The 5-Minute Strategy to Prepare for a Meeting

Meetings are opportunities to both advance your business goals and strengthen your personal brand as a leader. To make the most of every meeting, your preparation should include not just reviewing the subject matter, but also paying attention to the critical nuances that really drive success. Taking just five minutes to review these five questions can make a real difference in how your next meeting goes.

1. How Do You Want to Show Up?

If you only have time to think about one question from this article before your next meeting, make it this one.

Every meeting you attend affects how others perceive you as a leader. What do you want your colleagues to understand about your leadership? And how can you convey that through your presence and behavior during the meeting?

Also think about how you can align your demeanor with the qualities people associate with strong leadership. For example, if you tend to talk fast, you might be perceived as stressed and harried. So you can make a point at your meeting to speak in a way that sounds grounded.

2. How Will Others Show Up?

It's a pretty safe bet that the other people at your meeting are going to behave in the ways they typically do. Today is probably not going to be the day that your grumpy co-worker becomes optimistic or that the chronic interrupter starts allowing others to speak. If you go into the meeting expecting others will behave in their usual ways, you may take their actions less personally and be more open to engaging in a different way.

At the same time, though, it's important to be aware of any events or situations that could change how others show up. Does anyone attending have an especially heavy workload right now? Is anyone dealing with a family situation? If you have trouble answering questions like those about your colleagues, that could be a sign to start paying some extra attention to strengthening your relationships with them.

3. What Questions Might Others Have?

Many times, if someone questions your ideas, opinions or decisions at a meeting, it's because they don't understand the connection between your actions and the big picture of what's right for the organization. If you speak just about your (or your department’s) goals and priorities, others may wonder whether your motivation is self-serving. So, as you prepare for your meeting, think about how you can "connect the dots" and help others understand your intent if they ask questions.

4. What Resistance or Objections Might Arise?

Even if you're proposing something at this meeting that seems like it should be a slam dunk, take a moment to think about any obstacles you might run into. What concerns might the other meeting attendees have? Preparing for pushback will keep you from being blindsided and help you disagree without being disagreeable.

5. How Will You Respond to Those Objections?

If you do encounter resistance, you can respond to it in a way that helps others feel heard and respected even as you are trying to win them over to your way of thinking. Different people can be influenced in different ways. The Center for Creative Leadership identifies three styles of influencing: 

• Head – a logical appeal focused on organization and individual benefits and typically full of data and facts

• Heart – an emotional appeal linked to something the person cares about such as individual goals and values

• Hand – a cooperative appeal that offers collaboration, consultation and alliances

The best tactic, of course, depends on your audience. So consider which approaches would work best for the different people at your meeting.

If you have a few minutes right now, answer these questions for the next meeting you have coming up. Want more leadership strategies you can put to use immediately? Pick up a copy of my book "Show Up. Step Up. Step Out." It will help you start taking small steps that lead to big results.

One Thing Video Series: How Are You Showing Up?

Your presence — the way you show up with others — is one of the key parts of your personal brand as a leader. The unpredictability of our world and our work lives today can affect how you show up. In my latest One Thing You Can Do video, I'll give you a few ideas for making sure that the way you're coming across reflects how you want others to see you.

How to Stop 'Getting By' and Start Leading Strategically

Back in March, the global pandemic upended the way we work. For most of us, this initially felt like a short-term crisis. So we dug in to power through.

But now, almost five months later, you might be stuck in this mode — which damages both your executive presence and your career prospects.

As the deep shifts in our work lives continue, we have to find a more sustainable approach. Today I'm kicking off a new series of blog articles to help you pause, reconnect with the bigger picture and be the leader you want to be even in the most challenging of times.

At Home, We're Working More 

As an executive coach, I'm seeing too many leaders right now who are packing their calendars, working at all hours and saying "yes" to everything.

What's driving this? Cuts and restructuring at many organizations are leaving fewer people to do the same amount of work (or even more). There's also a new urgency around showing your value in order to protect your job.

At the same time, working from home is making our jobs more logistically challenging and blurring the lines between our work and personal lives.

When Microsoft recently studied its own newly remote workforce, it discovered some dramatic changes in how employees were working:

• Time spent in meetings each week rose by 10%.

• Using instant messaging activity as an indicator, Microsoft found that employees were working more during lunch and evenings. Weekend work also grew.

• Also based on instant messaging, managers' workload has grown more than that of individual contributors.

• All of this adds up to a workweek that, on average, is about four hours longer.

Are You Neglecting Strategy?

This relentless pace has consequences. You might think that your hard work makes you a team player. But constantly focusing on the tactical vs. the strategic actually reduces the value you create as a leader. If you're always "putting out fires," you have less time for your truly important work, such as tracking what's going on with your team, motivating and engaging your team members and managing up with your bosses.

Remember also that, as a leader, you are always in the "invisible spotlight." Others are constantly drawing conclusions about your leadership based on what they observe. As working from home eliminates our in-person interactions, your virtual executive presence takes on greater weight. So think about what messages you are conveying by, for example, sending a lot of after-hours emails or arriving late to Zoom calls because you were in another video meeting.

Give Yourself Some Space

It's time to start thinking beyond just getting through these unprecedented times. How can you do so in a way that shows others that you are a strong leader and that sets the stage for your future success?

The first step is simply freeing up some more capacity in your schedule. To do so, take a moment to think about the most important work you need to be doing right now. Has it changed recently? Do you need to adjust your schedule to shift more time toward your top priorities?

Next, think about what you can get off of your plate. Are there meetings you can cancel or decline? Can you turn a one-hour meeting into a 30-minute one? Can you delegate more? Adding even a few minutes back into your day can provide some relief if you're feeling frenzied and overscheduled.

In my next article, I'll show you how to make the most of the capacity you've restored to your schedule. In the meantime, I invite you to explore my self-paced tools that will help you keep growing as a leader no matter how busy you are.