NOEL: Hello, I am Noel Rappin, host of Table XI's Tech Done Right podcast. And this is the beginning of a special 12-episode podcast, I guess 13 episodes counting this one podcast that we are calling Meetings Done Right. I have a co-host, would you like to introduce yourself?

ASHLEY: Absolutely. I'm Ashley Quinto Powell. I am lucky enough to work with Noel and the other Table XI folks here in Chicago.

NOEL: And we are doing this podcast in conjunction with Table XI's Inclusion Deck which is a deck of cards that you use in meetings to encourage or discourage certain behavior. So, each individual card has some sort of message on it that is you're either flagging a behavior that you're trying to discourage or noticing a behavior that you are trying to encourage or possibly giving somebody a role in the meeting by having them only be able to play certain cards.

ASHLEY: With the Inclusion Meeting Cards, you can do things like silence people who talk too much and encourage people who talk too little. Using cards like the Devil's Advocate which you might give to someone more junior to get them to participate more or the Angel's Advocate which you might give to someone who consistently poo-pooh's ideas and they're responsible for championing whatever's on deck. There's also Beating the Dead Horse card and the Opinion cards, each of which we'll discuss at length through the course of this podcast.

NOEL: Right. The idea behind the cards is to give you kind of a fun, not confrontational way to encourage or discourage certain behaviors in meetings. Each episode of this podcast, we will discuss a particular card with a special guest who has some expertise to bear on the behavior that we are talking about, and why it's good or bad, and how to recognize it.

ASHLEY: Noel, let's talk about why Table XI cares so deeply about Meetings Done Right. First of all, we're a software and design company in Chicago and we do work like embedding on innovations teams and being tasked with helping create outstanding products for technology companies. And we can't do that if we bring people into a meeting and don't get really unbelievable ideas out of them. If somebody is too scared to speak up, that doesn't work. So, we have all sorts of techniques and games and this is one of them to get people to have really efficient, really wonderful meetings.

NOEL: Right. And so, we have all of these episodes where we have a bunch of communication, culture and meeting experts to talk to us about specific behaviors and why they're good and why they're bad. And we've been asking people to share their best meeting stories and their worst meeting stories. Ashley, I was wondering if you have some stories to share.

ASHLEY: I do, actually. Long before I got to Table XI, I was working in a sales organization and I had a VP who would call all of the sales people across the country into individual conference rooms and have us put him on speaker phone. And then he would pump us up. And there were these really bizarre speeches where he would say, "All right, everybody. We're taking on water. We really need to get on deck and move forward." Somebody finally pointed out to me that the trick of these meetings was to figure out what History Channel documentary he had watched the night before and where it was coming from. And so, in a meeting like that where somewhere he would say, "All right, we got to get everybody on deck. We're taking on water." Inevitably, somebody on my team would whisper, "Boats, boats, it's boats." And then the next quarter, he would have watched a World War II documentary and would have been talking about how we have to get in the bunker and really solidify and find our allies. "I think it's World War II." I always thought the whole thing was so bizarre because he wasn't an expert in motivating teams, but the History Channel sure is. Noel, tell me about some of yours.

NOEL: The one that keeps coming to mind is an all hands meeting, not counting like the meetings where the content was objectively terrible at the meeting where everybody got laid off and the company decided to go under, that was bad. 

ASHLEY: [Laughs] 

NOEL: I mean, it was also poorly formed because we were laying people off from from like 30 to about eight, and the eight people had all been told before the meeting but the other people hadn't. So, it was kind of like an 'everybody who thinks they're still working at this company, take a step forward, not so fast' kind of thing which was literally like if you don't already know that you're staying, you're being laid off. So, that was awkward but that wasn't really a meeting problem.

ASHLEY: Certainly, the worst meeting ever.

NOEL: It was pretty bad. I do remember, I used to work at a very large telecommunications company in Chicago and we would have these also sort of quarterly meetings where our great grand boss, boss's boss's boss, would come and tell us what the team's priorities were going to be and what the metrics they were going to be using to determine people's bonus. So, it's kind of like not really a conference room but some kind of an open space somewhere between a conference room and an auditorium with one person speaking in front of about 25 people. And the boss, who we generally never saw, got up and started to say like, "OK. So, what do you think we need to do better in the next quarter?" And there was some silence and then somebody raised their hand and said, "We're having some quality issues. I think we need to test more." And that bounced around the room. Somebody else raise her hand and said, "Yeah, I agree. We really need to do more testing." And the third person said same thing, we really need to do more testing. And without missing a beat, the great grand boss said, "Well, our metric for next quarter is spending more time in development and less time testing."

ASHLEY: Oh, no! 

NOEL: We were like, "Thanks for going to the trouble of asking us. That was useful.".

ASHLEY: [Laughs] That's terrible.

NOEL: Yeah, it was interesting. And it was interesting too how they defined testing versus development, too, but that's a whole separate story. So, those are my bad meetings stories.

ASHLEY: Those are terrible.

NOEL: Thank you, I think. 

ASHLEY: It's such a great topic and I have loved hearing worst meeting stories. If any of our listeners have some that they would like to share, I bet you could email me at Ashley@TableXI.com. I really would love to hear them and we'll post them on Linkedin or on the site. I think it's just such a -- because everyone has sat in some terrible  meetings.

NOEL: Yeah. By the time you hear this, we'll have something set up in the show notes for you to share your meeting stories with us.

Ashley, thanks for this. And thanks for hosting with me for all of these very interesting conversations about meetings that we have coming up.

ASHLEY: It's a real honor to work with you, Noel.

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, or 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.