As I was preparing for this talk, I was wondering the same thing myself as I do not consider myself to be an expert in thought leadership!  Fortunately, I have a keen interest in personal thought leadership and I have facilitated several strategic planning sessions over the last several years where “thought leadership” became a strategic initiative to attract new customers.  To prepare for this speech, I married my personal interest to my experience and viola!  I created a one-hour presentation and slideshow – which was very well received; many executives listed the topic as their primary “take-away”.   High praise indeed.

Yes, the content was valuable.  I shared some insights and a blueprint to take action in an area that many of the executives had not been exposed to.

Yes, I made it very engaging and interactive.  After all, I wrote the book, Boring to Bravo: Proven Presentation Techniques to Engage, Involve, and Inspire Your Audiences to Action.  With a title like that, I have a reputation to live up to!

What really grabbed their attention was the real-life examples from companies that were represented in the room.  As I was explaining key components to a thought leadership strategy, I had copied and pasted an example from a company webpage into the slideshow.  They could SEE themselves  as content curators and thought leaders.  Often times, speakers cite the big players with established case studies (Starbucks, Fedex etc.)  Why not use our own audience’s wisdom?  Sure, it took a bit of work on my part to 1) Get a list of participants and company names; 2) Research the companies and 3) Select a visual that could capture the point.

What do you do to bring in the wisdom of the audience into your presentation?

The conference curator, Chris Williams started JSConf four years ago and decided to throw out all the things he hated about conferences.  He built JSConf centered around 15 and 30 minute presentations about leading edge technologies, best practices, and cool stuff the JS community needs to know.

The content is awesome, the location is hot, and the beer keeps flowing – so what’s not to love about JSConf?  In fact, it has been soooo successful, the conference has been replicated in Europe and is going “down under” in Australia later on this year!

Imagine this: back to back powerpoint presentations about coding…people flowing in and out of the two ballrooms, or hanging out in the lobby hacking their new Boot to Gecko cell phones, happily donated by the folks at Mozilla.  (Why not tap into the brilliance and influence of the JS community to help build the open source infrastructure and apps that people will use? Makes perfect sense to me!)

The presentations that received a standing ovation (there were three standing O’s!) moved well beyond lecture mode.  While each had different styles, they all used relevant stories to illustrate their points, added a little levity and created a connection with the audience.

Visuals are a big part of JSConf with each presenter bringing their laptop to the lectern, plugging it in and starting their presentation.  The screen is in the center of the room with the lectern positioned downstage right, so most of the presenters were confined to talking to the left side of the room!  You know how this drives me crazy…..the screen should be stage right with the presenter able to use the entire riser to connect with the audience.  However, I understand WHY the screen is in the center of the stage.  Have you ever tried to read itty bitty code on a large screen?  Dual screens might have solved this problem…but I digress…..

In keeping with the idea of being on the leading edge, Chris decided to have me speak in the afternoon of the second day.  Talk about doing something different!  For a day and a half, the audience had been bombarded with Powerpoint – and I walked on stage and the screen was (egads!) dark.  Although I was competing with the opening of the beer keg and the lack of a bathroom break for two hours, we had about 100 people engaged in a mainstage conversation – a large group conversation about how we can change the world and build up the JS community.

I also projected the twitterstream and asked the audience to comment via twitter as well.  Here are the top ten comments on what they had to say:

1. Respect the doing, no matter the doer.
2. Be more inclusive.  Don’t discriminate.  Do not hate on people who don’t share your faith or convictions (or lack of it)
3. Teach kids at a much younger age.
4. Mentor other developers, kids, women and other people you hang out with.  Help the noobs (beginners) in jquery.
5. Hack for social good with random hacks of kindness – e.g. Python users group weekend workshops
6. Contribute to the jquery learning site and MDN instead of duplicating fundamentals!
7. Be nice to each other.  Have civil discussion/debate/healthy discourse.  Say what’s wrong and why you won’t use it.  Don’t flame, troll or attack the person.
8. Be positive.  Don’t be negative.  If you dislike something, don’t bash it or be negative in your response.
9. Be constructive in your offer of criticism.  Remind them to come from a place of positivity.  Redirect them toward the positive and/or reframe the conversation into something positive.
10. To make sure your feedback is heard, give feedback one on one.  If you can, pick up the phone or send a personal message.

Perhaps this list can serve as a community credo – building up the JS community to truly change the world!

Sounds like a great plan, right?  Wrong.  Bob is headed for a marginally successful meeting.  If he took a bit of time to avoid these ten common mistakes executives make, he could achieve extraordinary results with a high degree of commitment to the resulting plan, course of action, or major decision.

Let’s review these common mistakes and what you can do to avoid them at your next off-site retreat:

Mistake 1.  Create a Topical Agenda

Most CEOs like Bob have a general idea of what they want to cover and describe it to the EA, who then puts together a “topical agenda.”  Whoa!  So what’s the mistake?  We all know that having a clear, concise agenda is the key to more effective meetings.  True, having a topical agenda is better than none, but it’s not going to get you the clear, definitive results you and your team are striving for.

Instead, create a results-oriented agenda with clear objectives and deliverables.  For example, you can talk about “increasing sales” or you can create a “plan to increase sales 10% in six months.”  Huge difference in the focus of the conversation.

Mistake 2.  Ratify Your Decision

If you have already made up your mind on the course, direction, outcomes, and plans, don’t ask the team what they think.  What happens if they don’t agree with you?  Are you willing to change your mind?

If the answer is still no, don’t ask the team to simply ratify your decision.  Be transparent by informing the group of your decision.  Share the logic and reasons for making that specific decision, what your concerns are, and then ask for their help in implementing it.

Mistake 3.  Invite Everyone

It is easy to bring in the entire cast of characters – absolutely everyone who touches the various topics on the agenda.  It is much harder to strike the right balance of people.  Each person you invite costs the company – in wages, opportunity costs, and increased meeting complexity.  While the optimal group size is between 6-13 attendees, executives tend to invite a far greater number “just in case.”

Who absolutely needs to be in the room for the entire meeting?  It is probably a core group – your direct reports, people you consider to be your “leadership team,” and other key stakeholders critical to the meeting objectives.  Everyone else can be put on “standby” to dial or video in remotely.  If you just need them there for a portion of the meeting, coordinate the time frames so they arrive just in time to participate.

Mistake 4.  Pick a Bad Day

The date(s) might work for you, but your staff may be closing out the books or frantically trying to meet a deadline. Mondays, Fridays, and holidays are lousy because people are either coming back from or looking forward to the weekend.

It’s tough to find a date that works for everyone, but at least try.  For example, you can accommodate your team by starting with lunch on Monday or leaving at lunch on Friday.

Mistake 5.  Meet On Site or a Poor Site

 For important, high stakes meetings where you need to leverage the creativity of the group, deepen the team’s relationships, and achieve concrete deliverables, don’t stay in the office or hold the meeting in your facility.

The off-site retreat is an opportunity to be laser focused on the most important aspects of your company – to work “on” vs. “in” your business.  By going off-site, you are sending a strong signal to cut the ties from day-to-day activities and focus on the big picture.

I continue to be amazed at how much the ambiance of the room contributes (or detracts) from the team’s efficiency, productivity, and creativity.  When selecting a venue, make sure the room is conducive to great conversation.  It should have a few windows (no mirrors, please!) and a place to step outside to see nature and breathe the fresh air.  You may also want to check with the venue as to what other events or company meetings are scheduled at the same time.  I was facilitating an event at a hotel with a church revival being held in the next room.  Loud and joyous singing and clapping kept erupting through the thin wall separating our rooms.  It was hard to focus for those few hours!

Mistake 6.  Talk At the Team

 With such a small group, the point of an off-site retreat is to have meaningful conversations where everyone participates and no one dominates.  This includes the chief executive and guest speakers who kick off the event.  If you are going to bring in a guest speaker, make sure the speaker is engaging and relevant.  This person sets the tone for the entire event, so you want it to be inspiring, uplifting, and meaningful – the fewer slides (if any) the better, especially for the kick-off speaker,

Unfortunately, you don’t have time to bring your people up to speed and then have a conversation.  Send out the PowerPoint slides, spreadsheets, and other stultifying documents ahead of time.  Make it clear that you expect them to read these documents in preparation for the off-site retreat.  And when the time comes to discuss them, do NOT punt back to get everyone up to speed.  Sure, you might take a few moments to highlight the key points, but then move immediately into discussion.  A word of caution:  If your audience is used to being spoon-fed information, it might take a few meetings for them to get the message that they need to transform themselves into participants.

Mistake 7.  Expect Too Much

One of the great benefits of having an off-site retreat is for everyone to be on the same sheet of music.  Just handing out the sheet music and expecting everyone to play brilliantly is expecting too much.  Furthermore, many executives stuff three days of work into a one-day off-site retreat and then everyone gets frustrated.

Set reasonable expectations, accounting for the fact that people need to process through and discuss the issues.  When you take the time to discuss the 5Ws and the H (why, what, who, when, where, and how), your speed of implementation increases dramatically.

Mistake 8.  Wander All Over the Map

Executive teams love to strategize, take a deep dive into the details, wander off into a rabbit trail, and crawl around in the bug dirt – all on the same topic!  In fact, you already have a good sense of what could go wrong, so why not try to prevent these problems?

Develop some simple ground rules that make the team’s expectations known to all.  My favorite is “All participate…no one dominate.”

Create a process agenda that allows the group to stay focused on the conversation at hand with the desired outcome in mind.  A good facilitator can devise a smooth process to help you stay focused and achieve your outcomes and deliverables.

Mistake 9.  Abruptly End the Meeting

Because you have crammed too much work into the amount of time allotted and wandered all over the map, you have run out of time.  The meeting needs to end, but there is still more to do.  People start packing up their belongings and you abruptly end the meeting.  Unfortunately, you did not crystallize the next steps.

Retreats are often like Chinese food – it tastes great in the moment, but leaves you feeling hungry hours later.  Conclude each topical conversation with a series of “So what? Now what?” questions.  Make sure you have clear expectations of who is going to do what and by when.  Then, if you have time (and you will because you have been following a realistic, results-oriented agenda), conclude the day with a summary of the work accomplished, along with the next steps to continue the conversation.

Mistake 10.  Appoint Action Items

As items are discussed, the CEO may direct one of the attendees to take an item for action.  There are two problems with this:

First, the CEO might be having a “sticky bun” moment where he/she is literally saying, “I want sticky buns for breakfast at the off-site retreat,” but what she really means is, “I want breakfast options – like sticky buns – at the off-site retreat.”

Second, the appointee might not be the right person and/or not too thrilled about getting that assignment!

Rather than appoint someone, clarify the action item first. Make sure the entire team understands what the task is – and then ask for a volunteer.  Even though you know who should accept this assignment, wait patiently for a volunteer.  You will have a greater probability of success if you let someone  speak up.  It becomes a public declaration not only to you, but to their peers – which is a powerful motivator.  If you are unsure of the person’s skill or ability, ask if anyone would like to assist.  (Perhaps it can be a developmental opportunity!)  Keep that “volunteer” as your point person to ensure the task gets done.

By handing off responsibility for the off-site retreat to the ever-capable EA, the executive distances him/herself from the desired outcomes and typically commits some, if not all, of these common mistakes.  Yes, your EA can handle the logistical details, but stay involved in the development of the agenda, selection of site, presenters and facilitator, as well as the process flow of the meeting.  You will achieve the desired results with a high degree of commitment to the resulting plan, course of action, or major decision.

You can also download a printer-friendly version of this article: Top10RetreatMistakes.

What to say?  Hmmmm….  Where to start?  To get the creative juices flowing, I mapped out a “timeline” starting in 1978 when I entered the academy up to today. That’s 30 plus years!  Yikes!

I then started filling in the timeline with significant events and potential stories.  When you step back, it may look like a mess to you, but makes perfect sense to me.  From there, I selected key points and lessons learned that I wanted to share.

You can do the same type of activity with your team: Tape a few sheets of paper to the wall and create a horizontal timeline.  Determine the context for the timeline – it could be personal (like mine), organizational (for example, what was going on in the USCG), local (what was going on in a certain location like Washington DC), global (what was going on in the world), industry (what was going on within your industry or field).  Future Search, a specific model for finding common ground in organizations and communities, actually has the group look through the lens of one time line at a time (typically three layers: personal, local and global).

Give your teammates several colored markers and then let them write in what was happening.  Some just write words; others use colors, drawings and symbols – more like a mindmap.  Let them focus on one map at a time.  After a defined moment of time, bring the timelines together (stack them up one on top of the other) and note how the stories relate to the other timelines.  The conversation and observations are amazing to listen to.  You’ll hear lots of “I didn’t know that!”, “That happened to me too!” and “Look at how far we have come!”

Using one or a few timelines is an excellent teambuilding activity that allows each team member to understand that we all live on the same planet and are psychologically the same.

And isn’t that true for any goal worth achieving?  We know the ultimate destination; sometimes we can sprint and other times, we just need to focus on taking the next step toward your destination.  Before you know it……you’ll get there!

Ah, but not without discipline.  And so my mind wandered over to another good friend and NSA colleague, Rory Vaden – who just happens to be stopping in Phoenix on Monday night promoting his new book, Take the Stairs. I received an advance reader copy around the beginning of the new year. Completely apropos as I just put my 2012 plan in place. I believe I am a fairly disciplined person, but know I can do better. He has a “Focused Forty” questionnaire that will tell you precisely how disciplined you are.  My test results?  Creepily spot on.  I am disciplined in the areas of my life I am interested in, and not so much in other areas.

The premise of Rory’s book revolves around making better decisions in order to improve your self-discipline and your life.  He covers seven principles that will help you achieve success – and he is going to be speaking about this in Mesa, AZ tomorrow, Monday March 12, 2012. Perhaps I will see you there – or at my first ever public webinar on Thursday, March 15, 2012.  One of my 2012 goals was to conduct a quarterly series of FREE webinars and the first one is being held this week.  It’s called TeamSpeak: Words to Use or Lose to Inspire Better Teamwork. You can register here – and if you can’t make that day, the recording will be made available – but only for those who register!

Hope to see you in Mesa or at the webinar this week!

Start enhancing your team’s work and enhancing your credibility by joining me and communication skills expert Pamela Jett in my first public webinar next Thursday, March 15, 2012.  During this 45 minute webinar, we will share key words to choose and the words to lose when it comes to inspiring your team.

Register for the Webinar Now

During this complimentary online training for great clients and colleagues like you, you will learn:
- How a simple shift in words can create more commitment to the task at hand.
- Simple and highly effective words that boost individual and team productivity.
- What to say… when you have no idea what to say!

Plus, by registering for this webinar, you’ll have a chance to receive a free copy of Kristin’s seminal book on building high performance teams, Team Basics.

Looking forward to having you attend this fabulous webinar you won’t want to miss!

Why?  After 20 years of facilitating high level meetings, I still don’t see a huge influx of women in the boardroom.  I won’t go into why (I’ll share that for another post!), but I will share that I was proud to see our community embracing these women.  As the publisher announced the name and read a short bio, the award recipient reached into a bowl and drew out a question to be answered – and then answered it!  Most of the comments were genuine, heartfelt and superb advice for anyone (man or woman) who aspires to be a leader.  One woman actually said, “World Peace” in a nod to the Miss America Pageant!  All in all, it was a truly enjoyable evening and I will plan on attending next year.

Although…..I hate to admit it.  I was disappointed at the same time.  Each of these lovely women were in the front row and were not called up onto the main stage to answer the question.  I understand why, as one woman quipped, “Glad I didn’t have to wear a bathing suit for this!”.  However, the award recipients were standing in the dark, with a small halo of light shining from behind them from the main stage – where they should have been.

Even the keynoter, Renie Cavallari, had to artfully dance from the right to the left of the mainstage during her presentation.  Why?  Because the multimedia projector (which was on a center table) was ON the entire time!  If Renie spent any time center stage, she was illuminated with the bright red scrolling, the name of the event, and the event sponsor logos.  When I chatted with Renie later (she is also a member of NSA), she had “assumed” the audio/visual (A/V) people would have blanked the screen.

It really was no big deal.  Renie is a pro and she didn’t let this little snafu bug her one bit. Lesson learned for me is to NEVER assume.  Think through not only the content and delivery of your speech, but the little things that impact the ability of your audience to see you and hear your speech.

One of the ways I try to remember these kinds of things is to have a pre-event packing checklist.  Fellow blogger and author of Confessions of a Public Speaker, Scott Berkun has an even better one here.  Use these checklists as a guide; better yet, develop your own!

What kind of things do you have on your checklist? 

Register today for as many of these webinars as you want – they are FREE for 2012!

The FIRST one is on Thursday, March 15, 2012, and you won’t want to miss it!

TeamSpeak: Words to Use or Lose to Inspire Better Teamwork

As a team leader, your team takes a cue from you – the words you say and how you say them.  Join master facilitator, Kristin Arnold and communication skills expert Pamela Jett as they teach you the words to choose and the words to lose.

• Stop unintentionally sabotaging your leadership success with ineffective words and start enhancing teamwork by choosing the right words.
• Enhance your credibility.  Discover what to say.. when you have no idea what to say.
• Master the art of boundary statements to set limits and boundaries, without coming on too strong.

Can’t make the live presentation? Don’t worry!  You’ll receive a link to the recorded presentation free with your registration.

Looking forward to having you on the line!

Even those meetings that charge real dollars to a cost center aren’t well thought out. These meetings are typically held “off-site” – where more attention is placed on the location, the food, and the cocktail party! Although major blocks of time are allocated for specific discussions, it still falls prey to the typical meeting pitfalls.

So how much are your meetings costing you? Check out this simple way to calculate the cost of an average meeting.

Let’s use an example of a typical leadership team off-site (I’ll use some numbers that make the math easy!):

The total cost of this one-day off-site is $12,917! Be sure to take into account the costs of the work that isn’t getting done since your people are away from the workplace, as well as looking at the historical trend for your meeting effectiveness. Are all your meetings top notch? No improvement needed?

Consider this: What is the cost to you and your company if this meeting bombs? Hiring a professional facilitator starts sounding like a good investment!