2024: Year of the Open-Ended Question
It was to be the last Monday morning status meeting.
Good riddance.
Ending that meeting lifted the weight from the back of my neck.
The cumulative effect of those sloping shoulders and averted eyes around the table at these Monday rituals had gotten to me. Silence or minimal language, eyes bent toward phones and laptops. These meetings were not generating conversation or human goodwill. Just the opposite: They had started draining my optimism a couple of hours before I stepped across the threshold into the room.
Is a status meeting—in the end—just a “belief feature” for those of us pretending to be bosses? Like a phantom island was a “belief feature” put on old maps because early explorers assumed they must be there. Our status meetings were a belief feature that hinted we were in charge and cracking on.
But phantom islands were never there, just like status meeting control.
Ever.
Then Tamara said, nonchalantly, that Client XY was stuck on content ideas. She said their team was feeling dry, and they were struggling to come up with new ideas. Our entire team just happened to be up to speed on their value proposition—why people use them—so we started spitting out ideas, which changed the tone of the meeting. Postures changed: people sat up, tossing off ideas and building on other ideas just presented. There was a hint of a crackle in the air. We’d gone from deflated to inflated because we were good at locating and presenting ideas that would be workable. Generating ideas from places of passion was a very different communication event than a status meeting. We were exploring together.
What makes a meeting good?
People ask this all the time. Status updates are deadening. But so are “communication meetings,” where the one-way monologue from the boss goes on and on without the opportunity to respond or even process the information. Nearly any time monologue shows up, a less-than-optimal meeting ensues.
Could 2024 be the year we turn toward engaging our teams in organic ways, using the team’s innate languages to pull us all forward into deeper engagement? Asking questions that engage each person’s curiosity and area of passion is a call to our innate language—especially for the ENFPs on the team. Asking about how that might work out—think spreadsheets and timelines—could engage the ISTJs. But every open-ended question is also a call to ownership of the client, team, and process. Engaging in organic ways may be more effective than the old command and control methods that forced control to maximize human resource productivity.
Our Livingston Communication team responds viscerally to our ”clients’ “What ifs?” That open-ended question awakens curiosity and collects the bits of mission and purpose we’ve heard from our client meetings and read in their literature, which we repurpose into thought pieces and content that draws in customers—wherever they are in the marketing funnel.
We Create Together in Dialogue
In 1987, rhetoric instructor Karen Burke LeFevre wondered in print how inventing things might be a social act.[i] Contrary to our received wisdom and assumptions about the starving artist in the garret producing a masterpiece, LeFevre noted how much the surrounding community contributed to a brand-new work of fiction or painting.
For the manager trying to move from holding soul-deadening meetings to engaged sessions that fire on all cylinders, LeFevre made a lot of good points, but among them is the notion of creating a community of dialogue. In a work setting, that dialogue community can start with an open-ended question that allows team members to respond using their skills and passion. Over time, conversations in that community of dialogue can share insights and collect knowledge together. That shared knowledge and emotional intelligence are marks of fully engaged colleagues.
So, give up on trying to reach the “belief feature” of command and control islands that don’t exist and never existed.
Make 2024 the year where we invite our teams to dream together.
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[i] LeFevre, K. B. (1987). Invention as a social act. SIU Press.