“Oh, God, not another meeting”
We’ve all heard it, most of us have said it. And the truth is, meetings can be unproductive, tedious, and utterly wasteful.
But the takeaway isn’t that meetings are bad. The takeaway is that bad meetings are bad. Good meetings are not automatically bad. In fact, good meetings can be good. Very good. Especially for emergency managers.
If you ever find yourself sitting across from your new boss, and you hear a comment like, “I don’t believe in meetings,” the first thing you should do when you get back to your office is update your resume’ and type out a quick letter of resignation. Don’t put a date on yet, but keep it where you can find it in a hurry.
Why? Because if your boss says he or she doesn’t believe in meetings, what they’re really saying is, “I don’t believe in sharing information, especially with you. Information is power, and there is not enough for both of us. I don’t want you to know what I am thinking, what my priorities are, or what I might do tomorrow and I don’t especially care what you think.”
If your boss won’t share information, you can be certain of one thing: he or she is setting you up to fail. Eventually something will go bad and you are going to end up on Front Street holding the bag.
In emergency management, law enforcement, and the military I have worked for many types of leaders: Good leaders, bad leaders, indifferent leaders, inspirational leaders, and leaders who can’t spell ‘leadership.’ There are lots of things that make a good leader, but one trait is always present. Good leaders share information. Bad leaders don’t. I am not sure which way the causation arrow points: maybe sharing information makes you a good leader, or maybe being a good leader makes you share information. Either way, the connection is clear.
Emergency managers should recognize this intuitively, as the entire emergency management enterprise is based on collaboration and cooperation – both of which require unconstrained information sharing. Good emergency managers are out and about, listening and learning. There’s not time enough in the day to do everything, and those plans really need to be updated, but you are not learning anything sitting in your office all day. And no one else is learning anything, either.
As an emergency management leader, your job is to share information. And not just with your staff, but with every organization, agency, community group, and resident of your community. Meetings can be a very effective tool for sharing information, explaining your priorities, developing relationships, understanding other points of view, and getting your message out.
If you are not sharing information regularly with the people and organizations that you are relying on – either through meetings, newsletters, e-mail updates, or other means – you are undercutting your own effectiveness as an emergency manager.
The best leaders I worked for conducted regular staff meetings to share information, discuss the future, and receive updates on ongoing projects. As a staff officer, I learned how my bosses think, what they expected, what their priorities were, and what our unit’s goals were in these morning meetings. I also kept abreast of the work my colleagues were doing, what problems they were having, and how they were resolving them. Every morning update or staff meeting was a mini-AAR, overflowing with lessons learned.
Of course, meetings need to be properly conducted to have lasting value. There are lots of articles and webinars about how to conduct effective meetings, and a good leader will learn how to do so.
At a bare minimum each meeting should have an agenda, a specified deliverable, someone in charge to keep the meeting on track, a time limit, and should only include people who have a reason to be there.
Despite what you might have heard, good meetings certainly have a place in the professional emergency manager’s toolbox.
January 20, 2019