NOEL: This is the Meetings Done Right podcast where we talk about meetings and we talk about the Table XI Inclusion Deck which is a set of cards designed to help you facilitate better meetings. Ashley, what card are we talking about in this episode? ASHLEY: Noel, today, we're talking about the three opinion cards. If you are running the meeting or you're the CEO, you've called the meeting because you want to get people's opinions and you want to understand what feedback you can get on a particular concept or an idea, you want to brainstorm. And the worst thing you can do is dominate that conversation. So, the three opinion cards, you lay them out - one, two, three - every time you have an opinion. And once they're out, they're out. NOEL: Right. Normally, the rule here is the person holding the opinion cards can only ask clarifying questions without playing an opinion card. And yeah, when you're out, you're out. We have a guest with us to help us talk about questions and opinions in meetings. Michael Donnelly, would you like to introduce yourself? MICHAEL: Absolutely. Thanks for having me. I'm very excited to chat about this. I come from a world of startups and large companies mixed together and focus a lot of my time on diversity and inclusion efforts, as well as most currently, doing some business development. I am the Founder of Forward Collective, FWD Collective, and I recently took on a role to help out a website development and design firm called Elevate in their business development initiative. I've been in all different types of meetings, all different types of structures, and really excited to dive in on how we can capitalize on making sure that people are heard. ASHLEY: Awesome. You were an early tester. Why were the cards in general so exciting for you? MICHAEL: Meetings are an opportunity for everyone to have the ability to share what they're working on, and there should be some type of agenda. But I'm sure we've all seen the meme 'just survived another meeting that could have been an email'. [Laughter] MICHAEL: So, I think what happens a lot of times is we've seen the pass-the-baton style of talking. We've seen the very well prepared agenda style of talking. And the cards were a way to gamify calling people out on what they're doing that could be disruptive without making them feel bad. Because a lot of times, what happens is in a meeting if someone is a dominator or is providing more information one way or the other, you get caught up in that. Just to name a few of the cards that I've seen, the Kick a Dead Horse Card, you need to kind of stop talking and this gives an opportunity to make that funny versus to have someone then react defensively which I've seen happen a lot of times when you try and work collaboratively to bring a meeting back to task. NOEL: With respect to this particular card, what's wrong with the person potentially running the meeting offering all of their opinions as they have them? MICHAEL: I think this card is really lovely for many reasons. Understanding kind of the growth of the card and what it was born out of from the Table XI side of things. I know that you guys created this card specifically for your founder because he was generally really, really excited to talk through some of the different points in a meeting. I have a very similar personality where I would interrupt people and I would jump in. And no way would I be trying to cut people off. But as one of the key stakeholders in decision making, that could happen very easily. So, the opinion card gives the person the opportunity to really think through when they're sharing versus just off the cuff say everything that comes to mind. ASHLEY: I love it. Mark Rickmeier is our CEO and he is the one that this was designed around. But I got to tell you that this is totally something I'm guilty of in a meeting because I often call meetings because I'm so excited about a concept. And then I'm like sharing the concept and I don't logically want everyone to just tell me it's a great idea and then everyone applaud. But it wouldn't be a bad meeting for me. MICHAEL: [Laughs] ASHLEY: It's a really helpful tool for somebody like me who's not trying to dominate the conversation but especially if I get really excited about something, it just naturally happens. I really can't help it. I'm so excited. We just want to barf excitement and then move on to the next thing. MICHAEL: Yeah, I totally see that. And I am guilty of it myself when it comes to projects that we find passion in. I think that's where a lot of times different personality types are showing in the introverts versus extroverts, and how we share our feedback or share our excitement. So, people who are generally more social are generally kind of stepping out more, don't realize that in sharing your opinions or sharing your excitement, you may be stifling other creative voices or other opinions that could be really important to pay attention to while launching a new project or an internal initiative or something of that nature. So, it gives different voices the opportunity to be heard. NOEL: One of the things I like about this card is it doesn't kick the cardholder out of the meeting entirely. The person who holds the card is not, it's not 'stand in the corner'. You're there to ask questions and therefore, to listen. And as we talk about some of the other cards, your there to 'yes, and…' people, to ask clarifying questions, and keep the meeting going. One of the goals of the cards in general, and I think of this one in particular, is to set up an environment where everybody gets a chance to offer their opinion and nobody feels like they are being prevented from doing that. MICHAEL: I see exactly what you're saying, Noel, specifically around the question asking. I think it allows for the person running the meeting to be more introspective in how they're receiving feedback and/or how the conversation is going instead of waiting to kind of tell everybody what you're thinking. It's really processing and listening and it allows for you to put on, "Let's all go back to preschool and put on our listening ears," and come up with some interactive elements for discussion rather than just telling everybody what we think. So, it allows for that process of really diving deeper into what's being shared while you're in the room and processing what's being said by others. ASHLEY: Michael, you've facilitated things professionally including some of our internal to Table XI meetings. What are some of the things that are hardest to control from a facilitator's standpoint? MICHAEL: I think the biggest hurdles are getting to know what's OK to push for and where we have to be careful of different personality types. So, making everyone feel welcome with the opportunity to share and engage, but also not making anyone feel uncomfortable by asking them. So, it's about setting the tone early on in the meeting. This is something that I'm fortunate to have been complimented on at some of our FWD events that I didn't even realize I was doing, but people would say when we come to a FWD panel, it feels like we're hanging out in your living room rather than very formal and sitting down. We allow questions throughout the panel. We allow people to kind of interact with the panelists more frequently than you'll see at most events and that is something that can become complicated because it does have to be controlled. So, people don't just get out of hand, everyone start shouting out but it's finding a balance between being polite but also allowing people to feel comfortable and engaged. And I think that has to do with the tone set of how do you really work together to make this, like, "We all know what the end result that we're looking for or close to what our goals are here. Here is the way that we're kind of setting up the stage to achieve that. And here's your part and here's my part." So, finding opportunities to guide people in a collaborative fashion rather than what happens a lot of times as you go to a meeting, you see the agenda, you're not really sure what your place is or how you're supposed to interact or when there's feedback or when there's conversation. So, allowing for setting the stage as much as possible and what's expected of the individuals as they're in the room or on the phone or involved in entirely. NOEL: How do the cards help in that kind of facilitation? MICHAEL: We have not used them in the more formal facilitation that I've been a part of but they help in the engagement of gamifying the conversation, gamifying the meeting, making it fun to find different ways to engage and allowing people to understand that although some things may be considered a fault at times, there's other ways to highlight your thoughts without continuing to do it down the same path. So it allows for a learning potential for that individual and a way for others who may -- I mean, we tone each other out if we see that. Unfortunately, that starts to happen. They talk about banner ad blindness, et cetera. Well, if someone shows up to a meeting and acts the same way every meeting, there's certain times that people just won't hear what they have to say. So, to allow other opportunities for that person to be heard and explore alternative communication methods so that there's an actual channel of communication and there isn't that wall being built on all sides. ASHLEY: That's so interesting. I had a family friend that was a very, very effective lawyer. One of the reasons that she was so effective is because she spoke like a few decibels under what you were used to. And so, you had to pay a lot of attention because she was speaking so softly and she was always saying something like insightful and good, but if she had just been speaking in a normal tone, and I think I speak always like a little louder and I'm always a little flashier, it might do me some good to switch it up. Adjust it a little bit and pick some cues from my friend. NOEL: One of the things that's fun about being in a meeting with this particularly the opinion card in general is they're -- you're talking like gamifying this. There's definitely a little bit of a strategy element to deploying the opinion cards especially if everybody knows you deploy them when you have something important to say and when you are down to your last one... We're not above trolling Mark a little bit when we know he doesn't have very many opinion cards left in a meeting. MICHAEL: I can almost see the drum roll effect. "There's one left! Is he going to play it?" NOEL: But I think also like tone is really important in this and it helps for the person who holds the cards to be kind of a good sport about it. In general, I think it helps for people to accept these cards sort of in the spirit in which they're intended. What would you do to explain these cards maybe to an audience that hadn't used them? How would you try and get them receptive to using these tools in their meetings? MICHAEL: The purpose of the cards and the opportunity to really engage with the cards is we all know that meetings, hence the name of the podcast, aren't done right. So, there is an opportunity to up our level of interaction, up our engagement. And if we want to be more productive with our time which is one of the most valuable assets or resources or however we want to classify time in our lives, let's make sure that we're using it correctly in a way that is more fun and allows for us to share with each other and hear each other in a way that's more meaningful overall. So, if I'm introducing it or if I would be introducing it to a roomful of people, it would be, "Hey, we've all been in a meeting before. Tell me more about why this meeting went that way or that way." Even just holding up the cards themselves and telling the story of where they came from. I think every time I've seen the cards or interacted with the cards, we can all immediately picture someone in our heads who personifies that card and who would benefit from having the ability to interact with that card during a meeting situation. ASHLEY: Speaking of meeting situations, tell me what's the best or worst meeting you've ever been a part of? MICHAEL: There's not unfortunately one that sticks out as the worst and I think that's probably because it happens so often. And just in general, where people are completely talked over or -- I'm trying to think of examples where you just can't get a word in edgewise. And I've seen it happen time and time again, and I've seen it happen to all different types of people and all different backgrounds. But I think that's the hardest thing is it's not just one bad meeting situation, it's a perpetual cycle of we don't know how to listen very well, especially in professional settings where everyone has an agenda as you should. You should have a reason of having the meeting. So, I think it just leads to a lot of conversations from what we talk about during our FWD engagements of how do I find my opportunities to get heard more in meetings. I guess unfortunately, that's not a really fun answer because it just leads to why this makes a lot of sense. It gives the cards there on stage to stand out of being a solution in this very noisy atmosphere of a problem. Best situation. We participated Elevate in an engagement where we were able to help a nonprofit in creating their website. We're actually randomly placed into a group and the group got together to create kind of an initial stakeholder and laundry list of things that would be needed to analyze this website. And it was so beautiful. There were four of us together, all different backgrounds, orientations, groups, mindedness, different areas of walks of life from level of career, et cetera, mixed in there. And it was so polite. Everyone said 'thank you', everyone said 'excuse me' in the nicest way. Not where it kind of got in the way. Sometimes, there's that over-polite, but it was building on people's ideas and writing down, and Noel, to what you said earlier, is a very 'yes, and…' atmosphere to "That idea, it works and what if we thought about this," or, "How does that fit into the big picture?" So, we did have the opportunity to have a big whiteboard that we were working off of, and kind of move and work together. And we all took different turns being the scribe, we took different turns in each role which I think aided to that. And there was a great cause that we were all kind of bought into. So, that led to everyone being real excited about it. ASHLEY: That's awesome. NOEL: That sounds great. I've recently become increasingly convinced of the value of a simple 'thank you' in setting the tone for a good interaction and a good meeting. ASHLEY: That's good. You mentioned that you all took turns being the scribe. I have a visceral reaction to being asked to be the scribe because I think, first of all, you usually ask a woman to write everything down and then that automatically takes her and her opinion out of the meeting. I think I'm just so sensitive to that kind of behavior which you really don't see so much. First of all, in the meetings I'm in lately, everyone is taking notes on a laptop. There doesn't need to be just one note taker. But I think it's so unfair to always pick a woman and then she's so busy making sure that she gets everything that she doesn't get a chance to actually participate except as the scribe. I'm pretty sure that's why today, I have terrible handwriting. MICHAEL: [Laughs] ASHLEY: As I've said for years, "No, I'm not doing that. I look like a drunk four-year old." It's terrible handwriting. You don't want to see it. MICHAEL: Well, you found your excuse. ASHLEY: I did. MICHAEL: Really we knew that it was something bigger. [Laughter] MICHAEL: But little did we know, I guess, there was something bigger. But I can definitely, definitely empathize with that and having pretty good handwriting and exceptional note taking skills, and being the person that was in class and having people ask me for my notes or even through some mid to low to high level jobs that I've worked in or have participated in, that's the way I process things is by taking notes. So, because I'm good at it, a lot of times and people would ask for that. And then all of a sudden that would fall into the category of what I had to do every time. And people would depend on that. It did get to be frustrating at points and I think that was where I found it to be such a great meeting when we all took turns or the person alternative to feeling like if you're assigned to scribe, that's a bad thing. I've been in other meetings where someone took on being the scribe and then acted like that was the best thing ever and that they were the one running the meeting. And because they took the notes, they took it in a different way and made it to where everybody else was less than them because they kept the notes. And it just gets to be goofy of kind of the different dynamics that can be thrown in and out of some people. It doesn't bother them at all and they have to take notes and they love it and they want to share. And others, it does create that visceral reaction or that reaction of, "Oh, because I'm doing this, I'm in charge of everything now." So, I think that's why these cards are so interesting and so important because not everyone feels the same way about certain things that happen within a meeting or within conversation and this allows for opportunities to highlight the different levels of interaction based on if you're personally getting defensive, this is a card that you should use. If you personally jump up and share your opinion as the card that we're talking about today regularly, then this is what you should use. But I'm sure there's people that you've been in meetings with, I know there are for me, where I'm like, "OK. We need like 20 opinion cards for you. You have to use them all because you never tell us your opinion. You more take notes and then share later," which is fine but sometimes, it's how do we pull this person out a little bit more to share and be present with us in the meeting, even though that may not be their style all the time. Is there ways that we can encourage that integrated collaboration happening during the real time that we're talking together? ASHLEY: Absolutely. NOEL: Do you have a non-card related tip that you would offer to people to improve their meetings? MICHAEL: I think I touched on it a little bit earlier. But my biggest kind of win in hosting events, meetings, engagements overall is really setting expectations. I think it sounds very rudimentary but it's so easy to forget in our day to day because we need to just throw a meeting on the calendar or get things set up in certain ways where what do we expect of the person that we're meeting with and what should they expect from us and what do we all expect to walk away from. A friend of mine shared what's called the PBC with me. That's the Purpose Benefit Check. So, if you're asking someone for a meeting, it's outlining what the purpose of it is, getting aligned and the benefits they will walk away with, and then checking in on everything overall. I think that's an easy way to look at that. If it's just a one on one or even with a client or in general, here's what we're working on together and why we're all in this room and what we want to walk away with. NOEL: That's great. Michael, thank you so much for being on the show and telling us about how to have better meetings. MICHAEL: Absolutely. I don't know if I'm an expert just yet. I'm still working on it but I appreciate what you have done as Table XI, both you, Noel and Ashley, with this podcast of opening up more discussions about it because I really do think it allows for us to think bigger picture about how we approach our individual contributions to meetings and how we evaluate the others that are in the room with us and then figure out how to best take that into next level. ASHLEY: Thank you, Michael. NOEL: Thanks for listening to this episode of the Meetings Done Right podcast. If you would like to learn more about the Inclusion Meeting Cards, order a set of your own. To find out about other episodes of this podcast, go to MeetingsDoneRight.co. You can also find out more about this podcast by searching for Meetings Done Right wherever you listen to podcasts. Leaving a review on Apple Podcasts will help people find the show. The Inclusion Meeting Cards and the Meetings Done Right podcast are produced by Table XI. Table XI is one of Inc. Magazine's Best Workplaces and a top-rated custom software development company on Clutch.co. Learn more about Table XI at TableXI.com. Meetings Done Right is hosted by Ashley Quinto Powell and Noel Rappin, and edited by Mandy Moore. Thanks for listening.