NOEL: Hello and welcome to another episode of Meetings Done Right, a podcast about how to improve your company's meetings using the Table XI Inclusion Card checklist. Each episode of this podcast focuses on one, or in this case, two cards in the inclusion deck. And we have a guest to talk to us about the cards and the behavior that they're either trying to promote or to...

ASHLEY: Discourage?

NOEL: Discourage. Yes, that's the word. Words are good. I like words. In this case, we are talking about two cards. We are talking about the Interrupted Card where somebody interrupts you and not in a good way that Ashley just interrupted me to save my sentence, but in a bad way where you cut somebody off. And also the Hepeating Card where a woman on your team gives an idea that is ignored and then a man on the team gives the same idea and is complimented for it. I'm going to try very, very hard not to do that in this call.

ASHLEY: Thank you.

NOEL: We have a guest. Our guest is Tarsha McCormick. Tarsha, would you like to introduce yourself?

TARSHA: Yes. Thank you so much for having me. So my name is Tarsha McCormick and I am the Head of Diversity and Inclusion for ThoughtWorks.

NOEL: Let's talk about the behaviors here. Where should we start? 

ASHLEY: First of all, Noel, definitely every woman knows what hepeating is. This is one of the things that came to us as part of our crowdfunding of the Inclusion Cards. And every woman that I've spoken about this with is like, "Ohhhh, right, no, that's a good one." Tarsha, I'm sure you have a lot of familiarity with hepeating.

TARSHA: Definitely. As the Head of Diversity and Inclusion, we know that one way to make everyone feel included is to make sure that comments and ideas are attributed to them and that everyone has a voice. So, when hepeating happens, it can definitely stymie your diversity and inclusion efforts. And so, it is definitely something that we want to pay attention to and we want to discourage.

ASHLEY: So, what are some of the more concrete ways that you're making sure that ideas are attributed correctly?

TARSHA: Some of the ways that we make sure that their ideas are attributed correctly is we'd like to have conversations with our employee about the importance of diversity and inclusion. We'd like to do trainings with first time managers, as well as with our teams, so they understand about gender diversity, why it is important, as well as why it is important to make everyone feel included in the conversation and in a meeting. And definitely, when you are attributing ideas to other people, that doesn't make someone feel included in the conversation. So we do it by a lot of conversation, as well as training. But we also like to encourage feedback. Oftentimes, someone may unintentionally attribute an idea to someone else. And if that happens, we encourage people to pull people aside and have that conversation and give them the feedback, but also attribute the comment to the right person in the meeting.

ASHLEY: I think that is so important. I know there is very little that makes my blood boil in quite the same way. Actually, as I'm just thinking about it here, I'm starting to think there was a time in college where exactly that happened. I'm mad about it anew even though that was like two decades ago. And I really have appreciated in meetings -- and this will be my segue to the Interrupted Card -- I have really appreciated in meetings when other people will point out that I have just been interrupted or I have something to say like, "Hey, Ashley was just in the middle of something. Can you let her finish?" And I've always been so grateful for whoever does that for me because it saves me from having to be so mad about it that I'm trying to keep composure in a meeting which is not healthy also.

NOEL: When this happens in a meeting, can you catch this at the first behavior which is the first person speaks up and is not acknowledged? Or is it better to try and stop the second behavior from happening? Does that make sense? Is it easier to try and boost the initial signal or is it easier to try and prevent the misattribution?

TARSHA: Yeah, I have to think about that one. I think it's probably easier to prevent the misattribution and speak up. Allyship is really important and that's something that we have started to talk about a lot at ThoughtWorks because as Ashley mentioned, it isn't always easy for the person to speak up for themselves. You know, you're angry. You may not feel comfortable speaking up. You may be new to the situation. And so, if there is an ally in the room who can speak on your behalf, it helps out a lot.

ASHLEY: Yeah, absolutely. I think the thing that makes it so frustrating is that when you're ignored like that and then your idea is repeated by someone else to much acclaim. So, the message is like, "You don't count. We don't see you." And that can be so alienating and so frustrating.

NOEL: Is this a case where good facilitation of the meeting can make sure that attribution happens in like a summarizing kind of way like, "Thank you, Ashley, for saying XYZ. Would anybody like to respond to that?" And making sure that the initial statement is heard and attributed right at the moment that it's made. Is that valuable?

TARSHA: Oh, that is extremely valuable. Good facilitation goes a long way. Not only can you summarize when a person makes the comment, but if you find someone else making that same comment, you can respond and say, "Yes, I agree. That's a fabulous point, as Ashley stated earlier - XYZ."

ASHLEY: Yeah.

NOEL: I always kind of wonder about this as somebody who's probably done this. Is the second signal largely a case of not paying attention in the first place, dismissing the initial voice? Is this also something where training your team to listen to everybody can make a difference? Or do you think it's occasionally or often more malevolent than that.

TARSHA: I think it can be a combination of both. But I believe it's moreso not hearing the voices in the room, whether it is gender-related or someone from underrepresented minority group, or maybe it's a new hire, or someone with less experience. Sometimes, we tend to discount voices in the world that are different from ours. It's unconscious oftentimes. And so, I do believe it is about training people to be better listeners, but also training people to give everyone a voice.

NOEL: Right. And I guess this is where this sort of ties in with interruption, as you said before, where paying attention to somebody else or interrupting can also come from a place of not listening to you or dismissing somebody else's comment and assuming that your comment is more important. I say this as somebody who has spent the last several years working on a chronic interruption problem. It's often a combination of just assuming that, of course, your idea is the most important or just enthusiasm. I guess I would say that there's a sense of 'if I don't say this now, I won't get a chance to say this at all'. And I think that that's something that a better meeting structure or a meeting facilitation can also help mitigate. What do you feel that you can do to prevent people from interrupting other people?

TARSHA: I think part of it is to set some guidelines at the beginning of the meeting, sort of a contract that everyone is going to agree to. So, we're going to give everyone a voice, we're going to try not to interrupt each other. But we're all human and it is going to happen. And it's not malicious, most of the time. To your point, people are very passionate. But when it happens, just acknowledge it. "I apologize. I didn't allow you to finish your statement. Go ahead." So, I have found that setting those ground rules in the beginning has been helpful for a lot of our meetings.

ASHLEY: I have had a lot of trouble not interrupting people, first of all, because of the enthusiasm. But also, I'm a nice Midwest girl. And so, a lot of times when I have conversations with people on the East Coast, for instance, I feel like, "Man! I can't get a word in edgewise." And in doing what I do, I talk to people from all over the country. And sometimes, like if I'm talking to somebody from New York, New York City in particular, I have to kind of up my get-your-foot-in-the-door game. So I feel like some of this also is a little regional. And that's one of the reasons that I love that this is being addressed in a way that -- interrupting in particular, maybe it's because this one is definitely a fault of mine, but I'm not sure that it's always bad acting. Sometimes, it's just over enthusiasm or we had another guest point out that sometimes it just takes people longer to form an idea and they're more careful about putting it in front of a group. And so, they're just more cautious. Allowing space and gaps in time to talk about it is really helpful.

TARSHA: I will definitely say that that is me. I am never going to be the most vocal person in the room. I am more quiet by nature. I'm the type of person who needs time to think through all of the information and formulate my opinion and then share that out with the group. And I think when it comes to women and minorities, they tend to be more cautious in certain groups because you just don't have as much room to get things wrong. And so, unless you're in an environment that really encourages and fosters ideas and fosters an environment where it's OK to be wrong and learn from their mistakes, then you really aren't going to have a lot of people readily providing a lot of their thoughts up front when you have a lot of women and underrepresented minorities until they are comfortable with the group.

NOEL: I feel like the extent to which an individual meeting tolerates interruptions is very, very micro culturally determined, I guess, by the individual meeting and the individual groups of people in it, that different groups of people behave in different ways. And I think that this is a case where somebody who comes in potentially to a meeting with a lot of privilege can play a large role in setting the tone. This is actually something - this is a ThoughtWorker thing. This is something that I've seen attributed to Martin Fowler but I don't know whether that's true or not, that he would just raise his hand in a meeting and wait for the meeting to acknowledge him. And that over the course of time, that set a tone where other people started to do that and you got less interrupting, more a meeting with people more able to state their entire thought. So, that's something where I think every individual meeting is a chance to do this right and a chance to do it again in a way that some of these other things, I think, are a little bit more company determined.

TARSHA: I would agree with that. Another technique that we've utilized often is taking the time within the meeting to get the opinions of everyone in the room. So, whether that is doing a round robin, individually asking everyone, or starting with the person who may be a bit more reserved or quiet to get their opinion first. And also using sticky notes. Giving everyone five minutes to write down their thoughts and then putting them on the board, so you don't have to vocalize it in front of the entire group.

ASHLEY: Awesome.

NOEL: One thing that we do in retrospectives sometimes when we are asking people for feedback is we deliberately start with the most junior person in the room to make sure that their concerns get heard and not drowned out by the things that other people want to talk about.

TARSHA: Yeah, that's a great one as well.

ASHLEY: Tarsha, particularly as it pertains to remote workers, what are some tips you have for making meetings really efficient and inclusive?

TARSHA: For remote workers, we like to utilize video. We want everyone on video. That helps a lot to be able to see each other's faces and stay engaged. So, that's a really big element that we try to use. Also, depending on what team you're on, there are daily or weekly stand ups. So, the team is always connecting with each other. You want to make sure that the remote worker feels like they're co-located with you as much as possible.

NOEL: Tarsha, one thing we're asking everybody to contribute is we're asking people to share one of their best or one of their worst meeting experiences. Do you have a story that you would like to share with us?

TARSHA: I do. I like to share a story about my worst meeting and I like to refer to it as the pineapple meeting. And so, to protect the innocent and the guilty, I won't name the team that I was working with. But several years ago, I was invited to attend a meeting where a colleague had been asked to facilitate a team meeting by their manager. The facilitator was responsible for setting the meeting agenda with the key objective of getting the group to decide on a course of action and a way forward at the end of the meeting. So during the meeting, several of the participants shared that they needed a bit more information before they could decide on a course of action. But the facilitator continued to push for the decision without providing the additional information. The facilitator's manager interjected and strongly suggested that the facilitator change the agenda and utilize another approach to get to this outcome. And that really didn't go over well with the facilitator and that was a bit of a tug of war of power playing out between the facilitator and the manager. And this was happening in front of the participants. To say that it was tense and extremely uncomfortable would be an understatement. The facilitator was frustrated, as well as the participants. Participants started to weigh in and offer suggestions but everyone was talking over each other. The facilitator lost control of the meeting. There were a lot of interruptions and there were some new participants to the group who sort of had the deer in the headlights look at the mayhem that was playing out. If you're familiar with comedian Kevin Hart in one of his stand up routines, he stated that pineapples is a safe word. So in my attempt to infuse some humor in the situation and bring down the intensity of the meeting, I just started saying, "Pineapples, pineapples, pineapples, I don't feel safe." And luckily, everyone knew the Kevin Hart reference and it worked, and everyone started laughing and we were able to take a break.

So during that break, again, the facilitator as well as the manager got some feedback on some things that they could have done differently on that first half of the meeting, and that included the facilitator being a bit more agile in getting the participants more of the information that they needed in order to make a decision. But also for the manager giving them the feedback to allow the facilitator to run their meeting and not interrupt them in front of the participant. And maybe it would have been better to just pull the facilitator aside during a break and make some suggestions instead of doing that in front of the rest of the group. Fortunately, today, we can all laugh about the pineapple meeting but it was not fun being in the midst of it.

ASHLEY: Yikes!

NOEL: Yeah, it sounds like at least it turned into a little bit of a team bonding experience at the end.

TARSHA: It did, thankfully.

ASHLEY: That sounds so awful. The worst is to be undermined, like when you really are hitting your stride and then someone, particularly a boss, who should be supporting and giving you some teeth in a meeting like that. That's the worst.

TARSHA: Yeah. And to see it play out, you could see the frustration in the facilitator because there was a certain path that they wanted to follow and a certain agenda and to continue to get these requests from the manager and not have the prepared material to then implement the manager's suggestions. It was a bit rough as well as for the participants. So, definitely not a great meeting.

NOEL: And Tarsha, do you have a tip that people can apply to their meetings right now that will improve them?

TARSHA: Yeah. A tip that I would suggest is as much as possible, try to provide an agenda ahead of time, as well as any materials that a person can prep for prior to the meeting. Thinking about myself, I know I tend to work best in meetings like that where I have any information in advance, utilize a variety of techniques to make sure that you are hearing people in the room. So whether that's the sticky notes, raising your hand, doing a round robin, just make sure that everyone has a say and they're being heard.

ASHLEY: Excellent. Tarsha, thank you so much for being on the podcast.

NOEL: Yeah, thanks.

TARSHA: Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. 

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 podcast 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.