If you read the blog post on 19 October, this title will sound familiar. That blog post was inspired by a discussion with a few colleagues after a staff meeting. Some ideas were already popping up on how these kinds of gatherings could be even more interesting and contribute to good dialogue within the institution. We decided to take this a step further and use our own communications unit meeting to generate additional creative ideas, and then to share them with the team who is responsible for our staff meetings. We imagine that these ideas will be read with as much enthusiasm as produced them!

Here was our question: You just went to a great staff meeting – you left excited, energised and hopeful. Tell us – what happened?
We first worked in pairs to create our stories, then shared them with each other. Here are some of the ideas that emerged:

Facilitation
• The staff meeting has changing chairs/facilitators – sometimes the DG, sometimes other management, or staff members lead the meeting.
• A different programme/unit hosts each staff meeting and uses it as a creative event. They use visuals (ppt or video with little text) as people enter the room to promote or update people on their programme. They run a warm-up, facilitate the news and reporting, and use a few minutes of the time for an “ad-break” on their programme. We give an award to the best staff meeting of the year at the Christmas party (people vote for it). Sometimes departments partner to put on their staff meeting so as to encourage cross-department collaboration.

Format of the meeting
• At the beginning of each staff meeting there is a 5-minute warm up to get people’s attention (breathing, tai chi, something fun etc.)
• The free coffee morning is changed to right after the staff meeting to encourage people to talk about the meeting and what they heard.
• There are different formats using interactive exercises for discussion components. For example, people make one minute interventions and then go into different corners of the room and invite people to discuss further, so they are “opt-in” discussions.
• Creative sharing is promoted in the staff meetings, and discussions are held that generate ideas about things of interest to staff, that explore a major issue, or use voting for more inputs by staff.

Reporting and updates
• Reports are not always made by the Heads; other staff members also get to report.
• Reporting uses more visuals, including “advertisements” of new products of which we are proud. Little text is used in the visuals, and more emphasis is put on pictures, cartoons and things to remember.
• Reports are delivered as if they were news items – answering the question, “What’s attractive for people? What is newsworthy?”
• The reports have a limit of 2 minutes (some people say 1 minute!) and a bell or a timer goes off when the time is up.
• The reports are interesting, humorous, engaging – the audience “votes” at the end of a report by clapping and that instant feedback incentivises the staff reporting.
• In reports, some parameters are set – such as that people cannot talk about “where, when or who”, only about “what they have learned and the key messages to staff.” Reports are forward looking and not backward looking, giving staff an idea of what we want to achieve and inviting engagement and discussion.
• Not only technical people take the lead; we also hear from general management, finance, cafeteria, etc. We consider what is interesting to ALL the staff.

Updates on non-programme and non-work activities
• Staff share what is going on in management – using the meeting to achieve even greater transparency on current debates in management.
• Space is given to support staff to share their news items.
• An “open-mike” system is used to allow people to share their news.
• Each staff meeting includes both work-related reports and also updates on people’s lives: births, announcements, weddings, etc.
• Staff meetings include 5 minutes at the end on social aspects such as how to make life exciting in our area (local events, announcements etc.)

Certainly there are great staff meetings in other institutions, what other experiences are out there? Even this 20 minute creative exercise was an example of how a staff meeting can give energy and contribute to our learning about how to do things differently.

What is the difference between a courtroom and a concert?

A courtroom is a place where people are being questioned for holes in their argument, for inconsistencies in their stories. People attend expecting not to believe one side or the other. It is a place where for the most part people’s minds are made up, and it will take a very powerful argument or some remarkable new evidence to change an opinion. The person speaking is either the accused or the witness, and the person asking questions is the defense or the prosecution. Courtrooms, I can imagine, are rather stressful environments. People probably don’t get up in the morning excited about going to court.

A concert, however, is a place where people go to expect to hear and be a part of something they will enjoy. They go to be transported by their thoughts, to be taken back to meaningful moments in their past and to hear some new things that they fully expect to love. Everyone is united in their appreciation of the person speaking or singing, and that person is energised by this openness and desire from the audience to participate in a transforming event. The person speaking or singing is an artist, someone who brings a unique message or delivery to an idea, and the people attending are expecting to enjoy themselves. Concerts, for the most part, are exciting and appreciative environments. People do get up in the morning excited about going to a concert.

Someone might say that the purposes of the two are different – courtrooms are there to make important decisions that affect people’s lives. However, aren’t concerts similarly generative gatherings? How many artists and authors, and people generally have been inspired by music? How many people have been buoyed to action by music?What comes out of concerts is often joy, thoughtfulness, creativity and inspiration.

If I was going to run an important meeting, which environment would I want to create? How would I want my participants and speakers to feel when they left the room? What would I want people to get out of it? Would it be a zero sum gain, or would it be a step of a creative, hopeful process? When I sent out my next invitation for the group to meet again, what would be people’s reactions? Would they be excited that their favorite group was holding a concert again? Or would they dread the eyes of the jury?

It is thought-provoking to hear people come away from discussions that they have lead and say, “Why do you think people reacted that way to my ideas?” Another question they could ask might be, “What could I have done differently to develop a generative discussion rather than a debate?”

We noticed during a recent meeting, where an external speaker was presenting a set of models of change, that some of our often outspoken younger colleagues remained silent, and a few of our more gentle colleagues really debated the speaker strongly, even in one case where the differences were very slight between the ideas that were apparently in conflict. If you took away the words and just watched the body language and the tone of voice – what would come to mind?
For me, a university classroom. There was an expert standing up at a screen, talking about theory, showing diagrams, asking questions and inviting comments. Around the table there were several quiet learners who were on a steep-ish learning curve, and several others well versed in the literature and related theory, heatedly debating fine points with the speaker. Most of the discussion time was spent intellectually jousting – good mental exercise, thought-provoking, entertaining, and making us proud of our smart colleagues, and of our speaker who tackled them all. What it brought to mind – many people loved university and love getting back in the thick of it.

If the goal of the discussion was to get the most points, then this kind of mind wrestling would have been a perfect way to do it (nearly a tie I would say). If the goal was to get people to develop something new and think about ways to work together on a common initiative, then perhaps some changes in the approach could have produced a different outcome.

I think the outcome of the meeting was a good one, people left interested generally, although I think we had a slightly higher goal. What kind of impact could the following changes have made?

* Speaker sitting down or standing at the back of the room?
* Presentation more applied, with case studies?
* More conversational (less taught)?
* More explanation (less acronyms)?
* What else?

What did I learn – if one sets up an academic situation, then people will be happy to react as though they are in one! Rarely do people throw a professor or a keynote speaker for that matter a soft ball…

In a beautiful retreat forty minutes drive from Boston, two dozen members of the Generative Dialogue Project community (http://www.generativedialogue.org/) came together. I was extremely privileged to join the group and, over the course of three days, engage in dialoguing about dialogue.

From the outset we were charged with the following: “Listen to one another with your full attention. Think about what is said, how it is said and the intent behind this. How does it make you feel – physically, intellectually and emotionally – as a participant in this dialogue process? How does it make others feel?” The purpose of this was advancing our understanding of generative dialogue by experiencing it as well as talking about it and examining case examples.

A heightened level of awareness was brought to the discussion by balancing theory with practice in the ‘here and now’. This experiential dimension – the learning by doing approach – set the stage for a wonderful interplay between exploring academic discourse, sharing experiences, and at the same time reflecting throughout on our own dialogue process.

This was a truly inspiring exercise! Joining change and dialogue process experts in this, I was party to a rare space in which professionals listen and inquire with a resolve and integrity too often reserved for outside the professional environment. These were conversations that mattered; conversations in which relationships changed – including my relationship with the ‘art’ of dialogue, the way I will approach dialogue processes, will listen, will inquire and will learn.

There is still much to explore and emerge about the role of dialogue in change processes. Along the way, how can we replicate such experiential approaches in our own institutions for collective learning about the important role of dialogue in change?

What are some of the different purposes of a Staff Meeting?
-To update and inform staff members of activities in the institution
-To profile people who have done good work and let them share their reflections
-To maintain transparency and an open environment for sharing
-To bring staff together for a shared experience once and a while

What is the most common format for a Staff Meeting? Most people would say that the staff meetings they have attended were of the “one-person talking/reporting and many more listening” type. What are some other possibilities for holding staff meetings – what would an un-staff meeting look like?

* Maybe there is an email sent out 10 minutes before the staff meeting which has 5 items (one para each) and the key people listed, then when you walk in the room you see those 5 people and you can go and join a small group to discuss their items. At the end each group gets to share in 1 minute, two or three of the highlights of the conversation (followed by announcements). People could move around so they can participate in several small group discussions.

* Maybe there is a rule at a staff meeting that people can only talk about the future, so that people are informed of things that are happening so that they can better participate, instead of after-the-fact reporting (that can go on the website or staff newsletter).

* Maybe an agenda is sent out in advance with key points for discussion, and at the beginning of the staff meeting there is 3 minutes of complete silence in the room while people focus on what they want to learn specifically at the staff meeting. At the end there is 5 minutes of silence or perhaps a 5 minute pairs conversation while people think about what they learned and what they will do with it when they get back to their desks.

Have you ever been to a great staff meeting? What was it about the meeting that made it useful, interesting, and made you excited to go to the next staff meeting? Any ideas to add?