Don’t just do something, stand there!

…groups, large and small, searching for future states they want to evolve to.

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You want to change the world one meeting at a time. Reaching shared goals in an effective and efficient way leads to the right decisions and make people energized and happy and makes a ‘yes’ really mean something.

No wonder people everywhere are so cynical about another meeting, having attended so many they considered poorly led, counter-productive, and time-wasting. The purpose of Don't Just Do Something, Stand There! is to outline the ten principles for structuring and managing meetings. Whether it is a meeting in your community, in a board rooms, with work teams, in offices, schools, factories, or hospitals, Don't Just Do Something, Stand There! shows you how to start leading meetings the right way.

Don't Just Do Something, Stand There!:

• is organized into two major sections:
  1. how to successfully structure and manage meetings; and
  2. shows the keys to managing yourself—illustrating techniques to deal with anxiety, getting used to projections, establishing dependability, and learning to say no in order to make your yes mean anything.
• shows groups how to achieve shared goals in a timely way, manage differences without flying apart, solve problems and make tough decisions, all without inefficiently re-delegating the tasks addressed
• delves into the details of how to structure meetings to greatly increase the probability that people will accept responsibility for their own actions;
• discusses the importance of philosophical perspectives, the benefits of anxiety, and techniques for saying no to unrealistic requests;
• shows how, instead of deferring action until all defects are remedied, one can make structural changes in real time that keep groups whole, open, and task-focused; by learning to help people put forward their best selves in ambiguous situations, one can make a positive ripple in the stream of life; and
• explains and demonstrates when to act and when to just stand there, and in doing so, shows how to change the world one meeting at a time.

Therefore:

Prepare and structure gatherings thoroughly and carefully. Invite the right people. Manage yourself.

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Principles

Leading Meetings

1. Get the whole system in the room to understand everyone’s stakes, faster decision-making, and greater personal responsibility. The whole system in the room
   • guides you to identify the whole system that matters, matching people and tasks, and managing the agenda while at the same time giving people enough time to express themselves; and
   • provides ideas on what to do if you can’t get the whole system, e.g. 3 × 3 rule.
2. control what you can, let go of what you cannot
   • helps you to stay away from micro-managing meetings
   • allows you to still exercise control where it is important; and
   • lets people self-manage when it is better for them to do so.
3. Explore the whole elephant:
   • advocates using our ancient wisdom and systems thinking
   • refers to the poem Six Blind Men and the Elephant; and
   • urges you to use a variety of techniques to explore the ‘whole’ during meetings.
4. Let people take responsibility:
   • provides ideas on how to get people who are participating to take ownership for the meeting and its outcomes.
   • urges you to be patient, let people hold on to their hidden agendas, and help them to self-manage and encourage dialogue.
5. Find common ground:
   • relates to principles that were expounded in the earlier book Discovering Common Ground edited by Marvin Weisbord, to hold off problem solving and conflict resolution and start a dialogue to find common ground.
6. Master allies experience differences:
   • provides ideas to take advantage of alliances that form naturally during meetings to help them become functional subgroups and to experience their differences.

Managing Yourself

1. Make friends with anxiety:
   • provides tips on how best to make use of and manage anxiety that often arises in meetings;
   • touches on another tool from Weisbord’s book on productive workplaces—the four rooms of change.
2. projection alert:
   • advises you to be aware of your projections to avoid getting upset or agitated with things that can happen in meetings.
3. dependable authority:
   • explains the importance of learning the authority dynamics that are played out in meetings;
   • discusses experiencing authority projections, dependency and counter-dependency.
4. just say no:
   • learns to say no if you want yes to mean something;
   • urges assertiveness while not promising more than one can deliver.

Meetings that Matter

Purposeful, interactive face-to-face meetings that matter, that count (resonates with Agile Manifesto).

To help people themselves to:

• cooperate regardless—or because of—their differences by discovering capabilities they did not know they had;
• manage differences without flying apart;
• achieve shared goals in a timely way;
• solve hard problems;
• make tough decisions;
• structure meetings to greatly increase the probability that people will share responsibility.

Participants need to:

• take self-discipline to learn;

As a facilitator:

• lift the yoke of worries about peoples attitudes, motives, hidden agendas, status, and styles.

In meetings that matter, you:

• expect to participate;
• expect to be heard;
• make a difference.

Leading gatherings where diverse people:

• solve problems;
• make decisions;
• implement plans.

Meetings that matter stop:

• wasting people's time;
• cynicism;
• apathy.

Meetings that matter:

• tolerate multiple realities;
• stay focused on goals;
• keeps the groups as a whole, open and task-focused;
• are guided by safety, hope, and friendship;
• allow people to get more done with greater satisfaction in less time
• educe people to take action and responsibility—the less the facilitators do, the more the participants take over.

Change the conditions under which people meet, and you will educe constructive, integrative, future-oriented action. Change the meeting's structure is the short-cut for people wanting to change their own behavior. Pay attention more and act less. Be quiet on the outside and active on the inside. Become visibly active at times when people want to fight or flee (or freeze) the goals, the task, the problem, or decision. In these times, you can be at your best when you can contain your own anxiety and quiet yourself inside.

Work with people as they are, not as you wish them to be. Take people as they are, there are no others.

When facilitating meetings that matter, you:

• manage structure, not behavior;
• match participants to goals;
• invite people to share responsibility;
• pay attention to time and space.

If you manage a meeting's structure, the participants will take care of the rest.

• See people doing their best with what they have rather than using labels like “restistance” and “defensiveness”.
• Build towards a comprehensive of the whole and a picture of the preferred future rather than list problems.
• Ask “What are the possibilities here, and who cares? ” rather than “What went wrong here, and how can we fix it?”

Differentiate and integrate

To differentiate:

• to distinguish, to classify—to group similar things;
• to isolate, to ostracize, to segregate.

To integrate:

• to make one, to harmonize;
• to centralize, to orchestrate.

As a meeting leader you want to help people to:

• differentiate their stakes, including everyone.

Unless people differentiate their stakes, they are unlikely to act together. To put it in positive wording, people are likely to act together when, including everyone, differentiate their stakes. Value and validate differences to foster harmony, wholeness, cooperation, and shared goals.

Differish

Different opinions in a dialogue is of key importance to break through what we—individually or as a group—find obvious or self-evident.

• http://www.hetnieuwetrivium.nl/index.php?id=145: Verschil van mening is in de dialoog van groot belang, om te doorbreken wat we individueel of collectief als vanzelfsprekend beschouwen.

Be differish to integrate.

Cells and organs in the organization—research, development, engineering, manufacturing, marketing, sales, operations—are differentiated, each with its own structural needs. None can accomplish the mission alone. A tricky differentiation/integration challenge—hold on to your own differences while integrating toward a result bigger than any of them. You cannot afford to act in ways that deny the necessity of each.

As a catalyst, you need to set things up so that everyone can accept their differences and integrate their capabilities for the good of all. Making the leap from differentness to integrative is at the core of effective meeting leadership.

As a meeting leader, from D/I theory, you will:

• gain insight into your own potential for personal growth;
• learn to use it as a lens for your own projections;
• be in a better position to avoid exchanges that hook you into responding in ways you will later regret;
• gain a new measure of influence over any system.

Behavior

• Do you bring few useful skills and relevant experience to the gathering?
• Are you always unprepared for gatherings?
• Do you grasp the firm’s central idea and business strategy?
• Are your questions focused and appropriate?
• Do you bring many ideas or leads on business development?
• Does gathering have established norms on what is expected of its participators?
• Has the line between leading and staying out of the way been made clear by the lead or chief?
• Have you been asked for confidential feedback on dysfunctional peers in the gathering?
• Has the lead privately coached someone into appropriate, constrictive behavior?

More

• Agile Retrospectives by Esther Derby and Diana Larson.

See also

• category:gathering

To do

• Create a bus tour.

bol.com » Sandra Janoff,Marvin Weisbord » Don't Just Do Something, Stand There! IAF » Marvin Weisbord,Sandra Janoff » Don’t Just Do Something, Stand There: Ten Principles for Leading Meetings That Matter HBR » Amy Gallo » The Seven Imperatives to Keeping Meetings on Track HBR » Ram Charan,Dennis Carey,Michael Useem » Root Out Dysfunction in the Boardroom Seth’s Blog » Seth Godin » Conference call hygiene