The Art of Leadership

Chapter 13. Gossip, Rumors, and Lies

Everyone is just…sitting there.

Six of you. All managers who report up to Evan, your boss, who decided two weeks ago that “It’s probably a good idea for this leadership team to get together on a regular basis and talk about what’s up.” He dropped an agendaless, 60-minute recurring meeting on everyone’s calendar, and that meeting is now.

Six of you. You know these humans. You work closely with two of them every single day. You’ve collaborated on occasional projects of significance with two others. The last two are friendly first names you see in the hallway.

Evan kicks off the meeting by repeating exactly what he told each of you face-to-face and in the meeting invite. It’s probably a good idea for this leadership team to get together blah blah blah. He finishes his bland opener and everyone is just…sitting there. Saying nothing.

Welcome to your first staff meeting.

An Unacceptable Amount of Crap

I’m solidly on the record as believing 1:1s are the most important meeting of the week. A very close second is the staff meeting. I find that 1:1s beat staff meetings in two important categories: trust building and quality of signal. There are ongoing, compounding benefits to a regular well-run staff meeting, though: team building, efficient information dissemination, and healthy debate are three I can think of off the top of my head. There are more.

Definitions first. I define a staff meeting as “the correct collection of leadership gathered together ...