Ever wondered how some people just seem to know what the right thing to say or do is?
It’s no magic, these people weren’t born that way. What they have in common is a strong desire to contribute and to make things work better. They’ve learned is that it’s a compounding effect of skills, wisdom, and habits that must be integrated into their character. They also constantly reflect, scrutinize, and improve.
So to be effective, instead of disbelieving ourselves by saying that we have no natural talent, we must diligently seek out the reasons behind what makes people effective and learn. It’s about having the belief that there is always a way and following it up with actions.
“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you”
Matthew 7:7
Like the above passage from the scripture, to get what we want, the verse tells us that we must be ready to ask (for advice from others), seek (research and study), and knock (put it into practice). Then the door will be opened for us.
So I’m here to share some habits to get us rolling in meetings.
1. Go With the Flow of the Discussion
Let’s say our company is coming up with ideas for a new product.
The meeting kicks off, and the team starts brainstorming ideas together. Discussions go around aspects of initial product planning such as what features the product is going to have, what the pain points are, target age group, demographic…
The discussion flows in a direction to establish the outline of what the final product will be. While everyone else is on the topic, in an eager attempt to contribute, one starts talking loudly about how long the development is going to take, and what the technical bottlenecks are.
While these points are important, we must remember that these details can be discussed in a follow-up meeting and raised later. If the current one is about establishing a blueprint of the product, we must take off the old hat and put on a hat that matches the current context.
“If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.” — Henry Ford
This way, everyone can think and work in unity. With more people working towards the same goal, the final outcome will be rich in good ideas from everyone’s two cents.
2. Know Exactly What to Say Before Speaking
Our words are powerful. It has the potential to steer the direction of the discussion.
However, the important thing is to add real value.
To do that effectively it’s crucial that our point is made clear to the listener. I have had moments when I began to say something but lost track either in nervousness or lack of preparation, so I kept saying things but the words that came out stemmed from vaguely formulated thoughts, resulting in an unclean delivery that left the listeners confused.
While I do think that this is better than stopping midway, for our thoughts to be delivered properly, we must clearly understand the point to be delivered. If there are challenges, backup arguments are necessary.
Let’s remember that the main reason for making a point is to get everyone else to see from our view.
3. Prepare by Accruing Knowledge
“Before anything else, preparation is the key to success” — Alexander Graham Bell
Ever realized how when we talk about a certain topic that we like we can go on forever without losing juice?
This is because we have accrued lots of information about this topic. We’ve built up a pool of knowledge inside our minds while having fun exploring. We know about its problems, who’s scored the most goals, what club has recruited who, whos being paid what.. etc. Knowing a lot about a certain subject allows us to pick and choose from the pool on what to talk about.
Now, let’s say the meeting is about quality assurance of our company’s product, and let’s say we are a software engineer for that company. People who readily contribute have likely built up a solid understanding of the main issues, potential challenges in overcoming them, potential side effects, where the bug lies… They understand their system like it’s their child.
When the discussion comes around to a certain topic they’re well versed on, they are ready to make a valuable contribution by sharing what nobody else knew about.
Like how a mother knows what best for their children, if we know the ins and outs of the topic, we’ll have many ideas on how to make it better.
4. Carefully Contemplate What the Right Thing To Do is
Let’s go a little deep.
Is it right to be right all the time?
Imagine you’re in a room with 10 other people and while the team is discussing building a company website, the topic comes around to the menu structure. Home, About us, Contact, Careers… a drop-down sub-menu is needed
Then in the middle of the discussion, our senior says something that we know is inaccurate.
For example, he addresses a technical challenge that he believes is a bottleneck for implementing the new menu layout a certain way, so he suggests another way, which seems plausible, but we know that the first way is possible and is slightly better.
Would it be the right thing to do to correct him and challenge his view in this situation?
Although debatable, wisdom will likely say that it’s not. In this meeting’s context, it’s probably better to let the discussion flow instead of holding it up by talking about the technical challenges; also it would be wiser to avoid humiliating the other person in front of the team. It’s much better to leave him/her with higher self-esteem and confidence than to discourage and be on somewhat awkward terms especially if we’ll be working closely together.
But of course, there is a right time for everything. Hence we must carefully contemplate. For example, if the decision is going to impact the whole course of the project, would it be correct not to speak up? I don’t think so.
5. Listen to Understand
It’s far too easy to start thinking about how we’re going to talk about our own opinions while the other person is speaking.
As we’re listening, we can easily phase out and be stuck thinking about our ideas. The underlying motive could be that we believe our idea is clearly better than the other person’s. I was guilty of this, and I remember believing that my idea was the ONLY solution to this problem.
him — “There is a problem doing it in that way because of this, this, this”
me — “No, but that’s not going to work because of this that and that”
…and this is how the discussion went. You can imagine how unfruitful it must’ve been.
I do believe that it is super important to discern the validity of the other person’s opinions, but showing respect by really trying to understand what they mean and asking them questions to find out more would give them a feeling that they were heard. Also, it’s likely that they’ll have something to say that we didn’t know about that could complement ours.
“Listen more, talk less and be decisive when the time comes”
— Satya Nadella CEO of Microsoft
The central idea of this story is that to be effective in meetings, we must have a correct goal for the outcome of meetings. Let us keep in mind that the whole point is to reach the best possible course of action that would result in the most desirable outcome for the company.
Let’s throw away our egos!
