This episode runs 35 min.
Marketers facilitate meetings large and small, recurring and one-off. But few of us have received training in running a successful meeting. Ted Sive, of Ted Sive Consulting, shares his unique perspective on getting the most from your meetings.
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Questions Answered in This Episode 143: Ted Sive on Meetings
Why have a meeting vs. other forms of communications?
Why should marketers become better meeting facilitators?
Do marketers have advantages or disadvantages in running meetings?
What does the meeting facilitator control, and not control?
How much should the facilitator talk during the meeting?
What are your go-to tools to use during a meeting?
What are the biggest mistakes facilitators make?
Tips for introverts and meetings?
Best practices for brainstorming meetings?
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Announcer: Welcome to PSM, The Professional Services Marketing Podcast. It’s insight applied.
David Lecours: Hello, I’m David Lecours, and I’m joined by a special guest, Ted Sive, to talk about meetings. Welcome to the show, Ted.
Ted Sive: Happy to be here, David.
David Lecours: We’re going to learn more about Ted, but first, I want to remind our listeners that we have a fantastic underwriter, and that is SMPS, who reminds us that business is transformed through marketing leadership. You can find out more about SMPS at smps.org.
Announcer: This is PSM, it’s insight applied.
David Lecours: Now, in thinking about today’s episode, I had this sort of realization that as marketing leaders, one of our many tasks is to facilitate meetings. I don’t know about you all, but I never received any sort of training on how to do this, and I think we all just sort of wing it. I’ve been fortunate to experience our guest, Ted lead a meeting and he’s really good at it, and so I asked him to share some best practices for meeting facilitation.
David Lecours: Ted, maybe you could tell our listeners a little bit about kind of what you do and how you go to where you are today?
Ted Sive: Okay. David, I’ve listened to some of your podcasts, and one of the things that it reminds me of and it’s sort of a conversation or a theme or I guess a meme I should say. Which is, how do people end up in this industry? I think I want to start off by saying I am proudly someone who chose this industry and this job path of marketer and communicator and strategist in the A/E/C industry intentionally, which I find surprisingly rare even nowadays. I’m basically of the age when I got out of college, professional marketer roles in architecture firms, well, frankly were legal, and in A/E/C firms, were becoming regular.
Ted Sive: I was a guy in college, I had taken a lot of classes in the school of architecture, thought a lot about becoming an architect. As a kid, I was one of those guy who’s doodling house plans in middle school, and I have an absolute love for the world of designing construction, but I’m really in essence a word guy, an ideas guy, a communications guy. When I was in school, I was an English major with the writing focus, and I thought about going into PR and sort of the traditional path. A number of people said, “Well, Ted, there are marketing jobs and firms.” I’m like, “Well, that’s freaking awesome [crosstalk 00:02:57]-
David Lecours: Yeah, it fits.
Ted Sive: Because that’s combining the two things. That’s kind of where I started. I worked for many years at an architectural firm. Had a really interesting job with a variety of roles, as a marketer, as a technical writer, and as a project manager. I left that firm to go work for a very different type of company, a construction company, a big company in the private sector and not public. I was a partner there and Director of Marketing, and then for the last 15 years, I’ve been out on my own as a consultant.
Ted Sive: My work with my clients… well, first of all, my clients are really pretty evenly across the spectrum of architects, engineers, contractors and owners. I love that diversity. There’s also a lot of diversity with of size and type and sort of culture of firm in that mix, and with those companies my work is really in three realms. The first is the strategy. We’re really kind of classic operational and marketing strategy. Who are we? What do we want to be? What’s out there in the world? Who’s the competition? What’s the map? What are the things we’re doing? What are the things we’re not doing?
Ted Sive: A lot of work in the communication realms, both brand strategy at sort of the highest level. I’m on a graphic designer, I’m not a brand designer. I’ve very much a brand strategist in terms of, “Okay, we’ve decided who we are. How do we communicate that to the outside world? What are our expectations? What do we want people to be thinking about the firm?”
Ted Sive: Lastly, and really relevant I think to today’s conversation, and it’s a result of being a facilitator and someone who really enjoys being a facilitator and someone who’s always been interested in working on, reading about and writing about the topic of delivery, that is, how do architects, engineers, contractors and owners just… how do they work better and smarter and have more fun and make more money? As a result of having that skill and being focused on that topic, I do a lot of collaborative delivery. To working with teams on large projects that are actually doing real gnarly work together and working then to sort of assess the team and the desires, the communication risks on the job, and setting up decision-making protocol and patient process.
Ted Sive: The last thing I’ll say as an intro, is I’m a fellow in SMPS, which is something I’m very proud of, and I’m really happy that SMPS kind of writes this. So thank you SMPS.
David Lecours: Yeah, absolutely, we are too.
David Lecours: So I heard once that a boss told you that you weren’t actually a very good meeting facilitator.
Ted Sive: Yes, he did tell me that. You know, that was kind of a turning point for me. On the positive side I realized that I wasn’t really approaching the meetings I was running. I was the director of marketing and I would have these weekly, sort of classic meeting that marketers had, that weekly or bi-weekly meeting and you’ve got single management there and project managers and it’s got a whole bunch of people and you’ve got to talk about marketing and dt. I was not really approaching those meetings as positively or as intently as I could.
Ted Sive: That was a bit of a wake up call from my boss. Another part of the story is the boss didn’t like my facilitation because he and I didn’t necessarily agree all the time. But that’s another discussion David, for another day.
David Lecours: All right, fair enough. Obviously, you know meetings is a big topic and I think you and I agreed beforehand we’re going to sort of narrow the context to a couple things. One is, and you mentioned it earlier, a recurring meeting versus a one off meeting. Then also there’s a difference between a small meeting and we’re going to define small as eight or fewer attendees versus a large meeting, greater than eight. So we’ll kind of keep that in mind as we go through the questions. Just going to kind of give our listeners an outline of where we’re headed. You know, one of the things we really wanted to talk about is, what can and/or should happen at a meeting? Then also what marketers can do to become better facilitators, whether it’s written into our job description, it’s something we definitely do and I think we, and you would agree, we can be better at it.
Ted Sive: Absolutely, and I really think the story you had me start there, I think there’s a connection there for many marketers. Which is, meetings for marketers are really important because it’s your interaction time with your clients, who are internal. So your principles, your project managers, your architects, your engineers, whatever they are. Then the other reason the meetings are really critical is something hopefully is happening at the meeting that wouldn’t happen otherwise. It’s that basic thing, that one plus one equals three, not two. That because you’ve got this assembly of people something is born out of it that would not have happened unless those people where there to together, in person or virtually at the same time.
Ted Sive: I think that the first level that’s a really great guide for meetings is, can this happen otherwise? If it can you probably shouldn’t have a meeting, do an email, do a report.
Ted Sive: Thinking about this, the other thing that occurred to me is that, I think two things are the bane of the marketer’s existence in AEC firms. One is SRM, everyone struggles with it, then two our marketing meetings. Because often a lot of us have marketing meetings which are great, and this is really in that regular meeting category that we’re talking about. Well a lot of them are really a drain, and I think frankly there’s a lot of bad behavior in marketing meetings, all around. What’s interesting is the architect in your meeting whose maybe reading his iPhone or rustling papers instead of really participating, he might or might not hopefully won’t and probably wouldn’t be doing that same thing if he or she was in a meeting with a client.
Ted Sive: So marketers also sort of get the worst of behavior because it’s an internal meeting so people can kind of let down their guard with behavior. Whereas for the marketer, it’s our clients at the table, our internal clients.
David Lecours: Yeah, so what does a facilitator do to help boost engagement? Like get that person who’s looking at his iPhone to participate.
Ted Sive: Wow, how long do I have here? The first thing I want to go back to is that question. Which is, are we talking about stuff that will benefit from the group assembled and/or are there things here that can happen otherwise? What you’re looking for in a meeting is that all these people together as a result of that you’re going to get something more.
Ted Sive: So I think the first thing for marketers is to do that. There’s a lot of kind of basic things that we need, that people sometimes miss. One is having a really well thought out agenda. The agenda’s not just sort of a list of topics, it’s the facilitator thinking about, what’s the flow of meeting? Yeah, I do have to have a certain amount of reporting, when do I want have it reported? Is there going to be some brainstorming or creative activity? When do I want schedules? Who’s going to be at the meeting and how do I best use their time?
Ted Sive: I think we get in the rut of just sort of going to meetings and not thinking them and just sort of going on the fly. So offloading those topics that won’t benefit from the meeting, really thinking about and preparing an agenda beforehand. I’ve go a whole bunch of other things so maybe you-
David Lecours: Yeah, so I was thinking about that agenda part. It reminds of an invitation to a party sets the tone for the event. So would you say that agenda should be sent out in advance?
Ted Sive: You know, I really think it should. Even for regular meetings I think it’s really great to have two or three bullets at the top of the agenda which are, these are the objectives of this meeting. We are going to decide go, no go, on something or we’re going to create proposal strategies for this project. Or we’re going to talk about PR plans for the year, whatever it is. Make it as specific as possible, as sort of, yes we did that or we did not do that. Set that expectation.
David Lecours: Yeah, I love those rails of keeping everybody on track because so quickly and easily things can go off track. But if you have that sort of key purpose at the top, and it’s literally written down you can just keep going back to it, to help keep people focused.
Ted Sive: That is absolutely true. And I think that’s the other thing that’s really hard sometimes for marketers to do, or for any facilitator to do. Because the whole purpose of the meeting is to have something happen that’s unplanned, right? The one plus one equals three? You don’t really know where it’s going to go so, on the one hand you want that to happen. And it maybe that you planned on talking on topic A and you’re ending up talking on topic B and that’s good. But maybe it’s not good.
Ted Sive: I think one of the challenges a lot of facilitators run, is they’re not tracking the conversation in their brain real time. And sort of identifying, “Hey, we’re on a new topic do we want to talk about that or go back to the original topic?”
David Lecours: Right, it could be more important, more relevant. So yeah that flexibility.
Ted Sive: Exactly, or you know, maybe let’s set another time and we’ll get back to that, but lets get back to the original topic.
David Lecours: So do you think marketers have inherent strengths or advantages in facilitating meetings? And I guess conversely maybe there’s some apparent weaknesses that we should be aware of too.
Ted Sive: Well, I do think that marketers have strengths. I think, meetings are about communication, marketers, most of us are, or should be, or supposedly are professional communicators. So I’m always using that mantra, think about the audience. So I do think marketers have a skill of, okay who are the people coming to the meeting and what are their topics? What are their agendas? What is their personality, what’s important to them?
Ted Sive: I mean the exact same process that marketers go through with teams preparing for an interview with a client. SO you’ve got that, hopefully communication skill to sort of assess the audience. The marketers another advantage, I guess kind of in the realm of professional advancement maybe, is a lot of regular meetings the marketer has the opportunity to be speaking with the highest levels of leadership or ownership within an organization. That’s kind of a great opportunity.
David Lecours: Yeah, right it’s this stage to really sort of say, “Hey, I can lead teams and I should be considered for that next promotion.” Kind of thing.
Ted Sive: Exactly, and/or I have good ideas or I can draw the ideas out. That’s absolutely true.
David Lecours: I love that, yeah. So if you just approach this meeting like, hum drum, “Alright, we’ve got to do this.” You’re really kind of communicating that you don’t think originally or that you’re afraid of injecting life in situations where it could definitely be used.
David Lecours: So I think of myself as, it’s not my greatest strength, as somewhat of a control freak. And I’m wondering as a facilitator is that going to help me or hurt me?
Ted Sive: Wow, well both, right? I think the answer to that question goes back a little bit to your previous question about, what other things people should do. One of the things I think a lot of people don’t use is, I go back to a whiteboard and a flip chart. And a lot of people aren’t using those tools as strongly as they might. And it gets to the control, to me the purpose of a whiteboard or flip chart to capture the ideas and the topics being talked about in the meeting. Yes, it’s absolutely to record Jane and Billy-bob’s and Esmeralda’s ideas or input. But it’s also the opportunity for the facilitator to shape what that person is saying in a way that helps move the meeting along, so everyone understands it. And/or frankly they shape it in a direction that, that facilitator thinks it needs to go.
David Lecours: Mm-hmm (affirmative) So you’re not just a stenographer capturing a transcript, you’re kind of summarizing and shaping, I didn’t think about that. But that’s a really interesting topic.
Ted Sive: Absolutely, I think that’s one of the reasons, I don’t know if it’s why I really enjoy facilitating meetings, or it’s my training as a writer, that I’m bringing to the meetings. But I’m very conscious of that and that sounds a bit more machiavellian than I probably am in actuality. But one of the things that happens in meetings is people are talking about different things, they’re talking about apples and orangutans and not apples and oranges. And that facilitation that, that note taking process, that capturing ideas is a way to keep the discussion both organized and understood and also focused and directed.
David Lecours: Yeah, I know, that totally makes sense.
Ted Sive: One of the pieces of that is, I think in a meeting you’re typically running two or three flip charts at once. One might be a list of factors for consideration and another one might be a list of facts or you know, it’s sort of different angles into the discussion. And so as a facilitator when you’re thinking about those discussions think about what those angles might be and come into that discussion prepared. That will help that note taking.
David Lecours: Yeah, so you’ve mentioned a couple tools, a whiteboard, a flip chart. Any other favorites that you like to incorporate to make the meetings better?
Ted Sive: I wouldn’t be worth my salt, or weight, or whatever that expression is if I didn’t use dots. Avery dots and I like the little ones, I think they’re much prettier than the big ones.
David Lecours: So not post-its but actual stickers, the actual dots?
Ted Sive: Yeah, well post-its are great for when you’re getting a bunch of ideas and then rearranging them and sort of categorizing. I’m referring to sort of Avery label dots, which are voting dots. This is more applicable to that large group meeting. This is more applicable to a retreat or a workshop or a two-three hour meeting where you’re going through several series of things. You know, as a facilitator you’re always trying to et everyone to participate equally, that’s sort of the holy grail. You don’t get there, you know there’s some people like me who talk too much. And there’s other people, maybe like you David, who need to talk more.
Ted Sive: And so your job as a facilitator is to draw them out. Well a great way to get people, well one it’s just great to get people out of their chairs and moving, physical thing is terrific. But to get people participating is to have them vote, and I’ll do it in a bunch of different ways. Like I’ll give people green votes and red votes, green is yes and red is no. Sometimes I’ll say you can put all your dots on one idea if you want, or sometimes I’d say no. You know, you sort of figure it out as you go along.
David Lecours: Right, so you give people a budget of dots, say they get ten, and they can decide if they feel so passionate about one issue they are going to go all in and put all ten on that one thing, and try to sway. Yeah, I like that idea.
Ted Sive: But you can also use a negative dot. Some groups are like, “what? A red dot? I can do no?” And I’m like, yeah. And your red dot cancels out someone else’s green dot. Yeah, I don’t always want to do that but it’s an option.
David Lecours: Sure, well I like this from kind of an infographic, kind of way. Real quickly you can see, especially if you’re considering several different things, like where the group stands, by literally looking at the number of dots.
Ted Sive: Absolutely, and back to my comment on notes on the board. Just physically seeing it up there is really helpful. You know, so once again taking this discussion of dots or flip charts into the realm of weekly marketing meetings, it may not be applicable to all parts of it. But maybe you have 20 minute section of that meeting and once again back to my comment earlier when you’re thinking about the flow and the energy and the participation. Maybe you want to create a topic where you’re having a 20 minute feel during your meeting of a retreat, where people brainstorm and vote and do things.
Ted Sive: It’s a great way to shake things up and get people’s blood moving. In what can be otherwise dull meetings.
David Lecours: I think what I’m hearing you say is you’ve just got to vary the routine and think about the pacing and literally getting people out of their seats, does get their blood running and disrupts the status quo. That seems to be the enemy of the recurring meeting. People already know what’s going to happen, it’s the same thing. But if you can shake somebody’s expectations then it seems like it’s going to engage them a little bit more. Keep them on their toes a little bit.
Ted Sive: Another tool to use is to rotate the facilitator ship of the meeting either the whole meeting or portions of the meeting, to break up the routine. The other thing about rotating or changing the facilitator ship is. Let’s say you’re running the meeting and you’re the director of marketing and you are going into a topic that you’re really opinionated about. Maybe you shouldn’t be running that meeting, because you want to be pounding your fist into the table.
David Lecours: Or that part of the meeting.
Ted Sive: Exactly, and say that, up front.
David Lecours: I need to recuse myself, because I’m biased, on this. I’m going to have-
Ted Sive: Well, you know I’m going to ask so and so to facilitate the meeting because I have really strong feelings and I don’t think I’m going to be able to both facilitate and mention the pros and cons.
Ted Sive: I think we’re talking a lot about-
David Lecours: It inspires another question about how much the facilitator should be talking during the meeting. Is there any sort of rule of thumb or how do you manage that part?
Ted Sive: I love that question, I think in general less, rather than more. The facilitator, and this is really as your asking it is a follow on to that other topic. If you’re talking about something that you have a huge stake in and a strong opinion and there’s going to be an in depth or potentially even a heated discussion, you probably shouldn’t be facilitating that. Or you have to put it in some sort of mutual place where you can be having that discussion and somehow the meeting moves along. If your role is as facilitator I think generally for larger meetings, for a market retreat or whatever it might be. You want other people to talk, the best thing that can happen in a meeting is the other people leave the meeting feel their time was worthwhile. That’s why more likely to happen if they’re talking.
David Lecours: Absolutely, I feel more engaged. Like you participated.
Ted Sive: Exactly, the other thing, is you know we are talking a lot about facilitation but in my work, where I’m facilitating a retreat or workshop, I talk with my clients that I wear three hats. I’m a facilitator, as a facilitator I’m in charge of being on topic to talking about specific topics and getting to actionable ends and having even participation of productive conversation.
Ted Sive: I also have the hat of coach and opinion aid, the opinion aider one is like the subject matter. If my clients are talking about whether to get into the K12 market or not, well that’s something I have a lot of perspective on, from my own work to my clients work. So I’ll say hey, I’m putting on my opinion aider hat and I’m going to share some thoughts. That’s a really different role than facilitator. Then the other role is coach, which is both the, “Wow, you’re awesome.” Whether that’s to a group of people or to an individual or also pointing out improvement areas. The coach really comes into the marketers job in the interview presentation. But I think even in regular meetings if the person going to that meeting is thinking about facilitation, coaching and opinion aiding, that will help guide their participation and when they talk.
David Lecours: It seems like it should be clear which hat you’re wearing. I’m thinking a way to make the meeting kind of fun would be, if you’re the facilitator, meeting leader, maybe you literally have three different hats. And you could kind of-
Ted Sive: Oh, I’ve done that. The other thing I do in meetings is when I’m talking too much I put a pen in my mouth. So if I start talking the pen will fall out or I’ll look like a fool.
David Lecours: You know going back to what you were talking about earlier about how much the meeting leader should be speaking. Somebody told me once, “Think of it sort of like a charm bracelet, right? As the facilitator you’re the actual bracelet, which would be sort of understated that links all the charms together. The charms of course being the meeting participants.” But the charms should be, these more dynamic and should be kind of the star of the show. And you should just be the support, the structural integrity, the way for them to come together. I thought that, I like visual metaphors so that spoke to me.
Ted Sive: I like that, I’m going to use that David. No, I think that’s a terrific one. Yeah, gold star, I like that.
David Lecours: Okay, so this question is purely personal, I am an introvert and as a result I prefer to work on deep thinking by myself in a quiet space. So as a result I really hate this idea of group brainstorming, I would much rather be assigned the homework of generating ideas and then come to the meeting with those ideas and hopefully use the group to evaluate the meeting. So how do you navigate the different personality types and specifically this wort of group idea generation? Is it good to generate ideas in groups? Am I crazy? Talk to me about it.
Ted Sive: No, you’re not crazy at all. All of us have probably been exposed at some level to understanding there’s different learning types and there’s different personality and style types. People process information differently people make decisions based on different values. And people are different when they are happy and then when they are under stress. You put all that into a pot and a different topic can and should be addressed different ways by different individuals.
Ted Sive: So I think the practical answer to that is you really have to do both. You have to allow different people to process and do things in their own way. At the same time, the meeting has a purpose. Which is the assembly of the individuals, the whole is greater than just the assembly of individuals. So this gets to that large meeting, workshop, retreat. I generally do assign homework beforehand and it’s in all sorts of different formats and different levels of seriousness or fun. If you’re having a meeting where there’s some brainstorming or some idea generation expected, I do think it’s really beneficial to give people an assignment beforehand. A whole heck of a lot of people are not going to prepare much and that’s okay. People like you will really like it. And you can sometimes put some, “Hey, you’re going to be presenting for 90 seconds, an answer to the question.” Well for those people who don’t prepare their more likely to prepare and if they don’t, you know-
David Lecours: Yeah, and if they have a role.
Ted Sive: Yeah, so both, is my answer to your question.
David Lecours: Yeah, that makes sense. So how does somebody, let’s say, well not prepare but handling these different size groups, so dynamics obviously are very different in a small group, which we defined as eight or less versus large. Maybe you could talk a little bit about how to approach each one to get the most out of the meeting.
Ted Sive: Well, one of the things I do in my work, you know I actually train facilitation and if anyone’s listening to me and has heard me speak previously at SPMS or AIA or elsewhere, will know I always like numbers and steps. I think of preparing for meetings in five steps and those steps are analyzing the specifics, who’s there, what’s their personalities, what’s the setting? That’s the same, no matter the size of the group. Create the agenda, we talked about agenda before here. Anticipate discussion, what might be bad news, what’s the information that’s needed, who might be good people to facilitate different portions? What’s the flow want to be? Once again, I think instinctively, with a smaller group, well these things are probably more important, all these things are more important with a larger group, because you have more chance for people to sort of fade out and lose the connection.
Ted Sive: But you’re going to have differences between those smaller groups and larger groups when you’re thinking about the discussion. [crosstalk 00:32:07]
David Lecours: It seems like good to break the group, a group bigger than eight and you’re encouraging discussion to break them up into smaller groups, and then report back.
Ted Sive: Well absolutely, that’s a great technique. Certainly if you’re meeting for more than two or three hours, I really suggest that, absolutely. So anticipate the discussion and then the quantity of discussion and how to get people involved. My fourth step is lead with confidence and we talk a lot here about, what’s your role? Confident in your role, take command. That whole piece about note taking and how you’re taking notes, that’s a piece of confidence. Then, really from the mental, engage in dialog. This gets back to, what’s the topic being talked about and looking for that moment of excitement and interest. A lot of that gets to the physical piece. Again here there’s an analogy, if that’s what it is, back to preparing for interviews. When we’re working with teams on interview prep a lot of markers are thinking about physical language and physical communication, on watching physical communication.
Ted Sive: This exact thing is happening in meetings, and I sat in meetings where I’ve watched the facilitator miss the physical ques. Miss that time when someone’s engaged or excited or wanting to say more, they’re being quiet but you can tell they’ve got something to say. So engaging in that dialog, where all those people are, that’s really what you want in the meeting is that dialog.
David Lecours: Yeah, those are great tips. Well Ted, we’re about out of time but I want to make sure our audience has a chance to connect with you offline if they want to and learn more about you, and what you do. Is there a good place for them to go? Either online-
Ted Sive: I’ve used the term all the time, my website is like the cobblers children. The cobblers children are the people who have the worst shoes. And I’m sometimes embarrassed by my website, but certainly people can go to my website it’s tedsive.com and read the format on my LinkedIn profile.
David Lecours: All right, super, well that’s it for this episode of PSM show. Where today we focused on meeting facilitation, and I feel like I learned a ton, so thank you so much Ted. And thank you also for our sponsor SPMS. So audience if you have questions or comments, suggestions for future guests, please write to us. Go over to PSM.show, and you can scroll down to the contact form and send us a quick note.
David Lecours: From Ted Sive and myself David Lecours, best wishes leading your next meeting.