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Tune in and Level Up Your Meetings

Excerpt from Lead Conversations that Count: How Busy Managers Run Great Meetings
(Rowntree Press, 2021)

Have you ever walked into a room and sensed a whole lot of tension? Without hearing what has been said, you immediately know there’s a chill in the air. You can pick this up in virtual spaces when someone appears held back or closed off, even in your limited view. They may turn off their camera for prolonged periods, despite your request to keep cameras on for the meeting.

Communication takes place in many forms and is a critical input in connecting and understanding one another. Bats operate through an incredible and sophisticated sonar system, where they fly using signals that bounce back from the environment around them. We, too, need to pay attention to signals. People communicate in many ways beyond just verbal. Listen to pauses, pace, tone and body language, as well as the words. Effective Conversation Leaders rely on what they hear and see and also on what they sense.

Listen for what is NOT being said, as much as you listen for what IS being said.

When doing my graduate work at the Kennedy School at Harvard University in 1986, I had the privilege of taking a course called Leadership and the Mobilization of Human Resources with Professor Ron Heifetz, co-author of The Practice of Adaptive Leadership. The course had a fascinating structure with twice-weekly classes that were very active discussions between the professor and students. The course addressed significant, contentious topics, such as racism, discrimination, social and economic injustice, and more. In our weekly small group discussions, we had to present a mini case study of our personal leadership failures and, with the help of the small group, link it back to the teachings and themes that emerged in the large lecture class.

In one lecture, we discussed the impact of apartheid in South Africa, a system of segregationist policies against non-whites that was still in place in the late 1980s. Students in the class came from countries from all over the world, and many were of African-American descent. At one point, a white male South African student rose up to hotly defend apartheid. He proceeded to storm out of the lecture hall while many students implored him to stay and discuss this important issue.

During this incident, I noticed I was having a strong physical reaction. It wasn’t the first time I had felt this way in this class. My face flushed, my throat tightened, and my palms began to sweat. A question was formulating in my mind, but my inner critic shut it down. What if I asked a stupid question? That would be embarrassing, so better not do that. Perhaps I’d missed something, and my question had already been answered. Whether it was my identity as an extremely polite and compliant Canadian or my overwhelm and disbelief at the good fortune of doing my graduate work at such a prestigious university, my imposter syndrome was pretty adept at censoring me.

As if he had read my mind, Professor Heifetz stopped to ask if anyone in the class felt like their body was resonating. I hadn’t heard the word used much at that time, but it certainly described what I was feeling. I knew he was also an accomplished cellist, so perhaps the word “resonate” was a regular part of his vocabulary. He urged, “If you feel something in your body that needs to be said, you should speak it. Sometimes we resonate when others in the system need to be heard, and you can be a voice for that need.”

It was the first time I was given a vocabulary for understanding that we may think we operate independently from one another, but when we gather in collective intention, a system of collective intelligence begins to form and can take on a life of its own.

Masterful Conversation Leaders learn to cultivate and incorporate their own gut-sensing sonar, so you notice it when you get a “ping”. Pay attention to the internal signals and nudges you receive when you relax and tune in to your whole-body intelligence, not just your intellect.

Don’t try to analyze it right away with your brain or through the filters of past experience, but instead stay open and curious. I now call it my “spidey sense,” and it’s a nudge that I have learned to trust so I can tune deeply to what is really happening. It may not always be 100 percent accurate, but at the very least, use it to prompt a clarifying question. Get curious about what may be happening beneath the events taking place on the surface of your conversation.

Take Action

Sometimes it’s hard to tune in to your “spidey sense” if your mind is full of thoughts or feeling distracted. Before your next meeting, take 10 minutes to do a brain dump of everything that’s on your mind, or take some time to do a short meditation. Find some way of allowing yourself to create some space and calm, so you can more readily notice those signals that your intuition or body awareness may be giving you.

Resources

Ron Heifetz, Alexander Grashow and Marty Linsky, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World. (Harvard Business Review Press, 2009)

Ryan James, Emotional Intelligence: 21 Most Effective Tips and Tricks on Self Awareness, Controlling Your Emotions, and Improving Your EQ (CreateSpace, 2017)

Author Information: This is an excerpt from Lead Conversations that Count: How Busy Managers Run Great Meetings by Carolyn Ellis (Rowntree Press, 2021). For more information on the book, please visit www.LeadConversationsThatCount.com. This article may be shared provided the author information is included.