Author: whotalksapp

In the first 20 seconds of talking, your light is green: your listener is liking you, as long as your statement is relevant to the conversation and hopefully in service of the other person. But unless you are an extremely gifted raconteur, people who talk for more than roughly half minute at a time are boring and often perceived as too chatty. So the light turns yellow for the next 20 seconds— now the risk is increasing that the other person is beginning to lose interest or think you’re long-winded. At the 40-second mark, your light is red. 

Mark Goulston, How to Know If You Talk Too Much (hbr.org)

The article How to Know If You Talk Too Much by Mark Goulston in the Harvard Business Review is one of my favorites on the issue of monologing. Goulston, a business psychiatrist and executive advisor, explains how all humans like to hear ourselves talk and that dopamine is actually released as we drone on and on.

He suggests applying the Traffic Light Rule, suggested to him by his friend, coach and NPR host Marty Nemko. Basically, you are in the Green for 20 seconds, the light turns Yellow for 20 more, and then you are boringly in the Red.

Goulston suggests reflecting on your motivation for rambling. Are you looking to impress? Are you trying out new ideas?

Or do you genuinely not notice the seconds and minutes as they pass by?

If this is the case he recommends monitoring the time. This is exactly what Who-Talks.com offers. The ability to reign in our natural tendency to bore or alienate our listeners. With this low-cost and simple app, both you and your conversation partner get the chance to participate in the conversation. This leaves each person feeling heard and satisfied.

I have been trying to make more out of my weekly one on ones with my direct reports. I stumbled on this article in Forbes by Kristi Hedges that laid out a good rule of thumb agenda for a 45 minute one-on-one meeting:

15 Minutes: What your direct report needs to raise with you, get approved, etc.

15 Minutes: What you need to raise with your direct, delegate, provide feedback on, etc.

10 Minutes: Free time to air any long-term concerns, progress toward development goals, etc.

5 Minutes: State accountabilities and make a plan for follow up

This simple formula will ensure that both parties get to said what needs saying. The report is in the driver’s seat for the beginning of the meeting, meaning if they have something to get off their chest they are able to do so and move on to other topics that you might need to address.

Naturally having the Who-Talks.com app clocking how much time each person speaks will enable you as the manager and your report to understand how long each of you is actually speaking and ensure a fair talking to listening ratio.

How to run a successful meeting? Adam Bryant of the New York Times suggests the following 3 things in his article “How to Run a More Effective Meeting“:

1. Set an agenda

2. Start on Time. End on Time.

3. End with an Action Plan.

Sounds reasonable. Even obvious but then he gives some golden advice:

1. Leaders should set the agenda and then get out of the way.

He quotes David M. Cote, the former chief executive of Honeywell as saying.

“Your job as a leader is to be right at the end of the meeting, not at the beginning of the meeting,” he said. “It’s your job to flush out all the facts, all the opinions, and at the end make a good decision, because you’ll get measured on whether you made a good decision, and not whether it was your idea from the beginning.”

2. The second thing that really resonated with me is the advice to do a “meeting audit” periodically.

Lew Cirne, the chief of New Relic, a software analytics company, says:

“One of the things I do on a quarterly basis is to review the standing meetings on my calendar, and every one of them ought to be able defend itself,” he said. “The point is not to keep going to that meeting just because you always have to go. I ask myself ‘Why?’ and I encourage my managers to question their calendars, too.”

The article is a really good read, informed by years of the journalists work with hundreds of business leaders. I’m inspired to take action to make my meetings better.

What is the best way to get everyone talking? Tell everyone to listen.

This article by PETER DAISYME really nails the topic of interrupting in meetings:

At the beginning of the meeting, it can be beneficial to let everyone know that it’s vital to give every single team member the opportunity to speak. This means that if someone is talking — no one should interrupt them. This also helps avoid issues like “Hepeating.”

While it’s okay to allow your participants to express their views after hearing others speak, interrupting may make people uncomfortable. This may even cause people who don’t like confrontation to shut down and not want to speak up in the future.

Making your participants feel heard and appreciated is a great benefit to them and the company.

Having led what feel likes hundreds of meetings over the past year, since I became a manager of a large team of developers, I have learned a few things about how to manage a meeting:

1. Always have a clear and realistic agenda.

2. Make sure everyone invited really needs to be there.

3. Take notes and capture action items.

4. Make sure everyone gets their say.

I like the advice given by Brendan Smith in his article “How to lead an effective meeting” on the American Psychological Association website.

He says, unsurprisingly, that employees don’t like meetings.

U.S. employees spend an average of nine hours a week preparing for or attending team meetings, but more than a third of employees believe those meetings are a waste of time, according to a nationwide poll by Clarizen, a software company. Almost half of employees would rather do any unpleasant activity rather than sit through a meeting, including waiting in line at the DMV or watching paint dry, the poll found.

He calls for managers to take responsibility for and strike a balance within their meetings:

Meetings can feel like a group therapy session for a leader who must deal with vastly different personalities and potential land mines from office or university politics, Dattner says. “In a way, meetings are like a microcosm of the team dynamic,” he says. “It’s always an art rather than a science on how you balance being flexible and open without being disorganized or meandering.”

Given that employees will have to attend meetings, how can you make it worth their while? Get them participating….

A leader can ask for input from people who haven’t spoken, or participants can take turns going around the table so everyone is included in the discussion, Chambers says.

Meetings shouldn’t be dominated by the most aggressive or talkative members, so a leader must be assertive and diplomatically redirect the conversation so everyone has a chance to be heard, Fabick says. “It’s important to not be passive about running a meeting,” he says.

“You want to set a tone of inclusiveness and diversity of opinion but also efficiency.”

In my reading about the most effective ways to run meetings, I found this article “Egos at the Table, a Study of Meeting Behaviors”* quite interesting. In particular, the section on the use of verbal cues in meetings rang very true. The researcher findings support my feeling that people often use speech in meetings to get or show power over others. The author T., Oroszi writes:

“When witnessing members’ interactions in meetings, it is easy to identify verbal cues used to acquire power or to denote power. The use of verbal clues in a meeting is an efficacious tool to denote power or powerless. Hijacking is a term for common verbal behaviors related to speaking in meetings: interruption, recovery, monologuing, swerving, and crying. These behaviors redirect attention from the group and target the focus on the person.

Interruption is when a speaker has his or her works or thoughts disturbed. It is powerful because it allows the interrupted speaker to gain control of the conversation and have their thoughts heard instead (Stratford, 1998).

… Raising the voice is a way to generate power in meetings, making it a valuable method to take control of a meeting (Umiker, 1990). When the facilitator of a meeting initiates open-ended questions, a collaborative tone is established and encourages further communication in the meeting.

Monologues can be used as a power play and describe the behavior when a member answers a question, but elaborates on the topic longer than necessary…”

*Oroszi, T. (2020). Egos at the Table, a Study of Meeting Behaviors. Psychology, 11, 636-645. https://doi.org/10.4236/psych.2020.114043

Managers must be aware of these verbal power plays in meetings. We should identify “the usual suspects” who hijack, interrupt and with the volume of their voice dominate meetings, as well as the tendency of team members to engage in long monologues. By noting colleagues that use verbal clues to dominate meetings, we can better understand the dynamics of our meetings and take steps to curb imbalances in participation.