The meeting AFTER the meeting is the real problem, and you all know what I’m talking about. The meeting after the meeting is a breeding ground for drama, and you must stop it. Learn what steps to take to get you and your team productively addressing difficult conversations head-on.
Team meetings get expensive, so they need to be efficient, effective, and impactful.
If you’re finding yourself in these water cooler meetings after the meeting, one of the books I would highly recommend reading is The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni. Read it as a team and discuss it.
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Listen Now!
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Steps to Ending the Meeting the Meeting After the Meeting:
- Give each other permission to have difficult conversations
- Publicly thank those who raise difficult issues or unpopular opinions in real-time
- Permit people to communicate bad news
- Learn to recognize phrases that signal a “meeting after the meeting” so you can stop them
- Assess your tonality and ask your team members to assess theirs
- Do a meeting debrief
- Model the behavior you want to encourage and absolutely positively unapologetically refuse to participate in a meeting after the meeting
If you take nothing else away from this episode, commit to refusing to participate in a meeting after a meeting.
