Unknown Speaker 0:03
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. Welcome back to the smooth operator Podcast. I'm Adam Liette. So good to see you again today or to have you back. If you didn't check out the last episode, go back, listen to the last episode before this one. Because over the next couple of episodes, we're really gonna be talking about meetings, and how to be a presence and how to have leadership appeal past a basic leadership characteristics, of course, but how we conduct ourselves and how we perform on camera makes a big difference. We're all in this zoom architecture where we're on remote teams. And it's just very different running a remote meeting, versus an in person meeting. And I think that's, it's an elephant in the room, we need to get out of the way. So in the last episode, I talked about how to set up your stage just like a musical performance of what's on stage really matters that helps convey the personality of the performance. There's a reason like a slipknot concert and a Paul McCartney concert have very different stage presences. And the materials that you surround with during online communication during zoom meetings are very powerful, because they help send nonverbal communications to your target audience. And you can tell a lot about someone by what they choose to surround themselves with. And you might not think that's as important when just doing a team meeting versus like, doing like on a marketing call or a sales call with with someone. But I completely disagree. Like this is your opportunity. And so in this episode, I'm really going to talk about I talked about the stage last time don't need to muck around with that anymore. I'm going to talk about how to prepare for a meeting. because like it or not, we are always being judged period. Our team members and others are looking to us for motivation, inspiration, assurances, or even something as simple as acknowledging them during a call. And I found it's best not to leave things to chance, having a plan and a process for getting ready for a call is a critical part of my day, especially before a full team meeting. Something that I know, having this pre call ritual has a direct result in my ability to be highly successful in that interaction and get the results that I'm after. So I can sum it down to four things. Here's the process, I use the four P's as preparation, priming, personal reflection, and purposeful silence. So we all know the big one preparation. That's the one that most people are familiar with, right? Jot down the things that you want to be discussed on the meeting, laying out your agenda, and putting all those things in place. I have an agenda that it's a templated agenda, I prepare every single Monday morning before our Monday team meeting. And that's one I share with the team. It's a full agenda of what's going on in the week. And then I also have a more detailed agenda that I keep for myself and I usually use Evernote or a tool like that just to have the little details that I don't want to slip in there. In the detailed agenda. It has all as a critical things that I need to discuss projects, procedures, policies, all those necessary things that we need to do our jobs on a regular basis. And then I'll add more. For example, if there's something important to share with the team, like someone's birthday, or an accomplishment of the week, I'll make a small note to remind myself to bring it up and where it's best incorporating incorporated into our meeting. If it's at the beginning, if it's before we move to new business, wherever I want to insert that little bit. That's where I'm going to insert it. Oftentimes I'll share stories are encounters I've had with other team members, partners for other companies, or are our customers. And not only make a note about the story, but I'll include bullet points about the main things that I want to be sure are included. So the stories will often be practiced in advance. I'm really I'm a realist stickler for practicing stories, and that actually is an allusion to what we're going to cover next episodes, I don't want to go too far down that rabbit hole. But when we practice our stories when we do that, we end up with a really smooth cadence and able to get your, your points across much clearer. Finally, there's an ending send off like how long ending the meeting I've firmly believe in ending a call strong. So I'll typically plan this out in advance, give that my team something motivating or recap and important point to share them with them. So I send them off chomping at the bit and ready to go. Alright, so that's all the preparation phase and all that's like I said all these things very much under control. You can 100% control the preparation phase, and from there you have to move into priming. So priming, it's simply the idea of Making sure that your team is aware of the agenda before they show up for a call. Ideally, you want to publish this at least a day prior or at least a couple hours prior at the very minimum, to give them time to review the agenda. You don't want them showing up with surprises. If there are specific areas you expect a team members do have an answer for Be sure to notate that in the priming dock, which for me is that agenda, that's what I'm priming them with. I like to give my team the time to reflect and prepare for any questions that I have for them. It also minimizes the chances that someone's going to be caught off guard and potentially embarrassed, I don't want that for them. I want to cue them up to be successful and give them every opportunity and every bit of foresight that they need in order to be successful. I think there's so much to that. And it's it's an often overlooked thing. Well, I the one thing I never want to do is embarrass one of my teammates. In that that area, I want to really just allow them their opportunity to shine as well and feel supported, motivated, allow that meeting to be, for lack of a better phrase, a safe space for them, where they can express things Express vulnerabilities, things that are having problems with, because that's the only way we get shit done, right? It's when a team member actually says I need help. Boom, I know we're on our way. So set yourself up for that by priming. Alright, so after that, I move into my personal reflection time. So these are my rituals and things that need to happen for a call to be successful. They started with an actual checklist, which I evolved over time. And it's now a straight up habit. I don't even have to think about doing my pre call checklist because it's so ingrained and something I do every time. So for me, I had to actually jot it down and remind myself what I'll do. But for me, I turn off all notifications on my Mac, I close emails, Skype, messenger, et cetera, anything that could interrupt me, during the call, I put my phone on Do Not Disturb or better yet, get my phone the heck away from me, just in case something pops up on there. I turn on my call lights, which are much brighter than the normal lights I work on under. That goes back to what we talked about about setting your stage. But I want to be well lit for the meeting. I do check my backdrop, I look behind me at the desk behind me make sure things aren't out of place, make sure I didn't accidentally leave a book in an area where it doesn't look good. Just a brief glance back there, it's a good reassurance, I position my notes than on the screen. So I can make eye contact as much as possible. It's big reason I love Evernote is I can just pull a little box and put it up near my camera. I even do I do a wardrobe check. To be honest, I don't tend to wear the same shirt all day depending on what I'm doing. But I do have very specific shirts I'll wear for meetings. So I do a wardrobe check and check, make sure everything looks good. And including a quick check in the mirror to make sure that I don't have anything out of place, I don't have hair. So that's not as big of a problem. But you know, it doesn't hurt to take five seconds to take a look at yourself. It all seems silly, right to have these rituals until your phone goes off in the middle of the meeting. Or you're carrying a little bit of breakfast on your chin somehow or some you know, all these things are designed to to protect you. And to prevent you from also having that embarrassing moment. But having a routine like that also sets your mind in place as you're getting ready for performance. So I'm a big baseball fan. And one thing I've noticed about baseball, if you watch a major league pitcher or batter, watch their pre bat or pre pitch ritual, they do the exact exact same thing. Every time. Even something as little as doing two practice swings and then putting the bat on their shoulder for a second before they raise it up. Or maybe like raising their right foot for a second. They all do the same thing every time. When they do that, it's that pre batting that ritual or that pre pitch ritual that helps set them up to where they need to be to have success. They're eliminating all the variables. And I doubt many of them are even thinking about it at this point. It's so ingrained in them they just do it. Alright, so finally, there's purposeful silence. I have not always been the biggest fan of silence. And I'll talk about that in more depth at some point. But I will turn off everything. no music, no talking, no nothing. I just sit in peace with myself for a couple of minutes.
Unknown Speaker 9:44
I use this time to collect my emotions and prepare for who I have to be on the call. So when I'm actually not the most extroverted person in the world, I'm high mostly introverted. So for me to have to have that energy for that for 30 to 45 minutes. I need to collect my emotions and get into my zone, I need to not let myself get distracted or pulled into something that will be bugging me for the remainder of the call, you know, those emails you get that just send you off, you don't want one of those two minutes before you have to perform. The silence really helps with your emotional response in a big way, you come to the call collected with a presence of mind, you're protecting yourself from distractions that our digital environment can bring, you're ready to perform at your best for your team. So you can achieve the objectives that you need to achieve. You're doing this as a leader, to be the best leader you can be. So again, these are very, for just very simple things that will help you get into a rhythm and predictable flow. When it's meeting time. I found for me, it really eases performance, performance anxiety, it allows me to bring an energy to the call that propels my team and action and conveys calm and collectiveness. When things are a little bit in chaos, if things are in chaos, and something's going on in the business, the last thing your team members need to see is you being in chaos as well. So gain every advantage, you can come into that meeting, knowing what you're going to do, knowing what you're going to say, knowing how you're going to appear and knowing the energy you're going to portray, you're just setting yourself up for a high degree of success, that's going to just it's going to build over time, this is an art, it is a skill. And the more you do it, the better you're going to be. It's just like recording a podcast episode or anything like that, you do it more and more, and you get better and better and better. So know, every little thing you can control, leading into the Call, man, if you just get those things out of the way, you're just you're freeing up so much space in your mind, to then work on the other things, you still need to work on it because we're never done rolling into this. So I hope that helped. I hope you found some good things out of that. And I just wanna let you know that I'm actually putting together a mini course on how to run a business like a soft business of Special Operations Business. If you're interested in that, please go to Adam liette.com. That's ADA m li e TT e.com. You'll see it right there. And do subscribe to the podcast while you're at it. And I hope to see you at our next episode of the show where we'll get into storytelling and how much power can be gained from the art of story. All right, until next time, I'll see you then and have a good one.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai