Leadership team meetings ought to be engaging, collaborative, insightful and productive yet many that we observe and many more that we hear about are precisely the opposite.
I remember in my earlier career working for a Director who had a card on their bookshelf with a picture of a Board meeting underwritten by the title “Bored Meeting.” She seemed particularly resigned to the fact that this was inevitably how meetings were and that there was little to do to change them.
When I observed the meeting, I was struck by how appropriate the card was – the meetings were poorly managed, poorly structured and really rather boring. There was, however, a clear pattern which I have seen repeated in many leadership teams and in many businesses of all shapes, sizes and sectors. It is a pattern that is very typical in technical teams and I-shaped leadership teams where people tend to work in silos and/or pay far more attention to their own portfolio than they focus at the business level.
The pattern typically starts with:
One of the team talking about their achievements and issues for the period since the last meeting and then following up with their intended actions and outcomes for the forthcoming period.
The second person around the table generally does not pay much attention to the first person speaking as they are looking through their notes and rehearsing their input.
The rest of the team are usually predisposed with their own thoughts and reflections and therefore paying little attention to the speaker.
The pattern moves one to the right, person 2 talks through their achievements, person 3 focuses on rehearsing their forthcoming narrative and person 1 joins the rest of the group preoccupied with their own thoughts and not really paying attention.
And so the meeting flows with lots of talk and very little conversation, plenty of reporting and very little discussion.
A Bored meeting indeed.
Having the leadership team round the same table is a huge benefit and one that is wasted if the team simply engages with reportage.
So, how do we fix this?
We determine that there are things that each member of the team is doing that is within their skillset, within their KPIs and within their resource capacity. We should trust them to get on and deliver and not need them to recount their actions, issues, decisions and plans. It is their job, and they are capable of doing it so let’s trust them to do so.
We also determine that there are topics that have a bigger impact in the business, and which require leadership team debate, support and decision-making.
These topics generally fall into 6 categories, and are topics where there is likely to be:
- An impact on the strategy or operational business plan
- An impact on the commercial position of the business
- An impact on the culture of the business
- An impact on the reputational position of the business
- A topic which the leader needs support from colleagues
- The leader is not delivering their KPIs and objectives and it has cascade impact on other parts of the business.
We would consider that these 6 categories should be classified as ‘above the line’ and worthy of leadership team time. Standard delivery of KPIs and objectives are below the line and should be taken on trust unless and until the leader finds themselves in position 5 or 6 above.
When we have introduced above the line as a concept to leadership teams in a wide range of organisations, they have consistently found the impact to be significant and reported a wide range of benefits to us, including:
- More engaging and productive leadership team meetings
- More insightful discussion and collaborative decision making
- Greater strategic focus
- Better use of time
- Higher levels of trust
- Increased personal and collective accountability
- Enhanced leadership team performance
Like many ideas that work, however, this is a simple one that appeals when discussed but can be harder to put into practice. It requires the leadership team to make a commitment to change their habits and, above all, to recognise that the only way to create time and space for focused discussion at the level they should be operating at, is to focus on above the line topics.
Many teams ask us to help in changing these habits and when we do so they frequently ask us to give examples of above and below the line topics and act as the arbiter in the debate. We always decline as it is important that the team ‘feel’ their way into this categorisation and learn together how to determine what is above and what is below the line. It is not a mathematical equation, rather the application of learning and insight that comes through reflecting on the experience of the learning journey and a deeper understanding of how the leadership team adds value.
Once the team becomes proficient at managing their time and contributions, keeping on track and dealing with distractions is much easier as team members are simply able to ask “Is this an above the line topic?”
If it is not, then let’s not take time to discuss it and show trust in our colleague.
If it is, then let’s determine what the issue actually is and then work together to cocreate the best outcome possible.