NOEL: Hello and welcome to Meetings Done Right, a podcast about how to use Table XI's Inclusion Cards to improve your meetings. And where many of the other episodes of this podcast focused on a single card in the deck, in this case, we're going to talk more generally about all the cards in the deck and sort of the larger point of the kinds of things that we're trying to encourage with these cards. And we have a special guest with us on, it is Claire Lew. Claire, would you like to introduce yourself?

CLAIRE: Sure thing. Thanks so much for having me on the podcast, Noel. So, hello everyone. I'm Claire and I'm the CEO of Know Your Team. We are a software tool that helps managers avoid becoming a bad boss. [Chuckles] Yeah, most people when they hear that, they go, "Ahhh, yes!" Nod head. So, we give you educational guides that are all online, online tools to help you run one-on-one meetings, build trust, get feedback and then we also give you an online community with over a thousand managers who you can learn from.

ASHLEY: Awesome. Claire, Table XI uses Know Your Team. And a couple of times a week, there are questions sent out to the whole company. Sometimes silly, like I think today, actually we have 'what's your favorite breakfast cereal'. It just turns out it's surprisingly polarizing. 

CLAIRE: [Chuckles] Yeah, it's a hot topic. 

ASHLEY: Very hot. But the more important things like 'are there places you think we could be more transparent', or 'were there things we could have done in our onboarding process to make things easier for you'. And it has bred such a great part of a feedback culture. 

CLAIRE: That's so amazing to hear.

ASHLEY: Yeah. Tell me about the impetus behind it originally.

CLAIRE: I had the idea for Know Your Team because I had a really bad boss, Ashley. Kind of common story, I'm sure, for many of us when we think about who that worst boss is in our career. A clear answer usually comes to mind. Mine definitely does. And this boss, this was maybe seven or eight years ago, was a really great person but just had no idea how truly bad he was as a leader. 

ASHLEY: Whoa!

CLAIRE: Yeah. And it was both sad, I think a little bit, and frustrating. But the most sort of impactfully is it really affected sort of my well-being. I realized when you don’t have a good boss, when you're unhappy at work, it really bleeds into every part of your life. And so, I decided to start a company to figure out what's a solution to this. I remember googling for consultants and software products and nothing really seemed to fit. So, I decided to create my own solution. And prior to this, I had started a company before and I'd studied learning and organizational change but didn't really know what I was going to build. So, I actually first started a consulting practice working with CEOs one-on-one to help them get to know their company better. And my first client was a company called Basecamp which is actually sort of down the street from you guys.

ASHLEY: Yep, in Chicago.

CLAIRE: Yup, in Chicago. For folks who are listening who might not be familiar with Basecamp, they make one of the world's most popular project management software products. They have over 15 million customers and their CEO Jason Fried approached me and said, "Claire, this is the biggest problem that I'm facing. I feel like I don't know my company. Can we hire you to be a consultant for us?" So, I did a project for them and then coincidentally enough, they happened to be building their own software prototype to solve this problem internally themselves. And that was actually what was then called Know Your Company. And so, they originally built this tool and it ended up doing so well for them and for some other folks that they decided to spin it out into its own separate company. And then they asked me, "Claire, would you like to be the CEO? We'll split equity 50/50 but you can run the whole thing, grow it. What do you think?" I said, "Yes, please!" This is essentially my dream job and what I've been wanting to build. I didn't want to build a consulting practice. I wanted to really build some sort of tool eventually that could, on a more wide scale, help bosses like my former boss. And just most importantly, help folks who are working in the teams for others. The thing that motivates me to this day, Ashley, is just the fact that I know what it feels like to work for a bad boss. And gosh, I just want to help people not feel that way.

ASHLEY: I feel like -- in a little bit, we'll ask you what was the worst meeting you've ever had, and we've gotten great responses. I feel like we could get the same great responses if we asked people about their worst boss ever because I know in my career, I've had some doozies. I've also had some brilliant people that I really respect but, whoa! 

CLAIRE: You know, it's interesting. I often pose that question when I give a talk called The Accidental Bad Manager because what a lot of times happens is when we think about who that worst boss is, like I was saying, a clear answer really very easily comes to mind. This person is usually very formative. I call this person an anti-mentor in some ways because we usually pattern our own leadership behavior to be different from what this person was or sometimes unknowingly, we adopt some of their behaviors but they're extremely influential in our own style and choices of leadership. But I often pose that question actually because what we don't often think of as an answer is that, is that worst boss actually us? Could we, ourselves, unintentionally be someone else's worst boss? 

ASHLEY: Whoa!

CLAIRE: Yeah. And the reason is because the statistics that have been shown on this are really interesting. Gallup did a study or they do a study every year. Probably both you and Noel are very familiar with it. It's called the Q12 Assessment. And they survey millions of managers and employees and, I believe, over 84,000 business units. And in the most recent survey, they found that 82% of the time, companies choose the wrong manager. So, companies will choose people based off their success as individual contributors and that doesn't necessarily translate. And then most interestingly, Gallup then identified, I believe it was six to eight traits that they saw as essential traits of successful managers, and that indicated that you had an innate talent for management. So, this doesn't mean that you can't learn these traits or skills but it just means that out of the gate, do you exhibit these traits? And they said that only one out of 10 managers actually have the traits to lead. Again, it doesn't mean you can't learn it but it just means that the likelihood that us, here on this podcast, might be someone's worst boss. There's like a 90% chance, 90% to 80% chance that that's likely.

NOEL: The tech industry is notorious for promoting programmers into management jobs that they have no business being in, including at various times myself, I think.

ASHLEY: Yeah. I know that I have been someone's worst boss. [Laughs] Sometimes, early in my career before, I really knew what to do or how to be a great advocate for my team. That was certainly the case. And also, I've been in sales management for, I sort of go back between being a lone wolf and a sales manager. Sales management is just not a popular profession. 

CLAIRE: It is not. 

ASHLEY: You don't do it because you like to be universally loved. [Chuckles]

CLAIRE: And here's the thing. You know, I would almost extrapolate that out to almost every leadership role of all industries, just in the sense, that there is no "manual" or even a good model of success of leadership which makes it really hard to be good at. For example, Noel, you mentioned that in the tech industry, you have a lot of programmers who are promoted into managerial positions. What's interesting is programming, it's pretty clear there's a standard of what it looks like to be an excellent programmer. That's pretty clear. Or a good designer, or a good salesperson, right Ashley? So, the standard of success is very clear for those roles. But for leadership, the models all vary. So, it makes it really hard to figure out, "How do I even get good at this?" And then for the folks who are promoting you into this role, they're often looking at the wrong metrics or just going, "Oh, you performed really well as an individual contributor, and you seem like you're good with people. Let me just throw you in." When in fact, the key traits that make a great manager are three things. One, building trust. Two, creating context and communicating direction at all times. And then the last one is communicating honestly. And that often is not extrapolated nor measured nor examined well on an individual contributor level.

ASHLEY: Yeah. 

NOEL: So, that gives us a chance to segue into how those qualities might play out in the kinds of meetings that a manager might be leading and the kinds of environments that a good manager creates to allow for transparent communication, allow for people to feel safe. What are some of the things that a good manager or more generically in our case, a good meeting facilitator can do to make that space and make that process better?

CLAIRE: Absolutely. I think that's the whole purpose behind the Inclusion Cards is to provide some prompts and some structure. But I think the facilitator of the meeting or the leader of the meeting plays an especially essential role, regardless or not of what other tools that you're using to create that honest and transparent environment. Because whether or not you really know it or accept it as a leader, everyone is watching you. Everyone is picking up on and trying to read your cues as to even small socially acceptable behavior, like, "Do I raise my hand when I want to contribute? What's the volume of the voice that I should use? How much energy should I be showing? Is it OK that I look at my phone?" It's not right. So, it's really, I think, critical for a leader to be exceptionally intentional about how they create this open and honest environment. I definitely have a few suggestions. 

The first has to do with what I was saying about how the leader is very much a model for the kind of behavior you want to be seen and reflected throughout the rest of your group during a meeting. It's a concept that I call Going First. For example, if you want your team to be honest and vulnerable with you during the meeting, guess what? Surprise! You actually have to go first and be honest and vulnerable with them first. So, you can't expect to see a certain kind of behavior if you personally don't exemplify that and set the tone to begin with. So tangibly, what does that look like? That means that in a meeting, you should open it up instead of just saying, "What suggestions do people have about how last quarter could have been better?" Instead of doing that, start with yourself saying, "I want to admit with what I struggled with in the last quarter. And I want to just share how I was uncertain about a few things. I thought I personally didn't perform well on these issues. I was a little self-conscious about this went over." And level with people. What's most interesting is -- so, we actually ran a survey last year with almost 600 managers and employees about trust. And we found that the number one most effective way to build trust, according to these respondents, was to admit your vulnerabilities as a leader. So, if you're thinking about building trust in a meeting and trying to create that open honest dialogue, going first, being vulnerable is first and foremost thing that you should do. So, that's number one. 

ASHLEY: That's a solid, solid tip, Claire. That's awesome. 

CLAIRE: Thanks. Number two is to really pay attention to the questions that you're asking. I've no doubt that it's sort of like, folks who are listening to this, both Ashley and Noel, might be listening going, "Yeah, duh, Claire. Yeah." Ask specific questions. Ask good questions, of course. That's a good thing to do in a meeting. It's actually much harder to do in practice. For example, how often do we ask in a meeting, "How's it going?" And nine times out of ten, you ask, "How's it going?" And people will say, "It's fine." Or, "What should we improve?" And people will go, "Ahhhh…." It doesn't really elicit specific concrete responses. In fact, you only get specific answers if you're asking specific questions. It's why in Know Your Team, you'll notice every single question that we ask the team is something like, "Is there an area outside your role that you think you could be contributing in?" Or, "Is there something that you think we're behind the curve in as a company?" Or, "Do you commute to the office and does it take longer than an hour one way?" So, the more specific the questions, the better. That is the second most important thing.

ASHLEY: That's interesting. 

CLAIRE: And then the third sort of bucket of things that -- actually maybe there's one fourth bucket. But the third bucket of things that I'm highly conscious of is, as a leader, to really pay attention to how you communicate your own opinion so that it doesn't sway the rest of the meeting. What a lot of leaders don't recognize right away is that your word carries, for better or for worse, more weight. Like I say, people are paying just like a little bit more attention. So, you'll notice, as a manager, even as the meeting facilitator, you'll throw in your two cents and you'll see people sort of scribble it down on a notebook or like perk their ears up a little bit more. It'll happen, you'll notice when maybe more senior people weigh in on a topic. All of a sudden, the tone of the room changes or people are like, "Oh yeah! We agree with this person."

I have a couple of tips for how you can avoid, as a leader or a more senior employee, swaying the rest of the group. One of the things that I always recommend is to assign other people the task of disagreeing with you. As a meeting facilitator, you can sort of force the hand to create a safe space and say, "OK. It sounds like the seven of us are sort of saying the same things here. I'm going to make it your job to disagree with everyone else regardless of how you actually feel." You go around and you ask, "If you had to disagree, what would your argument be?" And that always really elicits wonderful conflicting, in a healthy way, productive ideas. I always recommend that. I also recommend giving either the least experienced person a chance to speak first or having the person with the strongest opinion speak last. What this avoids is two things. One is that if you get someone who is sort of newer to the team and you give them a platform to speak first, it helps make sure that someone isn't just saying, "Oh yeah," to what that person said. Now, the one con to that is it's obviously a little scary to be the first person to speak. So, just to really encourage and again, maybe you, yourself as a leader first. Like you could admit vulnerability and then ask the lesser experienced person to speak. And then the idea behind having the person with the strongest opinion to speak last is that oftentimes, people who feel really in it about something can sway everybody else. So when you wait to have them go last, it can avoid the potential to drown out any diversity of thought.

NOEL: Those are really good ideas. 

ASHLEY: Yeah, absolutely. We couldn't agree more. I would say that the genesis of the Inclusion Card started with the idea that our CEO was really enthusiastic and needed a playful way to silence himself.

CLAIRE: There you go!

ASHLEY: Yeah. We see these in meetings where we expect to get lots of innovative ideas. And if the CEO says a good idea, everybody goes like, "Yeah, he's the CEO. She's the CEO. It's a good idea."

CLAIRE: Exactly. 

ASHLEY: Yeah, let's go with that one." But if you're really there to get the most innovative ideas, that's kind of lazy.

CLAIRE: It's also ineffective. It's like you probably actually won't get the most innovative ideas. You'll just sort of be reinforcing what you personally, as a leader, might think is most innovative. 

ASHLEY: Yeah, absolutely. 

CLAIRE: Becomes an echo chamber. 

ASHLEY: Yeah. And we want to avoid echo chambers as much as possible in our space. So, with the cards, somebody like the CEO or the person who has called the meeting has three opinion cards and they lay them down every time they express an opinion. And then once they're out, they're out. They have to just ask questions. 

CLAIRE: Perfect.

ASHLEY: Yeah, it's pretty good. And then we have a Devil's Advocate Card which you would give to someone pretty junior and an Angel's Advocate Card which you would give to someone who has a tendency to pooh-pooh everything. You would give them the card that requires them to be an advocate for whatever is on deck.

CLAIRE: I love that. 

ASHLEY: Yeah. It's one of the things certainly that sets it apart for us and we're really excited about. So, we, again, could not agree more. 

CLAIRE: What I really appreciate about that, Ashley, is you are very much defining the roles of what kinds of voices need to be in circulation. That's what's wonderful. Because that's what the meeting facilitator is supposed to do in theory, yet it's always hard to do that, again, in practice.

NOEL: I was wondering whether you had any opinions on how to specifically apply this advice to remote meetings where people are definitely not all in the same room during the meeting?

CLAIRE: That's a great question. I think the main difference and the main difficulty in remote meetings versus in-person meetings is that when you're facilitating an in-person meeting, it's really handy and important to "read" the room. So, you're looking at body language, you're looking at who's disengaged, you're looking at who's withdrawn. You're looking at someone who clearly is thinking, but they haven't said anything yet. That's what I look for, at least, when I'm running a meeting. And so, what you can do is you can very much sort of circulate and ask different people's opinions based off that language. 

When you're remote, you don't have that. So, what you have to really, I think, pay closer attention to is very much the output of what people are saying. The two dimensions are how long is someone actually talking for, and what is the content and the quality of the content that they're contributing? If you want diversity of thought and diversity of opinion and you've noticed that persons Abby, Bob, and Carl have all each talked for at least 10 minutes and Ana over here has talked for two minutes just by virtue of time, you can follow that a lot more strictly and paying attention, not just the time but maybe you notice that Carl's comments are really well-thought out. He is not just explaining his opinion. He's talking about thought process. Maybe that's something that needs to be heard more of in the meeting or maybe that needs to be balanced out with someone's opinion who's different than Carl's. So, just paying much closer attention to those two dimensions of how long is this person talking for and what's actual content and quality of their conversation. So, that's one thing. I think the other thing is as a leader, you have to be even more rigorous about moderating yourself where Inclusion Card stuff come in. But I think even in the sense of, again, the measure that I always recommend for leaders is like how much time are you actually talking during the meeting. You really should be talking 10% to 20% of the time. If you're talking more than that and if the majority of what you are saying is not in the form of a question, you're not doing your job. 

ASHLEY: Sure.

NOEL: A question we've been asking all of our guests is to share a story of their best and/or their worst meeting experience. So, what would you like to share with us, Claire? 

CLAIRE: Sure. I can share both, I guess, because hopefully they'll be helpful. The worst meeting experience I had is when I had to let someone go. And of course, that's probably true for a lot of business owners. Letting someone go is never fun but this is when I was I just starting to run Know Your Team, maybe four or five years ago, and it was the first person I've ever had to let go. It was someone who was actually a mentor to me, who is really someone I thought highly of. She was a big supporter of the business and of me personally for years before that. And I let her go because just unfortunately, the work wasn't what it needed to be. She was way too busy with other clients and didn't give us the proper attention. And so, for us as a business, it didn't help us and I had to really be thinking about the best interests of the business. The conversation was hard. She was crying. She talked for hours and hours and hours and it was the worst just in the sense of, I mean, that's hard to sit with. That's hard to, as a human, to watch someone be really torn up in that situation. I don't think I would have done anything differently because she was also, like I said, a mentor to me and I wanted to listen and hear her out and everything. It didn't change the decision but just from a human level to just be there, that stands out the worst. The best, I would say, meeting experience that I've ever had is honestly, just anytime I run a meeting or in a meeting and something just truly gets done. There's a difficult sort of navigation of opinions and there's a positive outcome. And I think one of the best actually is not related to Know Your Team but I used to be the co-chair of something called the MakeWork Council for the School of the Art Institute. And it was a council that we fund aspiring entrepreneur artists. As the co-chair of the council, I run this annual meeting with all the council members who are, as you can imagine, very opinionated, a lot of diverse thoughts about how to structure things, how to divvy up funds. And what I was grateful for was getting to put some of these practices into use of just making sure that no one dominated the conversation, that we got to the decision that we needed to, and that the actual purpose of the meeting was fulfilled. Because sometimes you have meetings that are just to hear someone out. Some of them aren’t actual collaboration and working meetings, sometimes there's a decision that needs to be made. And for us, it was a combination of hearing everyone out and a decision to be made, and I was happy that that was actually accomplished at the end of the meeting.

ASHLEY: Outstanding. 

NOEL: Great. I feel like we've gotten a lot of tips for meetings but if you do happen to have another one in your pocket.

CLAIRE: Yeah. I remember that I actually had a fourth bucket of stuff to talk about with meetings which is fine. I'll mention it really quickly which is that the meeting has to, at the end of the day, you're having a meeting because you want something different to happen. There has to be some sort of real outcome. And so, defining that and making sure it actually achieves that is actually your sole goal as a leader. So, knowing beforehand what is the actual purpose. And then at the end, reflecting and making sure that that purpose was actually fulfilled is the biggest. I don't know if that's so much of a handy tip. So, what I guess I'll end with as my favorite sort of tip in a meeting is to ask for advice instead of to ask for feedback. Feedback is often a very loaded word that has a lot of baggage associated with it. People always like to critique, it's negative. "Oh, I don't want to give you feedback." But you ask for advice and it's so interesting you say, "Hey, I need your advice about something," or, "Hey, can everyone give me their advice?" And everyone all of a sudden wants to give advice. It just starts pouring in. So, I always recommend during a meeting asking for advice instead of feedback.

NOEL: That's a good idea. Claire, thank you so much for being with us and talking to us about meetings.

CLAIRE: You bet. Thanks so much for having me.

ASHLEY: Thanks, Claire. 

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.