‘Oh the Meetings You’ll Have…’

by Dr. Seuss?

I do love getting fancy

guiding that “oh so important meeting”

Reminding them not to be chancy:

give up preconceived leaning

honor agreed upon meaning

notice each person’s seeming

such that all depart beaming

But the least fancy part of all

matters more than appearing

Simply speak less at a stretch!

stop to ask “what are you hearing?”

how close to “ah ha!” are you nearing?

maybe even share why you’re tearing

ask leaders where next are they steering…

My first ever attempt at rhyming!

Thanks for making it this far.

This post is inspired by Dr. Seuss because reading his stories to my kids reminds me of the drastic difference between speaking relationally versus speaking as a soliloquy. Oops, now I’m rhyming accidentally…

My key point — I said “reading his stories to my kids” when I should have said “reading his stories with my kids”.

Hang in there, I’ll get to our “so important meetings” next paragraph. Rhyming stories are particularly wonderful for teaching kids to actively participate and engage in life; not just passive little consumers of entertainment. Because it rhymes you can read the first half of a stanza aloud and then, just before finishing the second half, simply trail off…this is your kids cue to guess aloud how each rhyme might complete! Once you really get a rhythm going, storytime becomes an enlivening verbal dance, back & forth, with much more laughter and interesting questions throughout.

Now consider any of your meetings that drag on beyond the scheduled time, or require several follow-up meetings when decisions initially seemed agreed upon (but apparently weren’t after all), or that simply leave everyone with less energy than they arrived with.

Mis-steps in these conversations might be extremely nuanced. The artform of effective conversations can be exquisitely subtle. That said, the group often intuitively solves for subleties fairly easily if you begin making one deceptively simple shift -

Simply stop taking turns talking for such long stretches at a time!

• Agreed, groups truly committed to something ought bring enough attention span to closely follow even the poorest communicators
• Agreed, there are times to powerfully own the attention of the group, to declare what you’re about to narrate and why it matters, and then just go
• For all those other times though, you risk talking at people when failing to at least check how well you’ve answered what they really wanted to know
• Beware of having so much attention on what you’re saying you might forget to track how well they’ve followed you so far

Millenia from now, this sincere co-exploration may be referred to as “conversing”, ideally sounding a little less like Heidegger and a little more like Dr. Seuss with ones kids.

Tap into this back & forth rhythm with any grown-ups you’re speaking with, you’ll spend less back & forth on calendars scheduling an additional meeting.

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