Enthusiastic meeting - illustrating better meeting design Design meetings to empower mental health and reduce meeting stress

Better meeting design to empower mental health and reduce meeting stress

Well designed meetings are a vital and powerful tool for transforming the negative effects of stress into positive energy and excitement
This article is part of our series on stress resilience and mental health at work..
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Is stress inevitable?

Challenges are always present. They are what provide us opportunities to add value, to pull together, and to shine. It is challenges that provide us with learning and fulfilment and rewards. But they also involve stress.
So how do we prepare our people to work with that stress so that it doesn’t adversely affect mental health at work? In other words, how do we equip them to use it as a motivator, and not be overwhelmed by it? And how do we ensure the stress is a positive influence and not a negative one.

The need for better meeting design

Typically, the biggest factors in how our people approach challenges depends upon:
  • Their understanding of the challenge and its context
  • Their skills, capabilities and confidence to rise to that challenge
  • The level of support they can expect in tacking the most difficult bits
  • The sense of purpose and meaning the challenge has for them
  • The insight, ideas and creativity that they can bring to the challenge
  • Their attitude and beliefs about themselves and their team in relation to the challenge
  • The appreciation and acceptance they feel in tackling the challenge
Greater levels of these things help reduce stress. But where the levels are low, stress grows, and has a negative impact on mental health at work.
So how do we deliver these factors to the individuals who are tackling the challenge? The answer to that is most likely the meetings that take place around the challenge. Big meetings, small meetings, one-on-ones. To good effect or bad.
The greater the positive influence of these things, the greater the likelihood of success, and the more the challenge seems like an adventure. But if these things are missing, or badly handled, the challenge can seem overwhelming. As a result, its impact on us and the organisation can be damaging.
Meetings are key. However, this is somewhat of an irony, because many of us don’t see meetings in that light.

Meeting stress

image of frustration in non inspirational meetings - source Engin Akyurt via PixabayThere is overwhelming anecdotal evidence that people see meetings as an obstacle rather than an enabler. All too often, and for too many people, meetings seem (and perhaps have become) a distraction to simply getting on with their work.
Instead of meetings being a means to handle and reduce stress through the means defined above, people find that many meetings add further stress. And this meeting stress is totally unnecessary, and the result of lack of meeting design. Such meeting stress is a major cause of issues in mental health at work.
And there is good reason for this. We have somehow lost sight that the value of a meeting is the difference it makes to those who attend it. We couch meeting objectives in terms of inanimate deliverables. But the only thing a meeting CAN change is how people act as a result of it. All that it can do effectively are deliver the bullet points above.

the value of a meeting is the difference it makes to those who attend it

A decision is sterile and impotent without the understanding and commitment of those required to effect it. The fact is, if your people do not need to change, even in a small way, then you don’t need a meeting. And if they do need to change, then that is what the meeting needs to deliver. The content is simply a means to achieve that. In a well-designed meeting, the people do not so much work on the content, as the content works on the people.
We need to begin to see meetings as a means to change people to what they need to proceed. Then we will start to design meetings as journeys in which we address what is missing (from the bulleted list). Our objectives would reflect skills, attitudes and shared understanding. And people would not only see their value, they would eagerly engage with them to play their part in that journey.
The value of your meetings depends not only on the journey, but the extent to which people engage with that journey. Their adoption of what is needed is much more likely if they are actively involved in developing it. For that reason, your meeting (especially if it is virtual) should use participative tools wherever possible.

Steps to better meeting design

So for your meeting design, here are some practical things to think about:
  • Do you know what they need in respect of the above bullets? If not, can you talk to them to find out?
  • How much of what is required can be delivered through interaction with their colleagues in a well designed meeting?
  • What did they feel about the last meeting in this regard, and why? Can you raise the bar for this one?
  • How will you use participation to build personal and team ownership and support?
  • How can you better engage their insight, ideas and creativity in the plans that you want to build?
  • Where can you authentically express your appreciation and acceptance for what they have achieved already?

expectations on people are not getting any easier

The expectations on people are not getting any easier. The challenges to which we refer are increasingly frequent, perhaps even daily, occurrences. Better meeting design is all about systematically rethinking our everyday meetings until they better equip people for those everyday challenges.  If people in our organisations do not like meetings, it is a very clear indication that they are poorly designed. And if they are poorly designed, we are handicapping ourselves and our people in a competitive race for the future.
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Relevant Links:

Daily re-restructuring for agility? How adaptive structures maximise agile engagement.
Culture eats strategy for breakfast – but what sort of strategy are you feeding it?
Facilitating mental wellbeing – The power of adventure in keeping our minds fit & healthy.
Patterns of collaborative excellence – Rediscovering the lost wisdom of design.
Prescient emotional knowledge management – do you have what it takes?
Glass orb of Girl offering paintbrush and palette - metaphor for facilitating adventure in others

#015 – Facilitating Adventure in Others

Building confidence in our ‘voice’ and the ‘voices’ around us – Using structure to draw out insight and self-discovery in peopleGirl offering paintbrush and palette - metaphor for facilitating adventure in others

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Benefits of facilitating adventure in others

Why take this challenge?

  • To think through what it might mean to find our ‘voice’ and inspire others to find theirs
  • To develop a picture of the changes we want to see for ourselves and those around us
  • To provide a context for using structure to inspire creativity and self-discovery

 

Graphic image reflecting different pathways to take the adventure

In Leading by Adventure, our first 12 or so adventures might be best described as adventuring in leadership. They have been largely about us, and who, how and why we are.

They have hopefully been an exercise in moving our perspective out, and seeing things a little bit differently.  Partly in the hope that some of those perspectives we might find helpful, and want to use again. But mostly with the intention of developing a habit of deliberately taking time to test out new perspectives and whatever they may or may not bring.

But what about the adventure we lead in others? How do we facilitate attitudes and habits in others to adventurously adopt new perspectives? After all, the stated aim of our adventuring is to help equip people for a future that is increasingly all about change.

So, as leaders (and we are ALL leaders – ‘Leadership is a choice, not a position’ – Stephen Covey) how are we helping those around us to explore new perspectives? How are we helping them to develop the skill of shifting their view points? And how are we developing confidence in them? That they too are adventurers in change and not the victims of it?

Over the next 12 or so adventures, our focus will be on leading (facilitating) adventures in others. Whatever our relation to them might be. In doing so, our own adventure will be into Covey’s vision for us: To find our ‘voice’ and inspire others to find theirs. (See the pack)

We will be using tools and techniques (some of which may be familiar) that ‘draw out’ from people, rather than ‘push in’. Tools that offer people a path to self-discovery of insights, rather than passively receiving  them from others. And to keep it real, and make it sustainable, these are all things that you will be applying within your ‘normal’ work. Your (and their) current needs and situations.

The purpose of this week’s adventure then, is to develop a perspective, a vision, for how you would ideally see their voices develop. You may already have solutions for each of the tracks in place. But if you do, then please take this opportunity to consider how they might be further improved.

 

Graphic image reflecting the idea of a Pack of resources to support the adventurer in the challenge

You may find the following resources helpful in tackling your challenge or in gaining further benefits from the skills and insights you develop

To catch up on past adventures you may have missed, feel free to browse our Adventures Library

 

Graphic image suggesting the idea of posting a record of the adventurer's journey

Let us know how you get on.
Share your experience, your insights and your observation using the comments section at the bottom of the Linkedin post.

Please help us to extend and develop our community by sharing what you are doing. Click on the links below where you are most active, and then like or share the article to your network. Thank you for helping.

And share your progress and insights with the Twitter LbA community using #leadingbyadventure

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