Are meetings the bane of your existence?

In a leadership position, being in command during a meeting is one of the most important parts of your job and where your leadership can shine and you can have the biggest impact.

But with a few adjustments you can confidently go into any meeting with power, strength, and the ability to achieve your desired outcome.

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Transcript

Adam Liette
This is the smooth operator Podcast. I'm Adam Liette, director of operations for a seven figure online business and eight year veteran of Army Special Operations. On this show begin with the tactical, nitty gritty of what it really takes to run a thriving online business. Because at the end of the day, operators lead the way. What's going on some of the operators Welcome to this episode, hope you're having a great day. And if it's like any day for me or for you, I mean, we are constantly pulled in multiple different directions. And honestly, like, I love that part of the job, I love the part that every day is a little bit different, that I'm constantly doing different things I have. And I tend to like focus my days, and like I have really strategic days where I don't have a lot of meetings, I'm able to, you know, go deep turn off slack, turn off email, work on big picture plans. And then when I do eat meeting days, I tend to do them back to back to back to back to back, like I'll do this crazy run of meetings. Because like, that's where my energy is then. And like being able to focus in during meeting time. It's it's kind of like a system I personally develop. And I actually have come to really like it.

Adam Liette
As long as I get like 10 or 15 minutes between meetings just to like recalibrate myself reestablished, where I'm going, that's all well and good. If that's not you, yet, I get it. I wasn't always that way meetings used to exhaust me. Because meetings can be the bane of our existence, right? It can be something that we absolutely hate to do. But if you are in a leadership position, if you are in a position of prominence and authority command, you have to do meetings. It's not a choice. Okay. And these are sometimes internal meetings with your team, there's sometimes one to one meetings with subordinates, or with superiors, or their meetings with clients. I mean, there's all sorts of this this nexus of different types of meetings that you can do. But how do you prepare yourself for them. So I'm going to call this mastering the meeting. Because there's, there's a certain art to like being prepared for a meeting and some things that I've found to be really successful. Let's get one thing out of the way, though, I, I have like, in the past needed like a pre meeting agenda, like 1015 minutes of like Silent time and reflection time. And like all this like stuff. I don't need that anymore, because like I've chosen to focus more on my long term mental health, and long term, like mental agility and strength. And that's actually been more conducive to just being able to think on the fly and just do things boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, because the higher you get up in this thing, like the bigger your business gets, the more responsibility you get, the less time you're going to have in between these high profile engagements, and sometimes high stress environments.

Adam Liette
So I'd stress like long term mental health, long term physical or personal improvements are going to be way more conducive to being better on a meeting than needing a 10 minute like meditation time, or like a morning routine and includes 30 minutes of reflection, and whatever's self hypnosis, or whatever you do, like I've done it all. So I'm not discounting the importance of it. I'm not discounting the power of it. But I'm, what I am cautioning you on is that if you're dependent on that timeline, you are setting yourself up for a danger position. Because it's only a matter of time before you have those back to back to back meetings. And yes, you try to get yourself 10 minutes in between. But your calendar isn't always something you can control, even if you are like militant on it. If you are strict, and you have these parameters, if you are running a business, any kind of scale, you're one step away from losing control of that. Okay, and so it just like accept that reality of it. I'm not saying this to be like negative, but just it's just what I've noticed is that's the reality is eventually I lose control over that. So instead, here's something that we can do ahead of time.

Adam Liette
So when I'm in my preparation phase, like let's say I'm on those focus days, the day before, what I'll often do is, if, like on a Sunday, I'll look at my week, I know all my meetings that are coming up, and I'll prepare my agenda for each one of them. Like I know exactly what's coming up, I know what I'm going to be doing. And then I can do it and I'm going to go through that exact process. Let's do a couple other quick, easy breezy things that are really going to help you in your meeting. Presents. The first off is your stage. So I call it a zoom stage. Just because you're on Zoom doesn't mean your physical appearance doesn't matter. Doesn't mean what's in your background doesn't matter. Like I don't like the digital backgrounds. I don't like the when people just blur out the background. I think that's actually more distracting that it is a way to like pull focus in rather, think of your zoom stage as a place to display your provenance display your expertise. Please display your leadership. So you can think of all sorts of things that you can put in your backdrop, awards, diplomas, books, things that are important to you things that demonstrate your personality, you'll be amazed the number of concretization conversation starters that come from having something simple in your background and how that opens up rapport building, which is one of the parts of the outline.

Adam Liette
The second is uniform, like you got to look the part brother, I'm sorry, we are just because you're in this remote environment doesn't mean this stuff doesn't matter. So wear slacks if appropriate, not just a nice shirt, wear your uniform, whatever that uniform is. I'll often change clothes mid day, depending upon what uniform I'm expected to wear. So I do have part of how I make my living is working for a marketing agency. And we have like branded shirts, I will keep four or five of those branded shirts out in my office. And if I have a high profile meeting with a client, I will put on one of my branded shirts, that is a different brand than my personal brand. For my personal brand appearance and what I have put out into the world far different. So I will change into my personal brand. Before taking one of those meetings, your clothing makes a big difference. And not only how people are perceiving you, but how you feel about yourself. So why not lean into it, like just put on that uniform and love it.

Adam Liette
So let's get into some of the outline. And like how we can like really narrow down our approach into bullet points. So we're prepared for the flow of the meeting. First off, let's begin by the fact that the first three minutes are the most important, the most important part of the meeting. So I like to be prepared for that know what some of my rapport building things are. You can't just like Hi, how you doing? Let's jump into your strategy. That doesn't work. You do need to allow for one to three minutes of rapport building depending on the client, some clients want more, do not let this exceed four to five minutes, though, keep it concise. So know how you're going to do that know how you're going to introduce yourself how you're going to introduce the team, discuss the reason for being there, engage in culturally specific formalities, if you're in person shaking hands, drinking tea, conversing, politely, all sorts of different things that you should do from a cultural perspective, just to welcome someone, especially if that's in a physical meeting space. And then like know, some things that you can bring up, you know, your clients, you know, the person you're meeting with, or if you don't do a little bit of research with them. Just the other day, I had a meeting with a guy had a virtual background, a big Buffalo Bills thing, right? So you know, this is right before the playoffs. I'm a Browns fan. He's Bill's fan, we're both kind of like, you know, us against the world kind of football team mentality. So I was like, Oh, my goodness, great. Wonderful.

Adam Liette
So I actually pivoted from where I was thinking of starting my report building into that. So I had a plan, but then you know, stuff happens. So having that outline, know how you're going to start that meeting. And here's continue with that outline. Like you need to have your stuff in order. Like if you have like four talking points, you need to get through have them in order in the order that you want to talk them through. Know exactly what you need to bring up from each have any resources available that you need to have available, I'll often have like a second Chrome window on a third screen that just has my resources, the data that I need, and I'm going to link that crap on it right in my presentation document. Or in my calendar event, that's just for me, often, I have two calendar events, one for me, and one that I send to the client with a zoom link and you know, puts on their calendar, I'm not gonna give them all of my stuff. But I'm gonna have a separate calendar event just for me. Okay, that keeps it all organized, keeps it all in one place. To just having those outlines, having those talking points, knowing what you're going to go through. And sometimes I'll even go through practice, practicing literally practicing what I'm going to talk through, especially if I'm at a high outcome type of meeting, if I'm trying to get something big accomplished. If I know we're at an inflection point with that client where I need to get them to move this way or that way or this way. Oftentimes, I can see that coming, especially with my coaching clients, like I know in the ins and outs of their brands, I know what they're going through, I know exactly where they need to go. But I know what's going to be a hard sell. I know it's something they're not, they're ready for but they're not like intrinsically prepared for, I'll prepare my supporting arguments, why they should do stuff have specific facts, data, things to lower the risk for them, so that they can make that decision right there in the meeting.

Adam Liette
I will also like be prepared for their objections, like know some things that they might bring up that they might address and be like, well, but we tried this. Yes. Let me tell you why that didn't work. Let me tell you why this was the wrong approach. Let me tell you why it's correct. Now, let you know just know your people enough to know what some of their objections could be, so that you can then go about your ways Now, what I like to do is actually record this, when I'm preparing for this, especially those difficult inflection points, I'll pull up my phone, pull up, you know, my voice recorder app, and I'll literally talk through the process, it's one thing to write it down. It's another thing to actually have to deliver it verbally, because that is our communication modality. So practice within your communication modality, right seems kind of simple. Not a lot of people do it. But I would encourage you to do it, not just say it to yourself, but actually physically record it because something changes in your physiological being when you hit that record button. It's weird. It's crazy. I don't know why it happens. But like, we have this like hanging up over recording, where if we know our voice is being recorded, we act differently.

Adam Liette
Believe it or not, that same modality, that same was shit moment happens that moment that zoom camera comes on. So why not lean into it? Why not rehearse the way that you're going to that you're going to present? So finally, at the end of this, like, we all go into these meetings, knowing that we have a desired outcome. Like we know how we want things to turn out. We know how if everything goes perfect, the client or the or the team member, or the whatever is going to say this, and we're going to be happy. What's the alternative outcome? What if they push back? What if they say no? What if the encounter or the meeting goes poorly? What is your exit strategy? How are you going to react if you don't get your way? Because the reality is, you won't get your way every time you will not. Always get the yes, a lot of times you get the maybe, hey, let's talk about this later. What's your strategy then? So no one knows. Right? And that's the that's the point. If you're in the moment, you don't know. So like, just one example I like to do is not just say, Okay, let's circle back to this. I'll say, Okay, how about we meet again in 48 hours, and then we can discuss this further that makes it time bound. It's make it makes it specific, we get it on the calendar right then. And then we can swing back, it gives them time to process what you just said. Process The recommendations, not feel like they're being put in a position where they have to make a decision right now, because they're not prepared to obviously they told you that. So but give them time, and give them a specific timeframe.

Adam Liette
Now they can wrap their minds around it. And instead of letting it go into a shit, I want to think about that for a couple of weeks. I can just like put that as a decision for the future. No, you need to give them a timeline. And you would I expect timelines for myself to someone says we're going to talk about this in the future, I'll say when, let's put it on the calendar. When are we going to talk about this, when I go swing around background to this, I want to know, because I need to begin preparing for that. And I need to be accountable to that. And guess what, so do you. That's kind of what you're saying to the person, but without saying it. So overall meetings, if you learn to love them, I hate to say like learn to love and that's like probably the wrong thing to say. But I have found that so many things are taken off my desk taken off my plate, and just allow me to be in a better position just by being prepared for them. And just by doing my homework ahead of time, I know I'm in a better position to get what I want to get what I need and to accomplish my objectives and my goals without feeling like I am losing control the situation. When you adopt this kind of a strategy of preparing, planning, process oriented things, these processes give us strength.

Adam Liette
They give us a lot of routine and stability. And we're gonna be talking more about that in the future. But lean into those things because they are fun, they are really powerful. And when you learn to use them correctly, brother, I'm telling you, you're not going to understand how good your life is going to be. Thanks so much for joining me this, this outline that I've just talked about this if you're interested in it, like having an outline for yourself. Just make a quick comment on my Facebook profile. It's Adam Liette. You can find me on Facebook and also via email LinkedIn, send me a DM if you want this outline, I will send it over to you very powerful outline to have I like to have it just in my Google Docs as a template that I duplicate on the fly and it's literally in my favorites to copy at a moment's notice. And I'll show you how to do that too. So we're not not finagling about things. Thanks so much for joining me until next time operators go lead the way. Hey, operators, I believe that within each and every one of us lies a warrior in waiting this warrior is able to conquer any obstacle that comes their way to discover how to awaken your warrior spirit and conquer what's holding you back. Go to Adam liette.com and join awaken the Warrior Within You.