Chad Maxwell | Lesson Two: make meetings all about you
Clive shared five powerful motivational lessons from Chad Maxwell (2009)
Hey Clive! I think it’s time I told you how to conduct yourself in the modern bear pit that separates mortal men from immortal leaders like you and me, Clive: the business meeting. These five tips will enable you to maximise your input-to-output ratio and turn must-dos to already-dones.
Meetings have sure changed since I was a kid, Clive. I remember being elected chair of my high-school student council. Fired up with ambitions to make edutainment compulsory and to maximise the school day by combining lunch with math, instead I spent hours with my hand in the air waiting for the chairman to let me speak; typical of the bleeding heart leftie communist apologist politics of the day that had slowly infiltrated the administration. I decided then that I had to find ways to make myself heard and create actionable outcome metrics that others would slavishly follow.
Thankfully, this is no longer the case. Meetings (thought gatherings, mind-revolutions etc.) are now simply a place to determine who is the alpha male, who is really in charge: position is irrelevant — the ability to circular breathe is all. Clive, I know you have a lot of meetings, so to tackle them with successivation here are my top five pointers to take control, take no prisoners and take away the power and leadership of others you have paid for (your transaction cleared, by the way — we had a few glitches but they are all resolved now).
Do not listen to others: do not fall into the trap others do by thinking meetings are where you exchange pleasantries or enter a non-actionable state by listening to other people’s problems. Work is not for making friends. If you need friends, you can find them on the squash court (if no colleagues are available). Meetings are where you, Clive, get people to do what you want. This is achieved by constantly and ruthlessly not listening to other points of view (or as I call them, excuses not to act). You have done your action prep: go into the room, delagatize ruthlessly and leave as soon as possible. The more efficient you are, the more respect you will gain and the more time is freed up to maintain your core stealth-like focus on the goals and blow the opposition quite literally out of the water.
Gain and maintain control: this is the burning platform issue. In order for people to want to follow you must first eliminate all excuses not to be followed. First, never show weaknesses, in fact abandon them altogether — they are an annoyance leaders like us have no time scheduled for. Second, act as if everyone in the room owes you. If they don’t, then one day they will. Eventually your co-workers will enjoy the warm feeling of being told what to do and not have the added stress of having to think before they act. Finally, use embarrassment and peer pressure whenever you can to shame others into working harder for you. This is easily achieved through such phrases as “Jan, why have you not given me that report, Brian gave me his — are you suggesting his is incomplete or you were unable to follow a simple order?” (do not worry if Jan is your line-manager, it is just as effective).
Do not allow silence to be wasted: key modern meetings are unruly and uncivilised arenas within which generally self-conscious people waste time waiting for stronger people to make decisions. The unguided and inefficient organisation of such gatherings is ripe for strong leaders to go forward and leverage to their advantage and add meat to the bones of their excellence. The most easily learned technique takes advantage of the modern fashion of letting people speak whenever they want (thankfully leaving the weak and junior almost irrelevant). You may have noticed the odd and monotonous noises produced by primary stakeholder-figures in major decision-huddles: “so.. you know… uh… ah… ba… da….” and so on into infantile inane rambling. These are how thought-followers have adapted to no longer being able to raise their hands. You make a noise and people instinctively look at you, useful for hunting, not useful for enhancing the quarterly sales figures, Clive. However, you can claw back this waste and take advantage of the evolutionary weakness of the masses by this tried and tested technique: simply hum whenever you are not talking so everyone continues to look at you expecting you to speak. At first they will find it odd, but staff are easily trained.
Your body is language: get ahead of the curve, Clive. We all know body language accounts for 90% of what we say (100% for mutes). Knowing this productivity factoid you can increase the payoff to your directives just by tapping into a few of my scientifically presented tips. The most important is to always walk into the meeting last, when people are wondering when the meeting will move into the starting blocks. This has several advantages: it makes you feel and appear important, it makes people think you were the reason the meeting could start; and you receive maximum attention as you will be arriving on your own and not with the masses (this will make many think you have been at a very important wrap-up tasking session).
Harness the power of your eyes: look: eye contact is the easiest way to manipulate those in a meeting to follow your lead. Stare intensely at people not talking, who you want to remain that way. This will undermine their self-confidence if you ensure you never smile at them (avoid humor, particularly in meetings). When someone is talking aimlessly, batting some idea or other around the table and you want them to stop, look at them intensely, never acknowledge what they are saying (you will see the rest of the room nodding like donkeys) and then look away quickly to the corner of the room. This will cause them to look around and you can then elevate your hum into action-speak and regain vital talk-control.