Modernizing leadership in meetings (featuring Brad Farris)

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Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to another episode of Chats with Chip. I’m your host, Chip Griffin, the founder of SAGA, the Small Agency Growth Alliance. And I am delighted to have with me a regular collaborator on all of my podcasts and other things, because he’s a smart guy. He’s a fun guy, Brad Farris of Anchor Advisors.

Welcome to the show again, Brad.

Brad Farris: Thanks, Chip. I’m glad to be here.

Chip Griffin: Always great to have you here today. And I think that we’ve got a good topic to get started with because I know you’ve been thinking a lot about leadership. And in particularly, in particular, leadership in meetings. And, you know, meetings.

There have been books literally written about meetings. In fact, I have one over here on my bookshelf. Lencioni, I can’t remember how to Yeah, Death by Meeting, a famous, famous, book on meetings. And I, I think that it’s a worthy topic because most agency owners spend a lot of time in meetings and a lot of time leading them.

Yeah. Pretending to at least.

Brad Farris: And I want to set this up by thinking about what is the only job in an agency that you, the owner that are uniquely able to do. Like no one else can do this job. And that is obviously the leadership role, the role of seeing the future. And saying, this is how we’re going to approach the future.

And this is how we’re going to be successful in the future. Come on everybody. This is how we’re doing this. Right. And so alignment and vision, that’s the job that only the owner can do. Right?

Chip Griffin: Absolutely. I mean, the, the owner, it’s their business. That’s right. So now, I mean, what I will say is that many owners abdicate that responsibility and allow inertia to carry them forward, but the, the business ought to be serving your needs as the owner, otherwise why take on all the risk and stress.

Brad Farris: I have also seen owners who try to have some sort of consensus or majority rule situation. And that tends to go horribly wrong in my experience because the, the person who is rewarded most for the longevity of the business is clearly you. And so the rest of the team, they have more of the immediate needs of the business in mind.

You have the longterm health of the business in mind. And so that’s the job that is yours and yours alone. Right.

Chip Griffin: You should be a benevolent dictator. That’s right. That’s I mean, it is fundamentally what it should be. I think trying to build consensus and get people to come along is okay up to a point, but at some point, you simply have to take responsibility and make that decision.

I remember when I was first hired to be CEO of a company back in the mid nineties and one of the early staff meetings, someone, we were discussing something and there was two different opinions. And so someone said, well, let’s have a vote on it. And I said, I said, you can have a vote, but mine’s the only one that counts.

And it was a little bit of a flip answer. I, you know, I, in, in the fullness of time, I’ve learned that there are better ways to handle that than being quite that direct that early on in the relationship. But. That’s how it is. That’s how it needs to be.

Brad Farris: That’s right. And the place where our team most often experiences that leadership from us is in meetings. You know, now one to one surely they’re experiencing our leadership one to one and there are a lot of leadership skills that we want to apply when we’re one to one with people. But by and large, the time that The rank and file of the majority of our organization experiences, our leadership is in meetings.

And my observation is that we’re running meetings, basically the way we ran them in the eighties, when I started work. And I have to believe that we’ve learned a few things about how to run a meeting since then, that would help us to project our leadership in a more positive and effective way than the way that we’re doing.

Is it, do you have that same observation?

Chip Griffin: I do, and I think even more so now, the nature of these meetings is very different than it was, because when you and I got started, these meetings all took place around a table. Yes. And, and so part of the whole meeting experience was, you know, coming in and the chit chat before and after, and it was just, it was a whole different dynamic from what you have today.

Brad Farris: Who sat where was important.

Chip Griffin: Exactly, exactly. You know, and, and now we’re, we’re all doing it like you and I are doing this right now where we’re doing it electronically. It is a very different environment. And so you need to adapt your style for the times and also for the technology.

Brad Farris: Yes. And I think that’s an important point because we’re running so many more meetings virtually.

I think one of the things that that requires of us is to think about how to do them in a way that we get things done as quickly as we can and that we stay on point. Like that we actually accomplished the things that we came there for. And so the first thing that that is my personal rule is if a meeting doesn’t have an agenda, I’m not coming.

And what does an agenda mean? An agenda means these are the things we’re here to discuss, and here’s how we’ll know whether we’ve done a good job or not. In other words, this is the outcome that we’re looking for from this meeting. And so, it, it’s, it’s my rule, and I, I am not afraid to cancel a meeting. If there’s not an agenda, I’m not there.

You guys can have a meeting about a meeting or whatever, but I’m not going to a meeting that doesn’t have an agenda.

Chip Griffin: Well, I would step back even one more step, which is it has to have a purpose. So before you have an agenda, there has to be, and too many meetings take place without a purpose. It takes place because, well, we always do this or it’s been a couple of weeks.

We should check in, but why? What are we actually trying to accomplish? And, and so I think that big picture purpose needs to come even before the agenda.

Brad Farris: And so the, the, the running joke there is this meeting could have been an email, right? And so that is an important thing that I’ve also started to think about is that one of the tests about whether this email, this meeting could be an email is once we have the agenda, I want someone to write down a point of view about each of the things that are on the agenda. So if there’s an appointment on the agenda that says, you know, we need to improve our lead generation. Great. I want you to show up with a one page description of what have we tried and what proposals do you have about things that we can do to improve our lead generation and what is your recommendation based on that, you know, analysis. And so that people come in advance, having thought about the thing before we show up so that we’re not doing, we’re not thinking in the meeting. We’re thinking before we came to the meeting. And this is something that, that, Quite honestly, I’m experimenting with, but doing it, I think helps a bunch of things.

Number one is it means that we know that there was a purpose for this meeting before we came. Because a lot of times, and this is honest to God, when I’ve asked people to do this, they’ll write that document up and they’ll say, Oh, actually, it’s very clear what we need to do. We need to do this thing. So we don’t have to have a meeting.

We can just send out the email, right? Great. Meeting eliminated. Fantastic. Second, if there is a reason for the meeting, we can allow the introverts to think about this thing before they show up. So we can send this document out, everyone can think about it and have some thoughts. And then we’re coming and moving from the place that the document started toward a destination that hopefully is getting us further along.

Is this something that you’ve…

Chip Griffin: I think that the introvert thing is so important. And I think even a lot of more junior employees today, and I think part of it is because of the medium and doing it not in person, you know, my experience has been that a lot of more junior employees are very reluctant to share their views off the top of their head, and they want that time to digest and think about it. And so giving them both the introverts as well as the juniors that opportunity to build their confidence in their own point of view, so that they can bring their own experience and expertise and all that to the table. Incredibly valuable. So I think there’s a balance to how much you share in advance, right?

Of course. You don’t want to overwhelm somebody, but you do need to provide them enough information that they can start thinking carefully about it. And you’re not wasting the first 30 minutes of the meeting, just describing the challenge.

Brad Farris: The other end of this spectrum is the Amazon six pager that they have this six page memo that they use before a meeting.

And then everyone comes to the meeting and spends the first 20 minutes reading it. Like that might be on the, on the far end of what I’m proposing here, but some amount of writing that is distributed ahead of time that describes why we’re talking and what the background is and what we already know and what we need to know that can really help bring the conversation a little bit.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, I’ve talked to Amazon employees about the amount of work that goes into those and it is astonishing.

Yes, it’s no joke.

And I, to me, that is not a good use of time in my view.

Brad Farris: I mean, I think of the executive levels, it could be, but none of us are working with billion dollar companies. So let’s just cut that off at the pass.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. And I, I, I don’t believe that the billion dollar companies are really all that different, but we can have that argument another day, I suppose. In any case, so yes, I mean, I, I think that by sharing this kind of information, you really are evoking a better discussion and conversation, because that’s why you should be having a meeting.

Meetings should not be briefings. That’s right. That is the one that could be an email. A meeting ought to be to try to involve people in discussion, and it should be involving everybody on the call, because there’s no point in being on the call if you’re not participating.

Brad Farris: So that was gonna be my next point, Chip.

Is that…

Chip Griffin: There you go. You’re welcome.

Brad Farris: Your transition is amazing. my next two rules are, okay, so we, we know what we’re there to meet about. We’ve done some thinking ahead of time. Now. The first part of the meeting is I want each person in the meeting to get some period of time to talk about what their perspective is on this thing.

And so start a timer. Go around the horn, get input from everybody. Because to your point, if they’re on the call, we need to hear from them. If we don’t need to hear from them, they don’t need to be on the call. Right? And so, if they’re on the call, we need to hear from them. So we, we want to give each person a chance to talk.

And in that time that they have to talk, you can’t interrupt them. People have uninterrupted time to tell you what they think. This has been a game changer in the meetings that I’ve done this, where people know that they have time to say what needs to be said and that they won’t be interrupted. Then they’re willing to wait their turn and we don’t have people getting cut off in the middle of their thoughts.

And this is really more for the extroverts in the group because for the extroverts, They can’t think about it unless they’re talking. And a lot of times their best ideas come at the end of their three minutes or whatever. And if you interrupt them, they never get to those good ideas that come at the end.

And so we need to give them the chance to work through the 10 crappy ideas to get to the three or four good ideas. They’re going to show up after they get a chance to talk.

Chip Griffin: Sorry. I just wanted to make sure I didn’t interrupt you there.

Brad Farris: Good job. I appreciate it.

Chip Griffin: Which I’ll admit I am terrible about particularly on these shows because I get so eager to, you know, and I think a lot of agency owners are similar, right?

You know, we’re all full of ideas and that kind of stuff. And we want to blurt them out for the most part ourselves. So, so having that patience to give people the time and space to have their opportunity to communicate is important. And I think part of this is a mindset shift for owners in that they need to realize that leadership is not always about talking.

Leadership is about creating the conditions to make the good decisions. And so what that fundamentally means in most meetings, you ought to be more of a moderator than a speaker, spread it around, make sure everybody has a chance to talk. The problem is in my experience, most times, whoever’s most senior in the meeting, as soon as they speak, it shuts down conversation.

Yes. Because nobody wants to contradict the leader, whether that’s the owner or a senior manager or whomever. So if you really, really want to get participation, you need to reserve your comments until the end, unless it’s really gone off the rails and you just need to say, well, look, that’s already been decided.

We’re not debating that, you know, and I think you should jump in on those. That is where you should interrupt. Don’t allow it to go off the rails because that’s not productive.

Brad Farris: Yeah. And and to your point, if we don’t want to hear everyone’s input, why are we doing this in a meeting? Why are they here?

Right? So the ground rules to me are the people in the meeting are the people we want to hear from. And so let’s give us a chance to hear from them. And then as the leader, I want to ask questions. I want to probe a little bit more deeply. I want to say as, you know, does anyone have anything to follow up on what Cheryl said?

I thought that was an interesting point, like highlighting things, but giving everybody a chance to, to have, some time on the floor.

Chip Griffin: And these things that you’re describing, we focus mostly on internal meetings, but these are just as effective in using these techniques with clients. And that’s another place where, again, we often feel we need to demonstrate how smart we are.

This particularly rears its ugly head during pitches where we just can’t shut up, but even once you’re working with the client, Shut up more, elicit feedback and ideas from the client. You’ll have a more successful relationship.

Brad Farris: So can I tell a story that might be a little bit of a diversion here, but I think it applies?

Chip Griffin: As long as you don’t go off the rails. If you go off the rails, I’m going to have to interrupt you.

Brad Farris: So the first time that I changed jobs, so I found a job right out of college and I was there for three or four years. And then a recruiter called me and was bringing me to a new job. And he said, okay, here’s the interview.

I’m setting you up on the interview. Here’s what I want you to do, Brad. When you walk into the guy’s office, you know, shake his hand. Before he’s even sat down, I want you to say, Tell me a little bit about yourself and how you got into this role. And then the recruiter said, and then don’t say another word for the whole interview.

The guy will probably talk about that for 30 or 40 minutes. I did that. Exactly what he said happened. The guy talked for 30 or 40 minutes. He says, Oh my gosh, you’re the smartest guy I’ve ever talked to. This is fantastic. We’re offering you the job. I went back to the recruiter. I’m like, I can’t take this job.

I don’t even know what the job is. Right. But the point is, The person that talks the most thinks more highly of the person who talks the least. And so if you’re in a new business situation, the less you talk, the more that they’re going to think highly of you. And that’s a crazy idea, but once you get used to it and try it out, if you’re just asking questions and letting the client do the talking.

It works out better, like 99. 9 percent of the time.

Chip Griffin: When I think that that you’ve touched on the right thing there, which is asking the questions, right? It shouldn’t be total silence. No, you know, your example was the extreme one. If you sit through a meeting internal or external and you say nothing, that’s not great either.

But by learning to ask good, intelligent questions that actually invite the right kind of conversation. You will be in a much better position, right?

Brad Farris: And so if we’re in that leadership situation where we’re trying to gain consensus around an initiative, having everyone have a voice in that and you asking questions to guide the conversation in a certain direction, that’s a way that you can demonstrate leadership in a way that they will feel like this was their idea. This is something that came from them. They’re more bought into it. They’re more connected to it. And you got out of it what you needed to get out of it without being without talking a whole lot.

Chip Griffin: And by the way, you might find a new idea that you didn’t have before or a solution, right?

I mean, it, it, it might not be just that it actually makes people feel included. It might actually produce a better result.

Usually does. That’s right.

And one of the things I like too, is, you know, and I, this is one of the things that I’ve seen you do a lot over the years on the shows that we do. You really like to say, “say more” to people and, and, and, and really draw them out and I think that’s particularly effective as we’re thinking about the introverts on our teams, those people who may not be like you and I, where you kind of have to shut us up a little bit and say, okay, that’s time out, we’re say less.

I don’t need to hear more from you.

Where’s the mute button. But a lot of members of your team or clients. They’re going to say something and you know, you may even already have a sense as to what’s behind it, but eliciting more, following up, asking them to say more, or asking a follow up question, those kinds of things Incredibly valuable, particularly for those introverts or people more reluctant to speak.

Brad Farris: Then the last practice that I want to highlight here is in some ways the most difficult. and that is I want to end every meeting with appreciation. What went really well in this meeting? What was great about this meeting? What did I appreciate about you, Chip? Like, like, I really like the way you, called me out for, for saying that, you know, I asked people to tell me more, like to have specific things in specific ways in which we’re highlighting the things that went well in the meeting, doing that creates a sense of bonding and connection and Sometimes it’s the most worthwhile part of the meeting.

Chip Griffin: I think that’s particularly true if you’ve had a tough conversation. True. Because you don’t want to leave, even if you’ve sort of built a consensus and you’ve reached the decisions that you need to make, I think it’s important that people leave meetings on high notes. And so that can be appreciation. It can be recognition of things, even as you’re saying, okay, well, we need to, you know, we need to make these budget cuts or we need to, you know, to do these changes or whatever, mixing that in with what is working, what has gone well, whether it’s in the meeting or even outside of it, I think, I think finding some way to touch on those, frankly, throughout the meeting, but, but I would agree with you that particularly at the end, you want people who walking away on as high a note as possible, even in the toughest meetings that we may have.

Brad Farris: EOS has a has a habit of rating meetings on a scale of 1 to 10 at the end of every meeting. They give it a number grade and there’s no It’s not a discussion. They just say, you know, this was a six, this was a seven, this was an eight, whatever, and tracking that over time and seeing are the ratings we’re giving our meetings improving, which I thought was an interesting idea too.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. I mean, that, that presumes that everybody’s rating it quote unquote, the right way. I mean, my experience is a lot of employees would probably rate pretty highly if nothing was accomplished, but that’s true, but they managed to escape without getting yelled at. Or assigned more work or whatever. So I, I guess I would, I put me down as skeptical for that particular approach.

You need some kind of rubric, right?

Yeah. Cause people will naturally judge those through their own lens. And was, was this a good meeting for me? That may not mean it was actually a good meeting. I mean, I think we’ve all had those meetings where we’re just, we’re just happy to have escaped it without anything bad happening.

I know I’ve had many of those over the course of my career.

Brad Farris: So. Before we step away from this topic, I want to ask, like, what makes doing these things hard? Why don’t we, as leaders automatically do these things? What is it that keeps us stuck in those old meeting patterns or ways of talking?

Chip Griffin: I mean, I, you know, I think so much of what fails in small agencies comes down to inertia.

And it’s, it’s just, this is how we’ve always done it. We’ve seen, you know, we’ve observed at our past employers that this is sort of I mean, how meetings occur, right? And we feel like, well, this is how meetings happen. This is how we should do them. I think that’s a piece of it. I think another piece of it is that we’re not comfortable letting go.

And that’s particularly true again, in small, I mean, I know that the work that we were talking about this pre show, a lot of the work we do with owners is trying to get them to let go. Yes. And, and that exhibits itself in meetings because you can’t really invite everybody in because you want to control every little aspect of the business.

And if you’re a micromanager, meetings are going to be really rough for everybody.

Brad Farris: You mean I need to listen to what everybody has to say? I get bored. I’m tired of listening to what that person has to say.

Chip Griffin: And you need to accept that you don’t have all the answers. That’s right. And that’s a good thing.

Mm hmm. Because, because then you don’t become so integral to the business that you can’t take a day off, or a week off, or sell the business someday, or whatever. Mm hmm. You, you need to be able to do that. And I, I, so I, I think those are all, and the third I would just say is fear. I think fear holds back a lot of leaders because they’re afraid of what might happen if they don’t do all the talking, if they do let go, if this meeting doesn’t achieve exactly what I think it needs to achieve, and fear is an incredible detriment to success.

Brad Farris: But Chip, I’m an entrepreneur. I eat fear for breakfast. Like, I’m not afraid of anything. Bull. Bull. Say more. Say more.

Chip Griffin: Most entrepreneurs are lying.

I mean, you know, entrepreneurs love to claim to be risk takers and all that. I mean, I’ve done my share of that claim over the years as well. And look, I mean, I certainly think that most entrepreneurs do have higher risk tolerance than most people, but it’s not unlimited. And we all have fears of different things.

It may not be a fear of true failure, but it may be a fear of looking stupid to our subordinates or a fear of looking weak to our clients. Or, I mean, there’s all sorts of things we can be afraid of. And that doesn’t make us, you know, scaredy cats. It just means we have, I mean, if you have no fear about anything, that’s a problem too.

Brad Farris: My, when I was in high school, my speech and debate coach, she would say, if you’re not scared, I don’t want you up there. Fear means we’re doing something important. It’s something that is important to us. And so that fear is actually sharpening your senses, helping you to focus, helping you to be present.

And so fear isn’t a bad thing in every case, but when it keeps us from being genuine and being, and showing up and listening and being curious, When we’re afraid of looking bad or we’re afraid of a decision going a different way. If, if our program for happiness is that everyone is responding to situations the way we want them to.

Well, that’s, that’s going to be a problem. You’re not going to get your best outcomes. If that’s the mindset you’re going in.

Chip Griffin: Absolutely. I think part of it too, is that, that everybody, including owners hate meetings, which is just completely backwards and wrong. That I, you know, I always have owners come to me and say, well, you know, we’ve got too many meetings.

We’ve got to cut back on the meetings. Maybe, maybe not. You need to have better meetings, but no meetings is not the solution either. Well run meetings can be an incredibly valuable thing. I, I went through a period of time where I was working for a larger employer and I basically just did meetings from sunrise to sunset, but they were by and large productive meetings.

And so, you know, people say, I can’t believe you spent, you know, 12 hours in meetings every day. I’m like, yeah, but that, that was the best way to get my job, the role that I had at that time done. And if I’d been sitting in an office on my own sending emails, that would not have been the best way to achieve them.

So just get better meetings. Don’t, don’t try to randomly eliminate them. And if you go into every meeting saying, I hate meetings, I just want to get out of this meeting. Of course, it’s not going to be run well.

Brad Farris: That’s it. I mean, if you’re, if you’re successful at growing your agency, you’re going to get to a point where your job is to go to meetings.

That is your job. Yes. You need some time to think away from meetings, but, but your job is to coordinate the group of others and to build the clockworks that then delivers the work to the clients. And that is largely done through meetings. And to your point, Chip, if, if you’re, if you have a negative view of meetings, Then you’re probably not going to put the work in to get that meeting to be as productive as it needs to be.

And to make it more productive means everyone’s more engaged in the meeting, we’re getting more out of it, and then we’re going to have fewer of them, because we’re making more progress when we are in a meeting.

Chip Griffin: And to bring this back full circle to the whole concept of leadership, you do not lead by email.

I, I cannot think of a single example where I, I saw an email and said, well, that’s a real example of leadership. I mean, seriously, it’s not, I mean, it’s, it’s, you can be a keyboard warrior and that’s great, but that’s not leadership. Leadership is fundamentally interacting with people. If not in person, at least by video.

And by the way, that’s the other thing I would say about meetings, put people on camera. I know the people zoom fatigue, blah, blah, blah, forget it. Yeah. I mean, I spent decades as I’m sure you did on conference calls. And I can tell you that when you are not on camera, you are not paying attention. It was a fine art form.

Cause you’d be on, I was on conference calls with 20, 30 people at a time. And, you know, inevitably at some point, you know, someone would say, well, Chip, what do you think? And then you, you pause cause you pretend you’re on mute and you know, you, so someone says something, so it jogs your memory about what was being discussed.

And then you come on, you know, You come off of, sorry, I was on mute and you come up with all these wacky excuses for, to get back in. You kind of broke up there. Can you clarify that question? You know, I mean, there are all sorts of techniques, but it was because we were sitting there and we were on email or doing other things or watching the birds out the window or something.

Brad Farris: There’s a reason why there’s a reason why every operating system has solitaire on it.

Chip Griffin: I was just talking about that with someone the other day. Does it still, I mean, I’m sure…

Brad Farris: I don’t know. I haven’t had a windows machine in a long time.

Chip Griffin: I have a windows machine, but I have not, I brought up solitaire, I guess while we’re talking,

Brad Farris: I bet minesweeper is still there too.

Chip Griffin: Oh, solitaire is still, Oh no, I have to download them apparently. So that’s what my computer is telling me. Of course, I’m probably blowing up my connection now. So the rest of the show doesn’t air it’s because I tried to load solitaire. So for you, for you younguns, that was a big problem. We didn’t have Facebook.

We had solitaire.

Brad Farris: When, when I’m talking to a leader about improving their leadership skills. What I want them to be thinking about is how am I representing the company’s values in every exchange that I’m having with, within my organization? And if the way that people are primarily experiencing me is through meetings, then I need to be really thoughtful about how am I representing the company’s values in this meeting?

How can I be more curious? How can I be more helpful? How can we get further in the meeting? If we’re already here, like let’s go as far as we can before we go on to do something else. I absolutely do that. We need to be more thoughtful about the structures we’re using.

Chip Griffin: I think that is a perfect note to end on Brad.

It’s almost like we’ve done these before and you know how to bring it in for a gentle landing for us. So, so hopefully we’ve given you some, some good food for thought on both leadership and meetings and how they interact and you know, with any luck, you’ll go and implement some of those in your own agency today.

Don’t wait till tomorrow, do it today, because all of these changes will make a big difference into the outcomes that you’re seeing both internally and with your clients. So again, my guest today has been Brad Farris, Brad, why don’t you tell folks where they can find you if they are interested in learning more about you and sharing in all the wisdom that you share regularly by email and elsewhere.

Brad Farris: anchoradvisors.com is my, is my home base. If you go to anchoradvisors.com/conversations, you can join an email list that I have there. I just send out one email a week, but several people have told me it’s the one email a week that they look forward to. And then if you go to, on the homepage, there’s a button there for a growth phase assessment, and that helps you to see what stage of growth you’re in and what are the specific actions you need to take to get to the next phase.

Chip Griffin: And I will say I it is not the only email that I look forward to each week and I hope that You know, most of my clients enjoy my emails as well. So, but, but it is a very valuable email and, and you are very good at asking thought provoking questions in those emails, as well, which I think is useful because it’s not just you pontificating, it’s you, it’s you forcing people to think, and I think we have a lot of the answers ourselves.

We just need to take a minute to reflect and it’s true. So go ahead, reflect everybody, go check out, sign up for, for Brad’s list and be sure to come back for the next episode of Chats with Chip with whomever I have on. Cause I don’t know. So with that, I’m Chip Griffin, my guest has been Brad Farris and we are done.

See you next week.