with what I want you to answer. Right? Answer about. So yes. Is strategy important, insanely important? If you want a productive meeting? Yeah, I would echo that. And when you're this, those leaders are stuck in the leadership Crazy Cycle. It's so difficult to do these things. Because you just don't have time to be this intentional. You're not even thinking about that you're, you're possibly you're not even doing meetings, you're blowing off meetings, you're cancelling meetings, you're moving meetings around, that all these meetings, let's assume they all have purpose and good intent. And meaning consistency I find is a is a hallmark of a great team, that there is consistency of meeting, there's consistency of showing up. There's consistency and communication. And that's where traction happens, and things start getting done. And because you're working cohesively as a team, all of a sudden, the leader isn't there, and they blow it off. They're not there, they move it, they move it again, they don't show up again. And now we haven't met in a month. We haven't met for a month because we're just so busy. And we're so stressed and the team is wondering when we're ever going to meet if we're ever going to meet. And it becomes, as you mentioned, Chris, the fear but it also becomes very frustrating. Assuming that you've got people on your team that actually want to get things done. This is why like leadership, Crazy Cycle, you know, that we that we teach about effective meetings, and we go into that, that learning to lead effective meetings is a key part of getting out of the leadership Crazy Cycle. And so right now, you may have an email be like Man, I've got to make this transition from not doing them to doing them. And I'm gonna have to force them in why so you can delegate and so you can train you can offload things to people rather than an all staying stuck in your brain. And so is the power of the power of going into meetings with such great intentionality. I think that's a really a word that we're talking about today is based having great just intent and intention about your meetings. That because if you're not doing that, as a leader who is going to do that for your meetings, yeah, no, that's great. I love the intentionality, the diligence, and what you said just a second ago, I think is

Unknown Speaker 25:00
super important for high DS and C's, like myself just that consistency the in the communication that gets you traction. I mean, that sounds so hopefully if I can consistently communicate, and like we say around here, high levels of high-quality communication, not just communication, blah, blah, blah, but it's purposeful. And as you said, You've got to take that time, sit down and set that strategy to be intentional. And a lot of the people that don't feel like they have time to have the meeting are the ones that need to have that meeting the most. And that intentional, purposeful, high-quality communication to actually get traction and get them out of some of those cycles that they're currently in. And so that's so important. Moving to rule number three, curb your enthusiasm and curb it up. So here's what we mean. Because I'm thinking of a C and an A D. You know, I don't necessarily share your enthusiasm, Joel, for meetings. And, you know, but as a leader, if you don't love meetings, here's, here's what's going to happen, your team won't love them either. If you as a leader tend to hate meetings, you're gonna guess what your team is going to learn to hate them just like you do. And so yeah, sure, some meetings are necessary, but uninspiring, you know, you mentioned a few moments ago, accountability, checking in these kinds of things are necessary type things. But yeah, not thrilling, okay.

But you've got to personally embrace the opportunity to sit down with your team to communicate well and lead them forward to success, this is going to spur on creativity is going to advance priorities, and set a vision for executing the plan and your communication with your team about the meeting sets the expectations and the energy that they bring in. I love what you said Chris, a minute ago, you got to give them time to once you've set that strategy, you've got to tell them, This is what we're going to have hoped to accomplish. Here's your homework, here's your you know, the preparation process, bring value, bring thought, bring the ideation bring questions, bring insight into the next meeting, and man that is setting your team up for success and leaders. If they'll leverage their meetings, well, they can actually come away feeling fulfilled and energized. I wonder if is that how to give us some examples. When you have felt you come out of a meeting and you go, Man, I would do that meeting all day long. Because of the results, we got the feeling of being energized and the team being empowered. What does that look like from your perspective? So those days, Brian, like when I have tons of internal meetings, like our team, and it's a one-on-one, and it's a leadership development team meeting, and it's another one-on-one, and then it's another kind of meeting. I love those days so much. Because all the meetings like we do meetings pretty darn well here on the team, they are productive, they are high quality, they do move things forward, the communication is on point. And those days are so fulfilling to me because I love leadership. You know, I went to school, you know, half my life ago to do public relations.

But you know what, I ended up loving leadership more than I loved PR. And that's what I gravitate toward. That's why I'm so enthusiastic about meetings, is it's not just about gathering with people, it's about getting stuff done. It's about accomplishing things. It's about, it's about developing a person, even if it's a tough conversation, it's about advancing the ball down the field for me moving toward a vision moving towards something that we're trying to get to. And so like when those days when I'm just filled with high quality internal meetings, amazing for me, because to me, it's all about leadership. It's all about getting goals done. Because even though I'm not a business owner, you know, I'm a leader in this company, and I carry with me constantly the that we operating. We're a small business, we're trying to get a lot done. We have a lot of payroll on the team, and that there's a very important mission that sitting in our hands that God has asked us to do. And there are results that we're trying to get to that just kind of under the current just drives me all the time. And I see meetings as as a linchpin to getting all of that done. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 29:53
So as far as curbing the enthusiasm, like everything is a joke

Unknown Speaker 30:00
To set them, there's nothing like great meetings, there's just nothing like it. And I think we should define in job pretty much just did. But just to add on to that a great meeting in my mind is when I walk away, it's not about how I feel.

Unknown Speaker 30:18
It's not personal, I'm excited, I really enjoyed that meeting, although that happens all the time.

Unknown Speaker 30:24
There is nothing like walking away from it can be a one-on-one, where you walk away from the meeting going, and that person knows what they're doing. That person just got, you know, a piece of information that changed their day, because they've been stuck on something, and maybe I didn't train something well enough. And now there's a new piece of information and bam, they've got it, they're tackling it, and they've got the right personality that they're gonna go implement it right away. That for me, is where energy comes from. Right, that's where I get totally excited. And here's what I know, I know that excites the person as well. So that, to me is a great meeting, when the team is walking out going, we know what the heck we're doing. This is awesome. This is fantastic. With that being said, you have to be cautious of all of my 99 eyes out there. You can't just carry energy into a meeting and expect that your 99 C is going to saddle up feel with you and carry that same energy, it's not going to happen. It's not going to happen, right? The energy needs to not be your energy for the meeting. It needs to be the energy for what we're trying to produce. So with that being said, it is not uncommon for a stand-up 510 15-minute meeting with a sales team that's on fire. Alright, guys, this is what we're focusing on. This is what we're going to try and get today. Let's make sure we're setting our goals I spent, you know, you bring in energy, but those are people who are wanting that energy. Those are people who are needing that, you know, injection, right? But it's not the same thing in a brainstorming meeting where you know, you've got a couple of C's in there a couple S's in there as well, where they're not looking for energy. They're just trying to figure out what the heck you're doing. What are you explaining, they're trying to be able to process stuff, right? So if you go in there with high energy, they're gonna be like, I don't even know what you're talking about. And they will check out. So the energy needs to match again, back to what Joe said earlier. What's the purpose? What's the mission of the meeting? If it is a high-energy meeting like it should be for salespeople? Great, ramp it up? You know, I, I think it's excessive, but whatever. I've actually literally seen some people turn on some, like, strong beat music and you know, get everybody pumped. Alright, let's get on the follow those go. That's great. That's fantastic. You know, okay, whatever. That's it's not my personality style.

Unknown Speaker 32:52
But, you know, I don't want to go into a meeting, where we've got a two-hour meeting set so that we could put together

Unknown Speaker 33:02
a product guide that I need people's sees, you know, focused on the details of this thing. I'm not going to come in and go Let's go guys. Let's get all of our, you know, punctuation correct. And let's make sure that our you know, that's just it doesn't match, however. And I think this may be a long lens of where you are going with this with the Curb Your Enthusiasm up. I have to show that I'm all in that mansion. Yeah, I've got to be packed with passion. And energy isn't necessarily the same thing. If I am passionate, we put out phenomenal workbooks for big events. I mean, I don't know how many pages this last one was for the Next-Level Leadership Live Event, but it was big. And it was gorgeous. And it was fantastic. And that's something I'm passionate about. You know, guys, let's put out a great quality product that our people when they sit down, they're just like, wow, this is amazing, right? I carry that passion in there that affects the team that affects their outlook. And not only do I carry the passion, but I communicate it. Folks, here's what I want you to understand. If somebody we've got Peter Chapman, who's just a great friend of ours been a client for years, just a great friend, like a 4000. C. He's just so detailed. You know, he's Heisey. He's Id just a super detailed task person. He can find if he's sitting down and focusing on something he will find a mistake. We just let our like Peter, take a look at this and let us know. If we screwed anything. Well, Praise God. We've got one of those on our team in Noelia. She does an incredible job with that. If a person is sitting down and I am not a high C I'm I think I'm now up to a 50 C, which I was a 10 in the 90s.

Unknown Speaker 34:57
I'm not the person who's going

Unknown Speaker 35:00
Sit down and find all your mistakes, but I will find a mistake. You know, when I see a mistake, it messes me up, it Jacks me up. And so now I'm starting to ask the question is the mistake, something that I need to judge your quality on? Right? If I see a simple mistake, you know, how many times have you read a book and you know, the word is wrong, that's not the correct word. But the content of the book is phenomenal. One word, not gonna, I'm not gonna throw the book out on one word. But if I go through this thing, and it's just crap, and it's distracting, and I keep finding mistake after mistake after mistake, pretty soon, I'm probably checking that book. Because if you didn't do your due diligence, and guys, I'm not the one to do the editing, that's I'm not that person, I will hire that person, I'll pay that person to do that. But if you didn't do your due diligence, on that editing, well, then I don't trust what you're speaking to. Right now, again, 123 Mistakes doesn't blow me away. But if it's nothing but mistakes, if I'm looking at 20 mistakes, I'm probably done with you, right?

Unknown Speaker 36:02
Sharing that importance to a high C to A Noelia, who is going to turn around or Javiera, who's going to turn around and pour their effort and energy into this thing is vitally important that they understand their product, their work product, is going to keep people focused on the content, not distract them away from it, and, you know, possibly turn us off in their minds. That's the important thing to be relaying to those people. So bring your passion, make sure they understand it, make sure they understand the purpose, make sure they understand the vision and help them to get on board. Gosh, there are so many other things that we could share in this that we just don't have time. Real quick too. Just to add to that, I think what you started speaking to in a way was giving that kind of even feedback to a team member. And that's part of setting somebody up for success. So Brian, you said a little while ago, it's like, you know, you don't share my enthusiasm for meetings, I completely get what you're talking about. I know you I know your personality style. And it's like that's, I completely understand when you say that. So I would say it's like you don't it's like so you're like you're not this, oh, I'm so enthusiastic, and I love meetings. But you know, something that you do love, you love information, and you love being set up for success. That's what you want. And that gives you confidence to be like, Hey, are we going to be meeting? Are we going to be discussing this stuff? Am I going to be able to ask questions? Am I going to get what I need to do my job? Well, you value that immensely.

And so like we talked so much about that, even like when your transition from the states over to Sicily, like how long ago now two and a half years ago, or something, and it was like and we were like, You know what, these are all the meetings that we're putting in place so that you have what you need so that you're not getting halfway around the world. And it's like, shoot, I feel very disconnected. Or I feel like I'm not going to have what I need. And I'm like, we're going to have the meetings, because the purpose of those was to set you up for success and for you and I to have great communication. And so again, it speaks to the purpose. And as a leader, the context is, of course, we're going to have meetings, I'm absolutely going to, because I'm dedicated to you, and I'm dedicated to setting you up for success. I don't want you to flop around and fail and not know what you're doing. And that speaks for anyone that I'm leading, is that there's got to be that level of responsibility for people that you carry. And then you can sell right into meetings because you see, it doesn't have to be flashy, there doesn't have to be, you know, frozen yogurt. But there's a purpose here. And that's why we're doing this. Although there should be frozen yogurt. There should be like every time or something Pate, something bait, like the on the table, would help a lot. It's a morale builder. Joe's wheelhouse right there, the baker? Well, I mean, yeah, all of that is a great perspective on why meetings should exist, and how we can get to that point where we're looking forward to them. That's the whole point here. It's not about the hype, it's about the passion, to know that we've created a context where communication and information flow, that people are going to get unstuck, and that people are going to be empowered to go out and execute what they've been hired on board to do. And I want to throw just a curveball here at the very end, there's a bonus round to the three rules here.

Here's the bonus. What leaders don't usually expect and therefore miss out on is the opportunity to learn from their team members. Oh, I know this is something that you guys do a fantastic job but I've been on some teams, where the leader is not interested in gaining permission

Unknown Speaker 40:00
Effective, getting information, getting feedback, increasing their understanding from their team who are down there in the trenches in the day to day doing that thing, you know, but leaders can use meetings as a way to understand where their members are at what's holding them back, speak into the workflow and really understand their business. There's a tendency that the farther removed a leader gets from the clients from the day-to-day, they can become a little Yeah, isolated disillusioned, or just apart from disconnected from reality. And this is an opportunity for the leader to do some learning. So yeah, speaking of that, what does that make you think of when I say all of that? Well, assuming that's a fourth rule? Yes. I mean, that's a fourth rule. I totally agree with bonus. Bonus. Yeah, it's great. And it's exactly right. You know, and in some of its a, some of its very surface level, you know, tactical information. That's, that feels very safe for this kind of learning feedback meeting. It's a whole other thing when you can be the very vulnerable leader and open yourself up for Hey, how can I lead you better? Where am I not leading you? Well, what do you not have what do you need, you have to reach a level of vulnerability to feel like, oh, I want to have that meeting. I want I encourage you leaders to aspire to get to that place. But yeah, it's the bonus. The fourth role is a great one. Yeah, I hire smart people. I don't like hiring people that can't add to the collective intelligence.

Unknown Speaker 41:40
And so for me, I am excited. I'm always just expectant that somebody is going to come up with something that I don't, I don't know about. I haven't heard yet. I haven't seen that point of view, whatever. I just don't know how to state it well enough.

Unknown Speaker 41:58
Let me just say it this way, if you're focused on you, you're probably not learning a lot from your team. If you are vulnerable, like Joel just said, Oh, my gosh, I love, love, love, taxing the collective intelligence, getting new information for myself getting new information for the people around the table. But one of the things I love is when you help your team to think for themselves because they a lot of them come from bad leaders that don't. When you allow them to think for themselves, oh my gosh, it just opens a spigot. Right. And then ideas flow and good stuff, quality. Not everything's great, some stuff sucks. But what's with all of us, right? But it causes them to start giving a lot of input, which becomes so beneficial. I don't want my people shut down. I want them to speak up. I want them to ask the question is this quality? And then I want them to share stuff as much as possible. So yes, I agree with that rule. Now, it's good. And as I'm kind of processing what you guys are saying, I'm thinking from the point of view of a team member, sitting in that meeting, I know some of the biggest aha moments that I've had in a meeting is when I've been expressing what I'm experiencing or the workflow, where I'm getting stuck, things like that. And a leader is able to say to me, Brian, here's what I hear you saying. And just hearing that feedback and getting their input and their point of view on it is just reframing where I've already been, but there's just there was a missing piece, there was a different angle that they approach it as, and that value back to me makes me feel as a team member.

Well, that was an effective meeting. I just got unstuck. And also I think the leader walks away thinking, okay, now I know where Brian is personalities, and wiring are the set of obstacles that he's up against. This is where he can get stuck, I am going to help him get unstuck there. And we're going to watch out for that together. That's that's the teamwork, makes the dream work. But you know, leader, it's your job to make your team successful, not the other way around. So here are the three rules, rehearsed back to your mindset. You got to change the mindset, you've got to set the strategy and you've got to Curb Your Enthusiasm up in order to have effective meetings. Absolutely. And, folks, just think about it this way. If I've got to be the one with all the ideas, and I've got to be the one who sets all the the direction and tone and I don't tax the collective intelligence, then I'm the one running the whole business and what a colossal not only a waste of my time and everybody else's time, but a colossal waste of talent. So hopefully this has been helpful to you today. Thank you, gentlemen, for joining us. I appreciate it. As always great job.

Unknown Speaker 45:00
Thank you guys for being with me. My esteemed pleasure. Yes, ditto Ditto. My self esteemed was very nice, not worth my unworthy pleasure of being.

Unknown Speaker 45:17
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