Few are agreeable in conversation, because each thinks more of what he intends to say than of what others are saying and listens no more when he himself has a chance to speak.
-François de la Rochefoucauld
You’ve certainly experienced reunions where you told yourself "This person isn’t saying anything interesting and this meeting is going nowhere.".
In my case it's not really a problem since I'm the boss and I can punch people in the face and get away with it (you probably can't). By the way being allowed to kill people is one of the top reasons why you should start your own startup, provided you keep the death toll within the limits allowed by the law.
But I disgress. What can you do to help the meeting go somewhere?
As strange as it may sound talking less is part of the answer. This is because silence alleviates stress and forces oneself to actually listen. When you listen, you communicate better. Better communication means better meetings.
An experiment
At Bureau 14 we're pretty awesome scientists. And I'm not talking about all the computer science we do all day (C++ is more black magic than science actually), but more like the one that confirmed that interns can't survive without oxygen.
The one you can do is the following: the next meeting you attend, do not talk at all.
It’s highly likely you will notice the following things:
- Every attendant is saying the same thing over and over with a varying degree of eloquence;
- The amount and the distribution of information is unchanged by the meeting (unmodified entropy);
- What you could have said wasn't that useful, intelligent or unique (ouch!).
Problem ? Solution ?
You might tell me: "I'm going to enforce some rule during meetings to fix that":
Unless one has a genuine question, needs information or has something valuable and related to share there is absolutely no reason to speak.
That sounds like a pretty obvious rule on which everybody could easily agree. But that would not change a thing.
Let's be realistic for a minute.
We all think that what we say is pretty clever. Actually what happens is that our overinflated ego makes us believe it's ok to reharse what the person next to us just said because, really, it's important to participate and it's less boring to spend one hour talking than listening and by the way it's probably a good opportunity to disgress and talk about the latest Family Guy episod.
Newsflash: we're not that intelligent and what we have to say doesn't matter that much. Actually most of the time it's completely out of topic.
In other words, we may have the feeling to genuinely contribute when we aren't.
Stop creating rules
Stop believing that every problem must be taken in your own (capable?) hands and needs to be addressed. Stop "managing issues". This is something much more complex and inherent to human nature than just a "problem". It needs education.
The education process is a simple matter of forcing yourself to speak as little as possible, as if you were underwater and you had to keep your precious oxygen for mundane things such as staying alive. Everytime you want to speak, double check that it is relevant and new. Once you've double checked, check again, and again. Listen more, observe.
After a while, you will talk less, be more relaxed and listen more. You'll be a better participant and people will look after your presence. This is the moment when you will realize that contributing to the success of your company is more a matter of listening than a matter of talking.
