Screen-reader caption for blind or visually impaired readers: faceless people sitting in a meeting, one guy is standing up, facing us, gesturing to indicate he is speaking. The text reads “We will continue having lots of meetings until we find out why no work is being done”. Photo credits: “Meeting Madness” by ecardshack.com.
All the time that activists, volunteers, staff, community members and researchers are sitting in a meeting their are not doing what they’re here for, which is participating into action. Streets are quiet, powerful people are undisturbed in enjoying their privileges, dis-empowered and marginalized ones are lacking support, community spaces are not being held, Nature is not being protected, fairies and unicorns are sobbing and loosing their wings. So, how about … NOT? Or, at least, SHORTER. Among many generous groups of people that allowed me to witness, participate, organize, host, tape, transcribe and analyze group-centered (i.e. horizontal, democratic and inclusive) meeting management, this bit is dedicated to the former – and yet somehow still living students’ collective that brought meetings from weekly to monthly, from endless to less than two hours, and from draining to fun and meaningful – 山城角樂 Happy Corner, mention does not mean absolute endorsement, especially not the documentary.
If your reaction is “But meetings are so useful! They’re the best part! I love them!” you can stop reading – or maybe seek help for yourself and/or your companions. If you wonder how they did it, the no-BS golden rule number zero is “Making it a regular practice”. But keep reading for three additional highlights and tips.
- Make it a regular practice_Organizational needs can vary, but groups of people will always need to get familiar with each other, forge a common language to share information, exchange ideas, make decisions, plan action, negotiate roles and responsibilities, hold spaces and emotions, building trust, skills and capacity, and manage expectations or conflicts. Finding the sweet spot between timing and duration, hosting and agenda set-up, and inclusive, emotionally-sensitive content and flow is a collective trial and error journey that every group has to undertake if it is to thrive.
- Timing and duration_The first question to ask each other is a blunt “Do we even need to meet?”. Meetings can be replaced by short messages, one-on-ones or strategically invited smaller group talks. If the meeting is to happen, and regularly so, you can start from a weekly 90 minutes (5 minutes video from the Huberman Lab podcast), or biweekly or monthly, and negotiate your way down from there – for example aiming at 45 minutes weekly or 90 minutes monthly. Regular timing saves a lot of time, communication and decision fatigue: as in every Monday, every second Tuesday, or every last Wednesday of the month. If you want to exceed the 90 minutes time-slot – but why?! – make sure to plan for 15-20 minutes moving and off-screen breaks.
- Hosting and agenda_When every team member regularly organizes and hosts meetings on a rotation basis, workload and valuable skills are shared among participants, and a spirit of solidarity and cooperation is likely to emerge. Similarly, when everyone participates to the agenda setting in a shared document (by timely adding topics and expected discussion time, and taking the lead in that segment of the conversation) momentum is created in view of the meeting and ownership is shared among the participants. Priority can be established by opening every agenda item is open for endorsement, with participants adding a “+” or their name next to a topic they deem more urgent or worth spending more time on.
- Diverse, equitable and inclusive_Meetings can highlight organizational power structures and dynamics that, sadly often, match with power structures and dynamics that we see and fight against in the world. Rotational hosting can help the group in spotting practices that exclude certain groups or individuals from fully participating. But, fortunately, creativity is an endless source when it comes to remove the barriers that prevent people from showing up for a meeting, freely expressing their status, needs, opinions, proposals and discontents. Among many devices and tools for inclusions, the group this post is dedicated to created three hand-signs with the specific aim of managing time, energy levels and mood levels in a way that participants found recognizable, useful and fun.
While the first one is used to signal the speaker that they’re going off topic without interrupting verbally. The second and third ones can be called by the speaker to check if the rest of the people need an emotional or energetic lift-up.
Stay on topic
Two hands are held up together in a circle shape. Other participants can literally join hands too until the speaker has received the message.
Energy level
A man with a sad face holds his hand in front of his forehead doing a loser sign. He may be sad because his energy level response is 2 out of 5.
Mood level
A woman smiles holding her hand on her heart. She may be smiling because her mood level is 5 out of 5.
noprofitideas.org 