10 Commandments for Ministry Meetings
A few weeks back, I found myself a bystander to a conversation between a couple of pastors when the discussion turned to COVID-19 and its impact on the rhythms of the church. "The one thing I don't miss is all the long, useless meetings we had before we had to go virtual," said one of the pastors.
That, to me, is a sad statement. Sad for several reasons:
It shows the pastor's time (and the time of others in the church) was not well spent.
It shows his team probably met about the wrong things and invited the wrong people.
It shows he didn’t value meetings as one of the best opportunities to align mission with momentum.
It shows he or his team probably never "audited" their meetings to see how they could be improved.
The truth is this: no single discipline can have a more immediate and beneficial impact on a ministry organization than a healthy meeting rhythm. It's why we devote an entire module of our mPower Model to meetings. Pulling inspiration from the business world, we prescribe the types of meetings an organization should have, what the agendas should include (and not include), who should be invited and how the meetings can and should lead to organizational momentum in every case.
How effective are your meetings? Our 10 Commandments for Ministry Meetings might be a good measuring stick:
1) Be prepared. At Seven Marches, we help organizations implement meetings with recurring agendas (which means you don’t have to worry about creating an agenda from scratch for every meeting). However, there’s still a little prep work involved for both meeting leaders and attendees. Put time on your calendar a day or two before each meeting (or more, if you’re planning a quarterly or all-hands meeting) that allows you to focus on preparation. Coming to a meeting unprepared shows you don’t value your colleagues’ time.
2) Don’t dominate. This applies to every meeting attendee, but especially to leaders. Don’t let the HiPPO (Highest Paid Person’s Opinion) effect color your meeting. Too often, the opinion of a senior pastor or executive director (especially if stated too early in a discussion) will suffocate other important considerations or ideas.
As Navin Nagiah, the chief of DNN, a web content software company, observes, “Sometimes I have all the information about a particular item beforehand, and there are times when I’ve stated the conclusion first,” he said. “Once you state the conclusion, there’s no discussion. You don’t get anybody else’s perspective, and those perspectives are still important for you to understand the business or other decisions. So you have to hold yourself back.”
David Cote, former Honeywell CEO doubled down on that opinion: “Your job as a leader is to be right at the end of the meeting, not at the beginning of the meeting,” he said. “It’s your job to flush out all the facts, all the opinions, and at the end make a good decision, because you’ll get measured on whether you made a good decision, and not whether it was your idea from the beginning.”
3) Questions > Opinions. Some of the biggest meeting breakthroughs occur in response to nothing more than well-framed, thought-provoking questions. Try this at your next meeting: when you feel primed to jump in with an opinion on a topic, take five seconds to consider if there’s a question you can ask instead. And, we’re not talking about a leading question that’s meant to support your opinion… but rather, a genuine question that might kickstart helpful dialogue. And you know what's even better than a question? A follow-up question!
4) Keep it small. We’re big believers in limiting most meetings (all-hands meetings are the exception) to seven attendees or fewer. And there’s science to back that up. Marcia Blenko, Michael Mankins, and Paul Rogers, authors of Decide & Deliver: 5 Steps to Breakthrough Performance in Your Organization, conducted research with Bain & Company and discovered that for each additional person over seven members in a decision-making group, decision effectiveness is reduced by approximately 10 percent.
And, as Steven Rogelberg points out in The Surprising Science of Meetings, the larger the meeting, the more likely you are to encounter “social loafing” – the “human tendency to reduce effort and motivation when working in a collective; it is akin to “hiding in a crowd.”
Ministry leaders often feel inclined to invite more people to meetings because they don’t want anyone to feel left out. That’s a noble intention – but a bad idea. There are other ways to be inclusive without overcrowding a meeting. Consider sending out surveys or e-mails in advance of an important meeting to ask for feedback from other stakeholders; you can then consider sharing that feedback during the meeting, or use it to help inform decisions.
5) No devices. We’re serious about this. Phones. Tablets. Laptops. Check them at the door. Have a basket or box where people leave their devices when entering the room.
You'll likely get all kinds of objections – "I use my laptop to access data or reports for the meeting;" "I'm expecting an important e-mail that I have to reply to;" "I can be more productive by multi-tasking when the meeting topic isn't relevant to me."
We've heard them all.
But, here’s what you'll find when meeting attendees are unplugged:
People are more engaged and empathetic
The discussion is more focused and on-topic
When people are forced to take notes with good old-fashioned pen and paper, research shows they tend to have a deeper understanding and better memory recall
There is just one exception to this commandment – you should have a designated digital “note taker" who uses Asana or a similar work management app to jot down notes, record to-do items and display any relevant data or information (we suggest connecting this laptop to a TV or projector so it’s viewable by everyone in the meeting).
6) Be positive. Nothing zaps the energy and momentum of a meeting more quickly than even one person’s negative attitude. Setting the tone starts with the leader. Rogelberg suggests the leader can set a positive tone from the get-go by standing to greet each person as they enter, along with smiling and making eye contact. And, if you can incorporate humor, do it! He quotes a study that showed a greater likelihood of “socioemotional” communication, constructive conversations and novel solutions in meetings that are heavy on humor and laughter.
When we help leaders implement our weekly “89-Minute Momentum Meeting,” we also encourage them to end the meeting on a positive note. This is the leader’s opportunity to send his or her team off with a “we’re all in this together, and no mountain is too tall” feeling by offering an inspiring thought, quote or Bible verse.
7) No jellyfish. If you’ve ever observed a jellyfish (watching Finding Nemo counts), you know they tend to float around mindlessly with no purpose or function. How often are your meetings derailed by tangents that are innocently “floated” into the meeting by a well-meaning attendee?
Create a ground rule that any meeting attendee can say, “jellyfish” at any time a tangent is floated out. Better yet, invoke some humor (see Commandment No. 6) by purchasing a jellyfish plush on Amazon and gently tossing it at any offenders during a meeting.
8) Honor the "customer." This is number eight on the list, but its importance might be number one. In the deep weeds of a meeting, it can become easy to forget the reason an organization exists – to serve a “customer" of some type. Don't let the word, "customer" be off-putting; it's simply the person you're there to serve. If you're a church, your "customer" is the worshiper; if you're a non-profit, your "customer" is either the donor or the person you're trying to impact; if you’re a Christian school, your “customer” is either the student or the parent.
When we begin working with an organization, we very deliberately and intentionally create a target "persona." Imagine that person is participating in your meeting. Are you weighing an important decision? Consider how they would feel or what would they want.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has long said, “Start with the customer and work backward.” That’s led to Amazon’s habit of ALWAYS leaving one chair empty at every meeting to represent the customer. VoC (Voice of the Customer) is a research methodology that’s gained traction from a myriad of businesses in recent years. If the empty chair isn’t enough, consider assigning one attendee at every meeting to serve as a “customer advocate” – their role is to view the meeting from the eyes of the person your organization exists to serve.
9) (Gently) provoke conflict. If your meetings are one big circle of everyone singing Kumbaya, you’ve probably got a culture problem. There should be freedom – even earnestness – to dissent. As Patrick Lencione writes in Death by Meeting, “To make meetings less boring, leaders must look for legitimate reasons to provoke and uncover relevant, constructive ideological conflict.” Designate a “devil’s advocate” if you need to – someone to intentionally take the “other side” on issues or decisions.
10) Solicit feedback. It’s difficult to improve what you don’t measure. Take time to collect data from your attendees – both immediately after the meeting and every few months via survey. Gino Wickman, author of Traction, advocates publicly polling attendees at the end of each meeting to have them rate the meeting on a scale of 1 (bad) to 10 (great). If that makes you a bit nervous, consider the Weight Watchers approach. The company has tablets outside their meeting rooms and attendees can use polling software (there are plenty of cheap and free options, such as Poll Everywhere) to choose from one of five emojis to rate the meeting. Send out surveys at least once a quarter with more extensive questions to gauge the quality and effectiveness of your meetings.
There’s still hope!
You might be an offender (even a repeat offender) of many or most of these commandments, but it’s never too late to change! Try integrating one or two of these concepts at your next meeting and start your march to meetings that engage and inspire your entire team – no caffeine needed!
