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Quick one before we start. You've been listening for a while now, learning, nodding along. But here's the truth. A podcast episode can teach you the idea, but very rarely changes how you lead on Monday morning. That's what our online program Leadership beyond the Theory does. Nine weeks to learn Marty's entire leadership operating system strategies that you can use the same day that you learn them with your actual team. We've had more than 2,800 leaders go through it and 99% would recommend it. And and we have a 100% money back guarantee. There is literally no risk to you joining Enrollment closes this Friday. If you've been waiting for a sign to back yourself, this is it. Enrol now and join us for the June cohort@leadershipbeyondthetheory.com
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the corporate world rewards good listeners. Except when it doesn't. Knowing when to talk and when to shut up might just be the most underrated skill in your leadership repertoire.
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Welcome to the no Bullshit Leadership podc. In a world where knowledge has become a commodity, this podcast is designed to give you something more access to the experience of a successful CEO who has already walked the path. So join your host, Martin Moore, who will unlock and bring to life your own leadership experiences and accelerate your journey to leadership excellence.
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Hey there and welcome to episode 409 of the no Bullshit Leadership Podcast. This week's episode how to Own Every Meeting Without Killing It Meetings can be a political minefield, and most leaders rely purely on the instinct to get by, which means they get it wrong more often than they realize. This episode cuts through the noise on one of the most deceptively complex leadership skills, knowing when to talk and when to be quiet. It sounds simple, but it isn't, and the Economist's Babel hypothesis shows why getting the balance wrong can derail your career. I lay out a practical framework for two meeting scenarios that matter most when you're chairing the meeting and when you're a participant in a room full of people who are more senior than you. Each comes with its own protocols. Each has its own yardstick for what good looks like. I'm going to draw on my experiences from the corporate world to show you exactly what that means in practice. I also give you my take on three types of meeting disruptors, otherwise known as dickheads, and some killer lines to get them off their soapbox without blowing up the whole meeting. By the end, you'll have a clear, context driven model for moving between listening and contributing so that every time you open your mouth, it actually counts. So let's get into it. Meetings are full of unwritten rules and conventions. We tend to learn them fairly early in our careers because when we don't observe them, we're met with stern gazes and sometimes even reprimands. For example, I remember in my early days in corporate, one boss or another would pull me aside after a meeting and whisper to me, you can't say that in a meeting, or, you shouldn't have embarrassed John in that meeting. And even though I managed to look appropriately contrite, I couldn't silence the little voice in the back of my head that was saying, well, you know, maybe John shouldn't have said something so stupid. I didn't embarrass John. John embarrassed himself. There are many reasons why meetings can be tricky. In my Moments With Marty episode this week, I covered how to overcome your fear of making a contribution in an important meeting. The only problem with that is it puts you in a frame of mind where you're only thinking about what you're going to say, rather than listening to other people's contributions. As a leader, you'll be chairing many of those meetings, directing the flow of conversation to try and optimise the outcome. To run a meeting well, you have to understand human behaviour. You also have to be strong enough to call out behaviours that aren't productive. There's no doubt that if you want to nail this, you've got to be an awesome listener, not just listening to what's being said, but also to how it's being said and most importantly, what's not being said. If you aren't listening, even the most astute comment that you make won't feel as insightful to everyone else, because you won't have a stronger connection to the flow of the conversation. And if you want to maximise your contribution, this matters deeply. The skill of listening requires you to step out of your own head, to stop focusing on yourself and instead to focus on the other people in the room. You'll never master this if you only do what the majority of your peers do. You may have noticed already that they're actually not listening very much at all. They're just trying to find a break in the conversation so they can make their point. There's an old saying, you have two ears and one mouth and you should use them in that proportion. Like most conventional wisdom, that sounds like it should be true. Even at the peak of my communication expertise, though, I would have been lucky to get the time I spent talking versus listening down to maybe a one to one ratio. Fortunately, my wife, Cathy, keeps me grounded because she occasionally says to me, marty, you're a bit of a yapper. In the world of leadership communication, listening is no doubt considered to be more virtuous than talking. It gives people respect for their views. It maintains space for conversation to develop. And more than anything, listening to a diverse range of viewpoints enables you to generate way more value in problem solving and decision making. But if all you do is listen, you could be shooting yourself in the foot. I recently came across a brief article in the Economist. As important as listening is, talking is a key indicator of career success. Bartleby's babble hypothesis says that people who speak more tend to climb the ladder regardless of what they say. Now this sort of makes sense because people who talk a lot tend to be more confident, and confidence is an important leadership attribute. The article cites a paper by Neil McLaren who ran some experiments with a small group of students. They had to participate in a simulation and then had to nominate who stood out as the best leaders. During that process, the people who spoke most were nominated most. Knowledge of the simulation per se seemed to be completely irrelevant. It was a case of quantity over quality. Bartleby concluded his article by saying, I firmly believe that people shouldn't say something if they have nothing to say. But that would seem to be terrible career advice indeed. We need to heed these lessons. Communication is about context, and I'll give you more on this shortly. No matter what, you need to inject yourself into a conversation if you want to be relevant. Sitting back and listening to others might be comfortable, but ultimately futile unless you join in the fray. Developing a healthy balance of talking and listening and knowing when to use each to best effect is the name of the game. If you find yourself in a meeting where you can't contribute well, you're probably in the wrong meeting. You simply shouldn't be there. Participation trophies might be popular in kids sport, but they carry no currency in the corporate world. I want to give you some guidance for how to handle two key meeting scenarios. The first is how you behave when you are chairing a meeting, and the second is when you are participating in in a senior level meeting. When you're chairing a meeting, you should have a defined purpose and clear objectives for that meeting. And this will depend on what type of meeting it is. Is it a daily huddle? A monthly business review? A board meeting? An annual planning session? Or maybe even a capital allocation review meeting? There are lots of different types of meetings, but they all have common elements. They need an agenda A rhythm and a clear outcome. As chair, you're responsible for the meeting setup and structure. Think of it like being the conductor of an orchestra. You direct the flow of the conversation. You're accountable for keeping it on track. You need to make sure that everyone plays their part. And ultimately, you've got to make sure the meeting achieves its intended outcome. Here are three rules for optimising communication in the meetings that you chair. The first rule is cull the guest list. Most meetings suffer from a common affliction. There are just way too many people there. But we're conditioned to be inclusive, so we often invite people just in case. There's no point in having someone in the room who. Who hasn't got a clear contribution to make. And if they should be making a contribution based on their role, but they're not, well, you could be looking into a performance issue. An overblown invite list is a particularly easy trap to fall into when you're having online meetings. No one's really taking up any extra space, but what are they actually doing? If they're not actively contributing, they may as well be playing Tetris. Rule number two, direct the flow of the conversation. Once you have the right format and the right people in the room, it's much easier to make the conversation productive. As chair, it's important that you harness the productive tension. Single people out by name. Ask them to make a contribution when it's in an area that you know they have some expertise. Join the dots by working out whose points align and where the differences are. Think of it like being a facilitator in a panel discussion. Ask really good questions and draw insights from the many conflicting views. You are there to stimulate robust debate, to bring out everyone's best ideas in an effort to get the highest quality outcome. The third rule for Ensure that outcomes and action items are clear. Don't leave anything up to interpretation. Many years ago, I realised I had a problem with board meeting communication. Quite often a director would make an offhanded comment, and before I knew it, there was a team somewhere in the company working on that initiative. But it hadn't actually been decided that we would action the suggestion. So eventually I got really good at bringing clarity to those conversations. When a director made an offhanded comment, I would simply ask chair, to be clear, is this something the board is directing us to invest resources in, or is it just a thought for us to consider? That response would find its way into the formal minutes of the meeting and everyone understood the status of every comment and action Item no more running off chasing butterflies. Now, to do these three things well, you will have to listen and you will have to talk and you will have to think carefully about every statement an individual makes. You don't have to be the smartest person in the room, but you do have to know how to get the smartest contribution from every other person in the room. The second scenario that I want to cover is when you're a participant in in a high level meeting. These meetings don't tend to happen that frequently, which is why it's so important that you know how to approach them when they do. Now let me just define which meetings I'm talking about. They're not the meetings that you chair and they're not the ones your boss chairs. She gets to see plenty of you. They're the meetings where people who are more senior than you are in attendance. Here are my top three rules for optimizing your role in senior level meetings. Rule number one, Understand the protocols. For more senior meetings, there's always some sort of unspoken protocol. Try to work out what these protocols are by observing the cues from the chair of that meeting. So for example, board meetings require a certain level of formality, even though outside the boardroom I would call the chairman of the board by his first name. During a board meeting I would always address him as Mr. Chairman. And depending on the meeting, there may be other protocols like who's there to speak and who's just an advisor or an observer. On a number of occasions I had to attend parliamentary estimates hearings as Chief Executive of CS Energy. And in those meetings, trust me, I knew the protocol. I only spoke when I was directly asked a question by the chair. The second rule is prepare like it matters. Every time you're in a meeting like this, it's an interview for your next promotion. So treat it with that level of importance. Work out who's going to be in the meeting and if you don't know them, just try to learn a little bit about them. Just some basic research. Look for common links in work history and industry background. Because quite often you'll have an opportunity for a brief exchange before or after the meeting. After you've done the research on the people get stuck into the content. If there's pre reading, study it properly. Form a view on where you sit in relation to the meeting content. When you're actually in the meeting, this is going to be invaluable. It'll shape your responses and give you oodles of confidence. And finally, number three, don't be afraid to respectfully disagree. You don't want to come across as being adversarial just for the sake of it, but you shouldn't be afraid to bring your perspective to the meeting. If you make sharp, insightful contributions, you'll be noticed even if they go against the general consensus and flow of the conversation. In fact, especially if they go against general consensus and flow of the conversation. But here's a key. If possible, start by agreeing. Try to find a jumping off point that you agree with wholeheartedly. That helps to give your point context and allows you to build on it with your unique experience. To stand out, you have to show that you can listen, interpret and respond to what's going on in the room. For example, I would often say something like, I think Jackie's assessment of the situation is spot on, but it relies on us being able to move quickly. The current schedule isn't aggressive enough to capitalise on our head start, and if we don't rethink that, we run the risk of losing our advantage. See the structure there? I leveraged another point from a colleague. I didn't repeat what she said and instead I added value by bringing my own dimension to it. These three simple steps are going to enable you to intuitively decide in the moment when you should speak and when you should keep your mouth shut. You might have two ears and one mouth, but the proportion in which you use them will be very different depending on the circumstances. I want to finish with some tips for managing people who tend to derail meetings, or, in other words, how to manage the dickheads. I've got three common types to help you with. The first is the person that I call often wrong, never in doubt. So frequently you'll have someone in a meeting who is so confident that everyone assumes what they say is true. But often it's just bluff. When someone says something so confidently that no one's prepared to challenge them, just try asking, that's fine, Greg, but what's your evidence for that? Slows them down every single time. The second type of person is the conversation monopolizer. Often you'll have a corporate bully who likes to dominate the conversation. They're not as smooth as Mr. Often wrong, never in doubt. But generally they tend to be more aggressive, more dismissive and more arrogant. And they won't think twice about talking over the top of you. It takes real strength to push back in the moment rather than just shrinking back into your seat and seething. One of my favourite lines. Oh, I'm sorry, did the middle of my sentence Interrupt the start of yours should get a laugh and it'll change the tone of the meeting, if nothing else. Finally, number three, the sycophantic echo. When I think of the sycophants I've worked with, it still makes me throw up a little in my mouth. One former colleague in particular comes to mind. In executive meetings, he would hang on the CEOs every word, he would nod profusely when the CEO spoke, and he would agree with every point the boss made, sort of like a puppy dog sitting by its master. If someone else tried to make a point, he would occasionally chime in to refute it, not with something original, but by restating the CEO's view. What an ass kisser. But the CEO was a little insecure and so he absolutely lapped it up. Occasionally I would step into the space by saying something like, well, thanks very much for reinforcing the boss's point, Chris. Would anyone mind if I introduce a new point into the conversation? The challenge of working out when to listen and when to talk is highly dependent on context. The key learning I'd like you to take away from this episode is that to communicate effectively, you've got to be able to move seamlessly between contexts. You need to find a balance of skills listening, analyzing and talking like the three legs of a stool. If any one of those is underdeveloped, the whole structure will collapse as soon as you try to use it. The quality of your communication is a key determinant in in your leadership brand, so work on it until you get it to the point where you can perform at your peak in any meeting. It's one of the most immediate ways to stand out from the crowd and your confidence will skyrocket. Alright, so that brings us to the end of episode 409. I really hope you enjoyed it, but as I'm sure you know, listening is easy. Leading is hard. If you found this episode useful, please follow or subscribe to no Bullshit Leadership on your favourite podcast player. I'm looking forward to next week's episode. Even pay transparency has its problems. Until then, I know you'll take every opportunity you can to be a no Bullshit.