Meeting MAXIMIZATION!

One of the most important roles of a leader of any organization or business is simply: Meeting MAXIMIZATION!

Discussing the most important issues… getting and keeping everyone engaged… considering the best location and providing GREAT leadership guidance… are all continuous factors that need to be addressed to ensure: Meeting MAXIMIZATION!

This month’s Inspiring Innovations LEARNING MOMENTS Podcast discussion is all about my four (4) top recommendations for achieving the best results every time you conduct a meeting. They are all reflective of my experience as a leader in multiple situations and have helped me organize every meeting that I have been responsible for to be labeled SUCCESSFUL! 

Enjoy the listen. 

Transcript

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Hello again, and welcome to the March of 2026, Inspiring Innovations Learning Moments Podcast. Hey, and as always, this is your discussionist host, Marv Pickla. And yep, it's time again to spend, you know, maybe a few of those learning moments to offer insight into at least one of our principal professional development topics, which include leadership and communication and developing you, and of course, my favorite innovation. And sometimes people ask me how do I select a topic, a special moment for each month? Well, I guess mostly motivation for a certain topic comes from like an informal review of the different projects maybe I'm working on, or the experiences I've had with students in my American government and politics class. Yes, I do. I look at that. Or maybe interesting discussions occurring with family or friends. Because there's never a time that one circumstance doesn't kind of rise to the top, and then it drives my prep for these what my good friend used to call milk house moments from my farming background. So that's where these moments, learning moments come from. So this month, we're going to lean more toward the area of leadership. Why? Because over the last 30 days, I've had multiple people talk to me, tell me about, or maybe whine about, and or maybe explain to me about their ineffective experiences regarding holding and conducting and participating in different organizational or business meetings. And interestingly, it did not seem to matter if the meetings were in person or virtual or a mixture of the two. Instead, people, you know, just seemed to be dissatisfied with how much direction or motivation that they don't get from attending meetings in today's worlds of work. So given all of this feedback, I directly and indirectly received, you know a bunch of information on the quality of meetings, and that this time we're going to get back to the basics and talk about meeting maximization. Yeah, I can't even hardly say it, but meeting maximization. And remember, these are my thoughts and recommendations that I have, but there are four of them, and and there's no one that's in particular order of importance. They're just the four that I think that we need to focus on. So sit back and maybe take a note or two and consider a return to simplicity to kind of gain effectiveness when organizing and setting up maximum maximization when meeting. Okay? Number one, meet on your co-worker's turf. Think about that. Hold your meetings on their turf, not yours. Because I believe too often meetings are held and structured around the boss's location or the very regular room and time. Because guess what? That's the way we've always done it, right? Well, my first recommendation is for meetings to be held whenever possible in a place where customers or clients show up for service and help. It is totally ineffective for those who come to the position, you know, from leadership or administrative support areas, that they never have that experience of meeting or seeing customers, business customers, agency customers come through your door. Sometimes they hear about who's coming through the doors, you know, like from a third party, and you know what I'm saying. But that does not ever give you a full, complete, honest view of the problems, the needs, performance issues, product issues, service expectations. It would probably, when you meet in in on their turf, it would give up or give everybody an air of shared responsibility and the chance to observe a totally different set of visuals. What the office looks like, how people react, all of those kinds of things. And with this shift in location, it will create kind of a special professional discomfort among everyone. Okay? Among everyone. And that's good. Nothing is change resistant, and meeting on a coworker's turf is very appropriate and it's a growth opportunity for everybody. Okay, that's number one. Number two, always have an agenda. Always have an agenda. In all of my meeting experiences, there is nothing less leadership principled than not having a written plan of action for getting everybody together to talk about strategy or business agency development. An agenda automatically lets everyone know why we are here, right? An agenda creates a common focus of what are important issues and limits and nonvalue discussions and opinions that really shouldn't be part of the meeting. The agenda sorts that all out. It is also critical, it's a tool to maximize everybody's time and better creates quality decisions and discussion versus, you know, the just the taking up time. Do you understand the point? Always have an agenda. Everybody in the room will not ramble on about a topic that may be minimalizing, you know, the solid decisions and the business and moving the organization forward thoughts that should happen. Time management and quality decision making would be the priority. Have an agenda. Number three, what I call half and half arrangement. As you continue to organize and transition to meeting maximization strategies, it will be important to incorporate a guaranteed shared priority facilitation process. What do I mean? Specifically, I believe as a leader, you need to equally share the agenda prep, priority selection, and discussion time to maximize the meeting event. In my director days, I would challenge each group I was visiting to build their own agenda first, to build their own agenda first, so that everyone would know specifically what their local priority issues were. The fun directive I would follow up with would be kind of a warning. And I said that if you don't have any agenda priorities, then for sure I'll bring my set, and then it'll be my meeting. And it was always the result was a good list of local issues that was most important to them that we could address first. So think about the meeting and designing action. And by doing, you know, that you know, shared half and half arrangement, it comes up that the organization isn't totally top-down or bottom-up led. Rather, it's middle of the road matters kind of design, and that you share that, you know, with the local group and yourself, and uh that letting them know that the middle matters is important, finding getting everybody in the middle. Number four, be a good no, no, be a great leader example. By that I mean don't ever think that if you are in that top spot in your business or organization, that all, yes, I said all co-workers look to you every day for quality examples of leadership. Study and respond to staff concerns, issues without them having to make them a big issue. You should do your homework and know them in advance. Then manage your time to show them that you care about what they are doing personally and professionally to make it kind of an inclusive feel. Do not allow yourself to become involved in gossip or the grapevine communications stuff. It will only lessen your credibility. Maintain a professional strategy that keeps everyone look forward, looking forward to what's next instead of allowing time to debate about what I consider old news and what happened last week or last month. It doesn't get you anywhere going forward. You can't change the past or old news except end up making the same mistakes. Well, we are way past my regular time. But how about a quick meeting maximization summary? One, meet on a coworker's turf whenever you can. Two, always have an agenda. That way you're prepared for the meeting, and so will they be. Three plan for a half and half priority list. Half theirs, half yours, and it'll be a great sharing example. And speaking of examples, number four, be that great leader example. It's what they hope for, look for, so be it. And maybe listen to this a couple times just to get all the notes that you can and all the ideas that you can. But thanks for listening, and we'll talk again next month.