This insightful video introduces a simple yet impactful approach to enhance meeting effectiveness without the need for extensive training. Termed “Rate This Meeting” (RTM), the method involves a quick evaluation at the end of each meeting, focusing on both content and interpersonal dynamics. Participants rate the usefulness of the discussed information on a scale of 1 to 5, followed by an assessment of the energy, engagement, and connection during the meeting. By encouraging open discussions based on these ratings, teams can identify areas for improvement, fostering continuous development in meeting dynamics. RTM proves to be a valuable tool for organizational growth and teamwork.
Transcript
Here is a really simple but profound way to improve your meetings without going off for training. I call it Rate This Meeting. If this is the only thing that you did, it takes about two minutes at the end of a meeting. If this is all you did, gradually over time, your group and your meetings would become more and more effective. Here’s how it works. In a meeting, there’s something that I call the waterline that exists, and above the waterline you have what you’re talking about, like the items on the agenda. This is the content. The question is how clear, useful, how important was what it was that you were talking about. And then below the waterline, as I say, there’s the people interacting with each other. What was that like? What was the energy like? What’s the level of engagement and connectivity? Are you closer as a team at the end of the meeting or not? And here’s how you do it at the end of the meeting. You say, “Okay, it’s time to rate this meeting. We call it RTM. And all of our clients. We introduce it everywhere.” And you say, “Okay, let’s start with, first of all, evaluating the content of the meeting. How useful, helpful, important was the information that you got here?”
And it’s on a scale of 1 to 5. So somebody says, “Okay, you ready? One, two, three.” And people throw their fingers out. It’s like throwing fingers. Like in the old days you could do zero, but it’s usually one, two, three, 4 or 5. Five means fabulous. Great information. Really helpful. One means total waste of time. So you throw the fingers, and then people hold them up, and you go, “Okay, great. 4-4-3-2-4-4-5, okay, great. Thank you. No judgment. Okay. Now let’s check below the waterline. What about the process? How we work together. Our energy, our engagement, our connection with each other. Ready? One, two, three, people throw out their fingers. You go, “Okay. Great. 3-2-3. Three. One. Oh, boy. We got some work to do there.” Now, at that point you say, after the fingers are thrown, you just sort of do a little bit of a summary. And then after both of them are thrown, you invite people to talk about what is it that was missing for you. Like some of you had fairly low scores on your energy. What could we do next time to make this a better meeting?
And so people say, “Oh, okay, Tom, you’re going to be facilitating the next meeting. Take this into account, this feedback that we did here for the next meeting.” Good. Okay. Great. See how that works. At the end of each meeting, you find out what was useful about the content, what was missing, or what was useful about the energy level at the bottom. And just without any training, actually, you’ll just instinctively begin to do things a little bit better. You’ll try some experiments. And pretty soon, you’re going to see your meetings getting better and better just from this 2 or 3 minutes at the end of each meeting. Now, it’s very important that the boss not be judging people and looking at low scores. Otherwise, it’s not going to happen. In fact, I privately coached the boss to sometimes come up with a low number themselves. If it’s real. Like don’t be nice to model, it’s okay to show a low score even about your own meeting. So one boss threw out a two, and everybody was shocked. And he said, “I think we could just do a better job of making the agenda more and so forth.” Everybody went, “Oh, okay, I guess it’s okay.” All right. So Rate This Meeting (RTM). Why not start with your next meeting? It will really, really help.
