Magnus Kull on effective meetings

One reason we need to meet is that it creates better conditions for driving development. The question is how we best make use of that potential. We met Magnus Kull and talked about effective meetings. He shares reflections and concrete tips. What can you as an organizer do to create presence, focus and engagement?

A summary for those in a hurry:

• Be clear about the purpose and activate the participants
• Skip the round of introductions – check in instead
• Include your audience
• Talk in pairs – rotate
• Facilitate for balance and focus on the meeting
• Create safety in the group
• End with reflection – and follow up.

Be clear about the purpose & activate the participants

Be clear about the purpose of the meeting from the start. Make sure you get a go-ahead that people have understood why we are having this meeting. Spend time on 'why are we here?' Something that can take anything from ten seconds to an hour. The key point is not to take for granted that everyone is clear about it.

If the participants sit passively and listen to one person, they do not connect with each other. If, on the other hand, they get to start interacting, they start building relationships.

– It is important to repeatedly give people the chance to build a relationship. John Steinberg, a wise friend and mentor of mine, said 'You have thirty seconds in a meeting to show who is going to be active: is it going to be you, or is it going to be everyone?' So my ambition is to get the group into some form of engagement within thirty seconds.

Skip the round of introductions – check in instead

It is in conversation that relationships happen, not in some kind of round of introductions, Magnus stresses. There are never rounds of introductions at his courses.

– I am an opponent of rounds of introductions. Precisely because they do not create relationships. A round of introductions can sometimes be needed for understanding and an overview of the situation, but the idea that it would create any relationship is an illusion.

A better alternative is so-called check-in procedures. It is something you do to settle into the meeting. It can be about reflecting on the purpose of the meeting; everyone gets to say what they want to get out of it. It can be simple tricks to become physically present, like sitting quietly for a minute and just breathing. Or it can be simple personal questions, where the participants for example get to tell which book they are reading or which TV series they are watching.

Then you do not have to rack your brain over what to say, as in a traditional round of introductions, and you also get a small glimpse that says something about the person beyond their title and so on. With at most 12–15 people, you have time to go around the table with that kind of check-in; larger groups can check in in pairs, with the person next to them.

– It is easy to think that it is most effective to just get going with the meeting, instead of spending a short moment on how we are feeling, and how we can feel better. But if we want good meeting quality, we have to dare to care about our own and the group's state of mind. The better we feel, the better it goes. If we come into a meeting in a state that is not good, it will not go well.

Include your audience

Include your audience from the start. How do you make people feel included? Two ways are to use universal experiences and to cover everyone present in how you address them.

So use an experience that you think as many people as possible can relate to. Saying 'you know what it is like to be pregnant/play hockey…' becomes excluding. Whereas 'going to school/getting up in the morning…' immediately captures more people.

When you refer to an earlier meeting, 'You remember the conference we had last spring', there may be two people in the audience who were not there at the time, for one reason or another. To include them, you can for example say 'If you were not, you will get information about it later', or 'if you were not, you surely know someone who was.' If you talk about experiences as a parent, you can say: 'If you do not have children, perhaps you know someone who does.'

Talk in pairs – rotate

Getting people to interact with each other early in a meeting both implicitly shows that the participants will be active and helps people build relationships. The easiest way is to ask a question that they get to talk about in pairs.

Talking in pairs is also something you can use throughout the gathering. Then it is important to switch conversation partners.

Coach2coach has become known for creating good relationships at its courses and in its groups. Besides the participants wanting to be there, the reason, according to Magnus, is partly that they are activated to a high degree, and partly that the rotation between conversations makes them connect with more people.

Facilitate for balance & focus on the meeting

What sometimes happens in meetings is that we head off in directions that are not effective. Someone talks too much or we get sidetracked. Facilitating is about finding rules for how we talk and how we stay with the purpose. What do we do when we drift off, how do we bring the purpose back, how do we make sure we get reasonably evenly distributed speaking time?

Sometimes this can be made explicit by the meeting facilitator checking their thoughts with the group beforehand. 'This is what I plan to do if this happens, this is what we can do to…'. The main thing is that you as the meeting facilitator are clear about this.

– See yourself as a facilitator and dare to steer. Also dare to use your phone to keep time – one minute per person to stick to. It is an underrated tool.

Create safety in the group

Psychological safety is important for making groups effective. The safer I feel, the more effective I become. What makes a group safe?

– The participants should dare to share without being afraid of having it come back at them in a negative way. That creates a sense of security, and people dare to say what they think and feel.

The possibility of dividing into small groups is significant. Something else that can contribute is you as the leader starting by sharing something that could be sensitive. Sometimes more or less formal structures may also be needed to make it clear what happens to the information we share. You can simply open by saying 'Today we are going to talk about this and that; can we all agree that what we say here stays here?'.

End with reflection – and follow up

End with a moment for reflection, and once again give the participants the chance to share. 'What do I take with me, and how will I use it?'

After the meeting, you should reflect on the following AAR questions (After Action Reviews):

• What was good?
• What can I/we do better?
• How will I/we do it?

Also follow up on the result by letting the participants answer:

• How do I think it went?
• What did I learn?
• How did I experience it?

Note that it may, for example, have been fun without resulting in anything. That is why it is important to ask all three questions.

Do you want to know more about Coach2Coach and their courses?
See the Coach2Coach website (in Swedish)