Leading Decisive Meetings

As a leader, do you know how to lead a decisive meeting? 

Simply because someone is appointed to a leadership position, it doesn't mean that they automatically know how to lead effective meetings.  To keep momentum in your work, you need to run great meetings. Make your next meeting productive with these three guidelines:

• Restate the meeting's purpose. Even if you think everyone knows it, it helps to remind them and sharpen the group's focus.
• Include everyone. If one or two people dominate the conversation and others are shy about leaping in, draw out people through facilitating by saying, "Thanks for those ideas, Carl. What are your thoughts about this problem, Megan?"
• End well. Close the meeting with specific actions to take and a clear time frame. State the decisions the group has made, who owns what, and when they need to report back to the team. 

Adapted from Guide to Project Management (HBR OnPoint Collection).

Are People Born Leaders or Do They Learn Leadership?

As a leader, do you continue to 'practice' the art of leadership? 


Leadership is not an innate trait that you're born with. It can be learned. The key is to practice before you have the official title.  In fact, even leaders in the role need to continue to practice.  Start by focusing on the choices you make now, such as who to put on your team or who needs to participate in your projects. Recognize that you likely don't know everything. Making decisions based on incomplete information is a skill that every leader must master. Once you've acted, ask yourself: Was that the right decision? Could you have done something differently? This will get you comfortable with making decisions, acting upon them, and reflecting on their outcomes. Then, learn from your inevitable mistakes. You will build knowledge and skills as you work up to the larger decisions with broader consequences that all leaders have to make.






Adapted from "Wilderness Leadership—on the Job" by John Kanengieter and Aparna Rajagopal-Durbin.

Planning Strategically for Meetings

As a leader, are you planning strategically for your meetings?

From the moment you send a meeting invite, as the meeting organizer you are responsible for setting the right tone and making the meeting a success. Here are three things you should do before people get in the room:

• Clarify the objective. Make sure people know why they're invited. If it's to make a decision, give participants the time and materials they need to prepare.
• Prep important people. Talk with key participants about agenda items ahead of time. You may hear insights that could change how you run the meeting.
• Include everyone who needs to be there.  Think carefully about who needs to be there.  Who truly cares about the topics?  Who has valuable knowledge insights?  Who might bring valuable divergent thinking to the group?
• Expect full participation. Ask attendees to do their homework, come with relevant materials, and show up ready to contribute.

Adapted from Guide to Project Management (HBR OnPoint Collection).

Helping Your Team Define How it Will Work

As a leader, how do you help your team define how it will work?

Most leaders know to help their team define goals, but the conversation shouldn't stop there. You also need to agree on the mechanics of how the team will get the work done. Here are four things that need to be clear on every team:

• Roles and responsibilities. Every member needs to know their tasks and how their work will contribute to the overall goals.
• Work processes. You don't need a notebook full of procedures, but agree on processes to carry out the basics—such as decision-making or communicating.
• Rules of engagement. Establish a constructive team culture. Discuss the shared values, norms, and beliefs that will shape the daily give-and-take between team members.
• Performance metrics. How will you measure team progress? Define the measures for meeting the goals, and the consequences for not meeting them.

Adapted from "For Your Team's Success, Remember the How" by Linda Hill & Kent Lineback.

Admit what you don't know

As a leader, are you able to reveal your weaknesses in order to build a stronger workplace?

Leaders who insist on making all the decisions often find themselves with disengaged employees. If people aren't taking charge in your organization, your leadership style might be the problem. If you have an overly directive approach, take a step back. Acknowledge your failings (whether they be your knowledge base or a particular skill set) with your team. Share your personal and organizational goals. Then, admit that you don't have all the answers and you need your team's help in reaching those goals. This will give your people room to actively participate in the organization's success. This act of humility is often seen as courageous and inspires others to follow suit.

You can extend this idea to actually inviting some individuals to take on certain roles.  For example, if you're bad at remembering the social aspects of the workplace, ask for a couple of volunteers to take on this responsibility.  Another example might be asking for a volunteer or two to help identify what's missing from conversations at meetings.  Certain individuals could be asked to help the group identify perspectives that may be missed when your team gets together to work.  By engaging more staff with important workplace roles, you're sharing the responsibility of leading the school/organization.  You're building capacity, and you're ensuring the workplace is a healthy environment in which to work because responsibility is shared.


Adapted from "Fire, Snowball, Mask, Movie: How Leaders Spark and Sustain Change" by Peter Fuda and Richard Badham.

Sometimes They Need to Know

As a leader, how much do you share with your staff?  How do you share it?

As leaders, we have many conversations in our offices with many different people or groups.  In some cases, significant discussions take place.  Some of these discussions end up in important decisions.  However, just because the conversation happened in your office and it was held with a group of key stakeholders, it doesn't mean that your staff knows what's going on.  How do you share important discussions, decisions, or information with all staff? 

Here are a few questions to ask yourself about how you share - or not! - the conversations you have:

• Who needs to know?
• Does everyone need to know?  If so, why?
• Who would like to know?  And just because they'd like to know, does it mean you share with them?
• Who might be affected by the discussions or decisions?  How will they find out what was discussed?
• Might you be missing additional thinking if some people are left out of discussions?
• How do you share discussions / decisions / information? 
• Do people have a variety of ways to access information from you?
• What might be the impact if some people don't know about the discussions or decisions?

Communication is a critical aspect of any school/organization.  People can feel included - or excluded - based on their access to information.  Exclusion from information can have a negative affect on both performance and morale.  In 2012, communication has never been easier.  Multiple methods of sharing information (bulletin boards, memoes, Twitter, email, etc.) have made it possible for everyone to have virtually immediate access to information. 

Don't risk damaging staff morale or their performance because you - as the leader - neglected to share information. 

Alignment of Your Beliefs and Your Actions

As a leader, do your actions align with your professed beliefs?

Many people feel that any decision is better than no decision. After all, you can always change direction at a later date. But, in an attempt to appear decisive, leaders may prematurely push for an answer. And if there isn't a clear conclusion, they'll provide one. This undermines a team's ability to make a collective decision. Pretty soon people stop participating because they assume you've made up your mind in advance. If you can't agree, don't impose an answer. Instead, end the discussion by putting a process in place that yields decisions—even slowly-made ones—that everyone can accept. That way you won't lose your staff's goodwill next time around.

Many of us profess to seek and honour collaborative decision-making.  However, if your espoused beliefs don't align with your actions, your staff will soon figure this out and may begin to disengage.  Remember, as a leader, people are watching you.  And they are often watching for the alignment between what you say you believe in and what you actually do. 

Adapted from "How to Cultivate Engaged Employees" by Charalambos A. Vlachoutsicos.

Evidence and Logic in Decision-making

Many leaders rely on gut instinct to make important decisions, which often leads to poor results. On the contrary, when leaders insist on incorporating logic and evidence, and include others in the discussions, they make better choices and their organizations benefit. Here are three ways to introduce evidence-based decision-making into discussions in your school or organization:

1. Ask for evidence. Whenever anyone makes a compelling claim, ask for supporting data. Don't take someone's word for it.  Equally, be sure to provide your evidence/data if you are promoting something.
2. Examine logic. Look closely at the evidence and be sure the logic holds up. Be on the lookout for faulty cause-and-effect reasoning.  Invite colleagues to question the evidence and the logic.
3. Encourage experimentation. If you don't have evidence, create some. Invite colleagues to conduct small experiments to test the viability of proposed strategies and use the resulting data to guide decisions.

Adapted from: Harvard Business Review on Making Smart Decisions.