Joan has just witnessed a conflict between Wanda and Drew, the Driver. Wanda was waving her hand around frantically in a meeting, wanting to be called on—and then threw out a bizarre and arbitrary route change and went on and on and on, explaining the dubious benefits of her suggestion and completely not hearing Drew when he said that it just wouldn’t work. It was dawning on Joan just how different this interaction is from the discussions that take place between Rufus and Drew. Rufus says a lot less, but the Driver respects his opinions a lot more. Hmm, thinks Joan, maybe there’s a lesson in this. She decides she’ll keep her hand down during meetings for a little while and listen to others instead. And she wishes Wanda would learn to sit on her hands.
When you meet with other team members, it’s important to be present. You want to make eye contact with the speaker and look interested. Don’t be on your computer or glancing at your phone. Don’t do things that could distract others such as eating during the meeting or opening a candy wrapper. While it may not bother some, it will unnerve others. If you want to contribute to the group, and you don’t really have the best ideas or you aren’t willing to volunteer to take on the project, the least you can do is to be attentive and not interrupt the flow around you.
Another way to be attentive when you go to a meeting is to have a notepad. It is a sign of respect because it’s your way of saying that you value what the person is about to tell you. If you are meeting with your colleagues and don’t have a notepad and pen, you’re saying you don’t expect to take any initiative on what needs to be done. You’re basically just an observer. Some will say that it’s fine to bypass the notepad if you are going to type notes into a phone or other device. To cover your bases, bring both. It shows initiative.
And if you are riding or walking, the best advice I can give you about meeting conduct is to put your hand down. To be more specific, I’m saying do not raise your hand to share ideas or to criticize others’ ideas—I’m suggesting that you only raise your hand to volunteer for a task or to ask a question. If you are trying to improve your speed and you want to be a Runner, the place to start is not by pooh-poohing ideas or even throwing out ideas of your own in a meeting, because you have not established a track record of actually doing the work in the past. If all you are doing is giving ideas, the team will perceive it as you coming up with more work for them to do. In order to start running, the place to do it isn’t in the idea department; it’s in the hard work department.
For example, we once decided to transform our school overnight into a carnival, which involved hanging five hundred yards of yellow, blue, and red drapes; transforming our classrooms into various scenes from the carnival; laying almost a ton of hay on the floor; and putting funhouse-themed decorations everywhere. For our lessons, we taught things that were necessary to run a carnival, but we included our content. For math class, students had to determine the square footage needed to house a carnival, and they had to create a working budget that included everything from the price of admission to all overhead costs. In art class, they had to build a clown costume; in history class, they learned the history of carnivals around the world; and in Language Arts, they created all of the advertisements. When it came time to transform the school overnight, it was a ton of work, and at midnight, I looked around and saw six staff members were still left, trying to make everything perfect. Let me tell you this: during the next meeting in which we are discussing taking on such a project, the ideas and comments of those six individuals carried the most weight. They proved they are “down for the down,” and therefore they have earned a voice. Those who left at four that afternoon should hush.
And if you aren’t going to be the one doing the work to fix any problem you choose to bring up in a meeting, you should hush too. If you aren’t running or jogging, people may still appear to be listening to you in earnest, but they want you to hush too.