Tag Archives: meetings

Meetings and spaces in between

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Have you ever gone to a meeting and wondered, “Why am I here?” Or questioned why the meeting wasn’t just a memo or an email? Are there ever times when your schedule can be filled with meetings such that there is almost no time to get anything done? Then one day you look at your schedule and you notice an entire day with no meetings.

If that happens to me, the first thing I think is, “I’m going to get so much done!” And that ends up being half true. Why only half true? Because the void in the calendar gets filled. Interruptions, distractions, and work getting done but stretching to fill the space faster than you imagined.

There is a sweet spot where the spaces between meetings is ideal. If the gap is too small, it’s hard to get anything meaningful done. If the gap is too big, it needs to be filled with intention… there needs to be a goal that is calendared in the space. Or the space gets inefficiently filled. That’s not to say I’m wasting time, but I’m not getting bigger, more ideal, tasks done unless they are planned.

It’s easy to fill time doing stuff that needs to get done, but not necessarily doing the things that really move me or my team forward. It’s easy to fill the in between spaces with tasks, not goals, with busywork not work that I want to do.

The things I must do crowd out the things I want and hope to do. My calendar fills, the spaces in between get filled. I stay on top of what needs to be done but struggle to get the things I hope to do done. Those items often get rushed or not done at all. Unless I fill the spaces in between with intention, they get filled with tasks. necessary tasks, but not the only tasks I want my day filled with. The key is to fill my calendar with intentions, not just meetings.

Rationalize or Analyze?

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I was at a meeting yesterday morning where some critical feedback was shared by a group of students. I think the feedback was very useful, and there was a lot to gain from the information. I don’t know how it was received by others?

When you get feedback and it isn’t what you are looking for, what’s your first instinct?

Is it to rationalize why the feedback was not ideal? Was it a bad question? A misunderstanding? …An excuse of one kind or another?

Or do you analyze, reflect, and think critically about what the feedback really means?

Rationalization is really easy, but renders the information useless. Analysis can lead to uncomfortable realizations, but may lead to meaningful learning and, more importantly, changes in behaviours or systems.

I think rationalization is an emotional response, it’s a defence mechanism. It’s a way to comfort your ego… but it’s not a way to learn and grow. Honest analysis is not about finger-waving and blame, nor about making excuses. Rather it’s about informing practice and getting better. And in the end, getting better feedback in the future.

‘Making it work’ mindset

This was in James Clear’s weekly 3-2-1 email newsletter:

“One type of person approaches a situation with the mindset of, “How can I make this work?” 
Another type seems to approach each circumstance with the mindset of, “What are all the reasons this wouldn’t work?” 
Both people will be forced to deal with reality, but the first person will only have to solve problems that actually occur while the second person will often avoid taking action entirely because of the potential problems they have dreamt up before starting. 
There will always be reasons to not do something. Be a problem solver, not a problem adder.” – James Clear

It’s not just enough to have the right mindset when you have to work with someone who has the wrong mindset. You lift an idea up, and it gets knocked down. You make a suggestion and three counter examples are brought up. I believe there are times and places that this counter argument can be healthy and even promote better solutions, but when you are still looking for solutions and you have someone knocking the ideas down over and over, well then the problem or problems become unsurmountable. It’s not just your own mindset that matters, it’s the whole team’s.

I remember working on a team where this one person seemed to undermine almost everything I suggested. Even when I went to her in advance to see what the roadblocks were, she’d still undermine my meeting with new problems after I thought we’d exhausted reasons it wouldn’t work. What I didn’t understand was that this wasn’t just about being stubborn and not wanting to change, it seemed more just a mindset of “This isn’t working, and that won’t work either.”

I left that job before ever solving the mystery of how to work with this person effectively, but that experience taught me that it’s not just important to have a solution-focused mindset, it’s important that the people you work with do as well… or that you plan meetings such that ideas are allowed to be developed before there are opportunities to knock them down. Because it’s easier to knock ideas down than it is to build them up.

Student involvement in meetings

When I recently quoted part of a post I wrote back in 2007, I shared this, “why do teachers have parent meetings about a teenage student’s education and not have the student there too?”

I can understand certain circumstances where a student might be too young, or the subject matter too sensitive for a student to participate in a meeting, but I’d guess from about grade 6 onwards, over 9/10 times it would be better if a parent-teacher meeting was a parent-student-teacher meeting. The ultimate question is, whose education is it? The students. So shouldn’t the student be part of the conversation? Shouldn’t the student see their parent and teacher both care and want what’s best for them… and are ‘on the same page’?

With that in mind, I think it’s awesome that at Inquiry Hub, students participate in Parent Advisory Council (PAC) meetings. We had one last night (online) and 3 students showed up, along with 18 parents. Last month one of them was on the agenda.

This started early on when our school was new. I began sending emails usually sent only to parents, to students as well. So when I mentioned the PAC meeting in an email a couple students asked if they could come too. When they came, the parents accepted their presence with open arms, and a tradition was started.

I can honestly say that students have only added value to the meetings. No downside. Parents love it. I love it. Students feel empowered. Students belong in conversations about their education, and their school.

Connecting digitally

I had a chat with a friend a couple days ago and he said, “I’m just looking forward to joining you in a pub for some chicken wings and beers.”

I was thinking of this last night when I reflected on our friendship over the last 30+ years. We’ve actually had conversations before where we said, ‘The next time we get together, we actually need to do something besides sit and have a drink together.’

It’s a small thing but it puts what we are going through in perspective. We are social beings and we want to connect in any way that we can right now.

I had a dinner meeting last night. We all left our different work locations, independently picked up food, went to our own homes, and turned on Zoom to be together digitally for the meeting. We played a game of Kahoot to start, and then we went through the agenda. No, it wasn’t as good as being together, but it was still good. It was wonderful to ‘see’ people that I haven’t seen in a while. There were a few laughs, and it was definitely worthwhile to plan it as a dinner meeting, even if we were sitting separately in different houses.

This is a time when we need to stay connected while respectfully staying apart. And this isn’t just a 2020 thing… we will be doing this very well into 2021 if not starting this way in 2022 as well. That’s a long time to be socially isolated. But if this happened 20 years ago we would not be able to stream a video meeting with over 30 people sharing video. We would only have been able to share voices.

Now it’s easy to connect both ‘face-to-face’ while also keeping your distance via digital tools. The easiest of which is your phone. Last night I had a FaceTime conversation with my daughter. It was our longest chat since she last come to see us. Interestingly enough, I think it was as long of a conversation as I had with her while she was here.

I don’t know why, but the lyrics from Billy Joel’s song Piano Man just came to mind, “We are sharing a drink called loneliness, which is better than drinking alone.” I guess we are substituting physically connecting with digitally connecting, and while it’s not the same as meeting in person, it is better than being even more isolated.

We don’t need to feel alone, if we make the effort to connect… from a distance.

A world of meetings

Today is the first day in a while that I don’t have an 8:30am neeting, but I have one at 9, a long one at 10, then 12, 12:30. And 1pm. For almost four and a half hours I’ll be sitting at my desk staring at my computer screen in meetings. That’s less than what I had yesterday. And yesterday, I ended up on 3 one-on-one conversations with teachers, and a phone call with a student as well. I barely got out of my chair.

I know things will settle down. I value much of the work being done in many of these meetings, but right now I feel like these meetings are equally a blessing and a curse. A blessing because I still get to connect with colleagues and video helps me feel far more connected than voice alone. Cursed because many meetings could just be informational meetings take 1/10th of the time.

Spending 4-6 hours a day in meetings is not efficient or effective, and some days even small ‘to do’ lists are taken home, or added to tomorrow’s list.

What’s really making this tough is that when I normally have days like this, I can take a break by walking down the hall and checking in on kids. I can peek in on teachers teaching a class. I can sit in a busy staff room and join a conversation. My daily 12:30 meeting is a staff check-in organized by the teachers and still feels like this, but for the most part I miss the opportunities to connect with students and teachers in a busy school… and I’m getting a bit tired of non-stop meetings.

Purposeful Contributions

Yesterday I was part of a meeting with teachers offering a new course this year. Teachers and administrators (principals or vice principals) from each high school were there, and the VP in charge had us go around the table sharing. When it was my turn, I passed it over to one of my teachers who supports this course online. Since she works closely with the Inquiry Hub teacher who teaches the course, and she knows the content of the course better than I do, I knew she would do a better job than me sharing.

The next round, the conversation was more specific about delivery in the schools. When it got to me, I realized that in the context of both the online school and Inquiry Hub, nothing I could share would benefit a school of 1,000+ students, like the other schools that were sharing. So, I passed when it was my turn.

Anyone who has been in a meeting with me knows that I am not afraid to speak up or speak out. I’m happy to share my thoughts, ask a question, or present an idea. But I don’t need to hear my own voice. There was nothing I could have added to the conversation that would have benefited others.

The meeting was excellent. I think everyone left knowing a lot more than when they came, and my online teacher is creating a shared repository for all the teachers to contribute to, and benefit from. I definitely benefited more from listening than talking, and think that I would not have added value by saying more… I would have wasted the time of the group.

Moral of the story: Make positive and purposeful contributions, or shut up and listen.

The Dalai Lama is a bit more eloquent:

When you talk, you are only repeating what you already know. But if you listen, you may learn something new.

The Dalai Lama