Zero-Preparation Techniques

By admin

Sometimes meetings can be just like a big vacuum cleaner: they suck you right in with no time to prepare. Once again, we can usually thank those who cannot budget time for the opportunity to participate without preparing. Under this topic in Part II, I suggested that we simply blame this situation on whoever created it and have some fun with the presentation, by becoming like one of the audience and critiquing the presentation even as we are giving it. In the meeting, this is not quite so simple. Because we are interacting, not formally presenting, we may not have material to critique. Also, we may be the perfect one to be at the meeting, but without the opportunity to prepare.

Here, we call once again on our confident yet indifferent attitude, and we assume a role. Instead of the role of the entertaining critic, as with the presentation, we assume the role of the helpful expert. We can start with a statement like, “I just got pulled into this meeting and have had no time to prepare. Please apprise me of your goals for this session and the issues you are dealing with, and I will see how I can help.” By approaching this situation in this manner, we accomplish three particular things. First, we show our honesty, which should be appreciated by the other participants. Second, we appear cooperative and helpful, which we are, of course. Third, we buy some time while the attendees are summarizing their meeting goals and technology, to get organized in our thinking. While listening to them, we do some of the mental preparation not afforded to us before the meeting.

Then, we ask the chairperson if we could pose a few questions before starting the planned agenda. This is usually permitted, and here we establish our role as a questioner rather than an information provider. Based on these questions, we not only gain insight into the direct issues, we also get to find the dominators, participators, and passivists in the crowd. Now that we have built our bridges, we are perceived as a questioning expert. When our time to offer something arrives, if we have some ideas, we can offer them, but I personally prefer to continue the questioning. I like to say something like, “I believe I understand the issues to be … (whatever),” and proceed to ask more questions. After we have asked our questions, if a position is evident, we can state it, or we can simply be honest and say that we have gained a lot of understanding but have no position or solution to offer at this time. Now the meeting continues (or ends if we are last on the agenda), and we offer to digest what we have learned and respond to the attendees later, in a memo or at a subsequent meeting

Fundamentally, what we have done is gain understanding, participate, and provide whatever we could, given the lack of preparation time. If that is not good enough, then the powers that be should allow a more reasonable time to prepare. It gets right back to the fundamental idea that quality work requires time to do it. There is no substitute for a skilled communicator working under a reasonable schedule. When the schedule is compressed, quality gets squeezed out.