42. How to Have Better Meetings: A Power Conversation with Jason Doiron

The conversation that I want to host today with Jason, who I’ll introduce in a sec, is about what it means to hold human connection in teams, to acknowledge that when we come into team conversations, team dynamics, team meetings, that there, right now anyways, maybe Jason will agree with me that there is a lack of being intentional in designing and co-hosting the spaces in order to connect into that human connection, to scale deep into the capacity, and taking care of each other to not only have the right people at the table to create impact and achieve goals, but it is also the essence of connecting in an intentional manner and being on a learning journey to experiment, what’s gonna work for us, what’s not. Who’s holding that intentional design? Who’s helping with that learning? And how does that dynamic play out in the way that your culture interacts or doesn’t?

Saralyn: So today, I’m really happy and excited to have, Jason from O Strategies coming from New Brunswick to hold this conversation with me because of all that he’s done with his team over at O Strategies to play with this very idea. Jason, really glad to have ya. Thanks for coming in.

Jason: it’s a great pleasure. Thank you for hosting me.At O Strategies, you and the team, you and, uh, your co-owner Myriane have taken a approach with your organizational entity based in beautiful new Brunswick, Canada, where you intentionally design the culture, behaviours, interactions of your teams with the idea that you want your team to thrive. And I’m playing with, like, what does that mean to come intentionally into, and I’ve heard you say this before, a conscious decision to focus, not just on grow more like let’s earn more revenue, let’s get more business and so on.

Saralyn: Right. But to make the conscious decision to focus on, hey, we’re going to scale deep on capacity. And we’re actually going to invest in holding space for the inner work of our team, because we believe, and you’re already seeing data, situations, and feedback loops that it’s the best way to invest our time and resources in the business and the impact we want to make in the world.

So what does that mean, to you? Like what’s going on? What, like what’s resonating for you from what I’m saying? Like what’s going on.

Jason: I mean, we’re a really young company agency or whatever you want to call it a collective. And we kind of prototype everything that we do internally with our team. I hope and I think we’ve built a culture where like we’re able to try new things and manage expectations and take care of each other. I learned the concept of scaling deep from you, Saralyn, a few years back, uh, when I was working with NouLab.

And I think for us, it’s about growing organically and making sure that we take care of our people first, there’s kind of a chicken and an egg situation where of course, I mean, any agency, any organization that wants to grow, wants to have more impact, but also needs to work internally on capacity and human connection and empathy and deep learning for us to actually create growth inside and out.

So this concept of intentional design, I feel those words very strongly because designing intentionally our team meetings, our connection, the way that we work, the way that we share information and knowledge, needs to be rooted in intentional design, it needs to be focused and created for the right reasons, and the right reasons start with taking care of our people first.

Saralyn: So I just want to feed something back to you. Cause I think that this is really important, because you’re so in it. Right? You’re, you’re so in it, I’m not sure you’re seeing the beauty and the challenge that you’re offering out to the world. So I’ve, I just took down a couple of notes cause I heard you just create a formula

that to create impact in the world through this vehicle called O Strategies, right, it takes two inputs, one finding the right people and two connecting them in an intentional manner. And so that’s not written in leadership books and org dev books and org behaviour books regularly.

Saralyn: Right. It’s not, you know, it’s not, org dev 101, you know, people, a lot of people will say, oh yeah, you gotta find the right people. You know? You learn into who the right person is, and there’s a whole conversation on right people. Sure, sure, sure. But the add that you’ve just provided is connect them in, in an intentional manner.

How do you all at O Strategies, how do you connect your people in an intentional manner? Like what does that actually mean.

Jason: Well, the first thing that comes to mind is actually our team meetings. You know, everybody has the meetings. We’ve had meetings on zoom for the past two and a half years and more, and we know that they can be a time suck. We know that they can be a burden and for business owners, some will say to us, well, I mean, team meetings is kind of a, also a money suck because you’re bringing all your best people together and you’re just going through a top-down meeting.

So first and foremost, the first artifact is the meeting where at O Strategies we share leadership through meetings, which means as a business owner, I’m not the one leading, Myriane as a co-owner is not the one leading. We take turns hosting each other through meetings. It’s not a moment for Myriane and I to give out information, to tell people what to do.

It’s a space where we have so much collective intelligence in the same room for two hours. And we all recognize as individuals that we have this amazing opportunity to host each other and have good conversation, not just talk about work, not just talk about what’s going on, not just give information that could have been in email, but also bring those questions that come out through our slack channel and our emails into good conversation.

What is good conversation?

Jason: Good conversation is a lot of things, but what enables good conversation is good facilitation and good design. So there needs to be energy and thought spent into not just appearing to a meeting and being fully present. Obviously we want people to be fully present during a meeting, but also spend time before a meeting.

If I need to bring a conversation, whether I am Jason or any other member of the team, if I want to bring in a conversation, a question, I have something that I’d like the team to work on with me, I need to intentionally design this moment where I’m going to be hosting others. And it doesn’t matter who on the team that is, everybody plays the role of host at some point when they bring in a conversation.

So if you bring in, you know, bring up a question, a challenge, a problem, an inquiry, it is also your job to be facilitating this conversation. So you need to spend a bit of your time before the Monday meeting and say, how am I going to bring this conversation to people? So a well-designed question, but also a well-designed and realistic outcomes.

And also just creating space.

lot of our conversations look like open space because we just want to create space for open conversation.

Um,There’s not this like productivity agenda behind it. There’s just people that are smart, that are emotionally intelligent coming together for two hours.

Well, we might as well make the best of it. You know, we might as well be intentionally designing these moments of good conversation with good process and good questions. So a lot of times we, we share practices like facilitation practices within our team. We start co-learning these tools together so that we can not only bring them into our conversations during the meeting, but also practice them in amuch safer space than if we were working with a nonprofit, a government agency, a company where we, we need to be very ready. During our meetings, we can test things.

Saralyn: And so here, you’ve just shared so much richness. So I just want to sort of unfold it a little bit so I can, I can bring it back and get clarity here. Is that a good convo requires energy and thought, good facilitation and design. You know, I’m going to geek out on that, right. Cause I’m right there with you.

And that that is sort of the formula to host others. And you’re using really particular language intentionally. Right? You just use the word open space. And for those who don’t know what open spaces we can, we can attach a resource here. Right. But to be able to host, here’s what I just heard to host others in good conversation requires good facilitation and design, energy and thought not just by the boss, the manager, the supervisor.

But by whoever’s turn it is, cause we all are taking turns here, because we all contribute to the dynamics and the culture of our team. And what is it that you do in those meetings? You know, above and beyond problem solving, which a lot of meetings are about your co-learning, practicing, diving deep, being able to test things because I’m inferring from what you’re saying, Jason, is that what this creates is enough bravery to stand up and share, enough playfulness to tap into creativity and innovation, enough engagement where people are like, Yeah, I’m totally in.

Like, it’s not even a question it’s like, yeah, okay, I’m looking forward to meetings, not, oh my God. Can I multitask while someone’s blabbing? Thanks. Right? Like it’s, it’s like, hold on a minute. You’ve got engagement, innovation, creativity, problem solving, like aren’t those the things that, whatever the, you know, the thought leaders of the world say, this is what you need in your organization.

And it comes from what you said earlier, just to bring this in. Let’s overwhelm everybody right at this get go here by giving them everything. It connects into what you said earlier, which is growth is the summation of two things, which is human connection, plus capacity all underneath the right people.

And by the way, right people, I’m already inferring, right people doesn’t just mean you’ve got the skill. Of course it does, but it means you have emotional intelligence, that you can thrive in co-creation and so on. That’s probably a whole nother enchilada.

Jason: Yeah.

Saralyn: But the intentional design to host the team also creates the accountability and empowerment to say, this is our team. Not oh Jason leads the team.

Jason: Yeah, I think there’s a, yeah. And there’s a big misconception when we, I mean, when we start talking to our, you know, our partners and collaborators about shared leadership, it kind of puts them off because shared leadership is a little, I mean, it’s kind of buzzwordy first and foremost. But shared leadership is often, misunderstood as a kind of a super organic, disorganized.

Whoever wants to do what does whatever kind of situation, which it isn’t. I feel like shared leadership is even more difficult than hierarchical leadership because decision-making and meetings are so straightforward. I mean, mostly in hierarchical decisions are made by people, you need to convince people to make them change their perspective on things.

Shared leadership is actually so much more difficult because you’re not just accountable to your supervisor or the person above you in this structure, but you’re accountable to everyone. So in meetings, how it shows up is everybody needs to be there and that’s it. And if you are distracted by other things, you are accountable to your team members to shut down those distractions.

So in our team meetings, we don’t see people checking their phones and checking their emails and kind of, we don’t see their eyes kind of shift away from another tab on their browser. They’re there and they’re fully present in these conversations, which I think is a beautiful thing to see. Cause I’ve, I’ve seen all sorts of meetings, but I think spending that energy and that time before bringing people into a meeting is so important. And that effort is just lacking in most of our organizations of actually spending time just thinking about how do I host others instead of how do I go through my agenda points? Why is it the case that people are not spending the time and energy? And right off the top of my head, I’m like, okay, you know, some people just don’t have the skill to host others, right. They just don’t have the skill.

Saralyn: They don’t have, the clout in some respects. They don’t have the culture. Right. They don’t do everything around what you’re talking about. They don’t do the other stuff that creates the culture in which this can be held. They don’t see the importance. You’re changing that. And also people are led by their ego, their own talking points, rather than being in service to a greater conversation and a greater system called team, for example.

And so just, you know, calling out and acknowledging that not everybody has the inputs that help create the success that we’re talking about in spending the energy and time to intentionally designing these curated moments, which delivers such huge ROI, that allow for accountability and empowerment if for no other reason, reason than it has the cultural context of being shared and co-created. You’re nodding your head a lot. Hey?

Jason: Yeah. And I would argue that a lot of people also see facilitation as a skill and it is a skill, but it’s a skill you practice much like yoga or anything else that you practice. So I think in most of my work, I want to convince people at least to initiate a practice of hosting and facilitation, not just saying, you’re going to receive this training.

You’re going to be good to go. You can spend weeks in facilitation training. Doesn’t matter what, you know, what community of practice that you get into. You need to become a lifelong learner of facilitating good conversation.

Saralyn: Yeah, because we’re always in conversation. It’s conversation that will create the innovation, the creativity, the problem solving, the leaning into relationship, the conflict resolutions. So talk me through, um, is this why you and the team have decided to create a course specifically on meaningful meetings? Give me the context there a little bit.

Jason: Yeah. So, um, for us meetings have been a learning experience. We’ve had these moments of like, wait a minute, are we wasting our time together? And in some cases we were, so throughout the last two years, we’ve had these moments of like, yeah, that point could have been an email or could have been a slack message.

And then there have been other moments where people on the sidelines having great conversation where they say, oh, wait, we should bring this great question or this really deep conversation to the whole team. So there’s a two way thing. So I hear people say this meeting could have been an email.

And my answer to that says, yeah, absolutely. I’ve been in that, in those situations a lot, but the other way works too. This email could have been a great conversation. So that’s kind of our our like tagline is this could have been a great conversation. Why doesn’t it become a great conversation? Because we don’t spend time designing process for good conversation.

We don’t give ourselves the time to do it. We run through an agenda in two hours. We have so many things going on that we just like skim the surface of so many great conversations, just for people to be informed on what’s going on. And then we’re not protecting time and space to have these deeper conversations because we kind of feel the need of it.

We kind of like, oh, this, you know, I feel like we didn’t get into the depth of our conversation, which happens so, so much. You know,we could have spent an hour just talking about this, but we need to move on because we have a lot of items on the agenda.

Saralyn: Yeah.

Jason: So the meetings at O Strategies look like this: Monday morning, from 10 to noon, we spend 120 minutes sharing time and space.

So everyone contributes points to the agenda. It’s an agile agenda, that’s categorized in three sections points of information. And when I say points of information, not information that I could email people. I mean like critical information. I want everyone to hear this.

Feedback items, I’ve been working on something. I need your help. I’d like your feedback on something. So I want to share something, an artifact or a project, a prototype, a question that I have, and I want feedback on this. Or flat-out co-creation and the more that you go into those categories, co-creation really needs intentional facilitation, you know, facilitated conversation.

So let’s brainstorm on this, let’s co-create something for a client or a collaborator or a partner. I want to maximize the collective intelligence in the room, like, if you’re a business owner, a whole staff meeting, that’s a lot of money. Like there’s a business cost to having a whole team meeting. If all those human hours were directed towards client work, that that would have a value, like a dollar value. So I might as well maximize the time. And like, for, for some organizations that means like, 2000, maybe $10,000, like a two hour meeting has, you know, monetary value for the company. So you might as well make the best of it.

It needs to be highly strategic and you need to spend the time to make it worthwhile.

Saralyn: Yes.

And then as a business owner, I need to let go of my, my position of power. I need to let go of my reflex to guide the meeting and to host it because I’m a facilitator at heart. That’s what I do most of, you know, most of the time I facilitate conversation for, for clients, for organizations, I need to let that go in a team meeting.

Jason: So you talked about the ego.

earlier. You need to let go of that. So as a leader, in a more traditional sense, if you’re in a more structured company or, you know, you have your, like high-level executive leadership, you need to let go of this space and let your people work together. And…

Saralyn: But I can’t, I need to control it. Jason. I can’t, I can’t let go. I’ve got to control and I’ve got to, I’ve got a micromanage, but I don’t micromanage.

How do you respond to that?

Jason: We do, but you do, you do. And, initiating a practice of facilitation is first hosting yourself. We learned this through the art of hosting community, the four-fold practice. Hosting ourselves first, taking care of our spirit, our body, to be able to host others. But even more importantly is learning to be hosted by others.

So letting go of that reflex of always keeping control and just be fully present and contribute your brain, your heart, your spirit to the conversation and let other people hold you in conversation. Which for most of us, I mean, you facilitate conversations, I facilitate conversations it’s hard to let yourself be hosted, let yourself be coached by others. Let yourself be held in deep conversation by others. That’s probably the hardest part.

Jason: So our hope is that through this online course, we want it to be super accessible, you know, a few hours of content, quote, unquote content, but then after initiating practice in your organization, in your team, wherever you work or wherever you spend most of your, you know, your professional day, of initiating these little tools and tips and tricks and practices, and just initiating practice of facilitating good conversation during your meetings and letting go of this meeting needs to be productive or operational.

Our meetings do not need to be more operational. We’ve over organized and complicated meetings. We need to have more connected human conversations during our meetings.

Saralyn: Alright, everybody, our conversation with Jason was sure to be rich. And man, did it ever turn out to be super rich. So what we’ve done is we’ve split that podcast and that conversation into two parts. So join us for the next episode where we’ll explore four day workweeks, Jason and O Strategies are playing with and experimenting what does a four day work week actually look like? Stay in the practice.