Seth’s Blog: Three kinds of meetings

Three kinds of meetings by Seth Godin

Meetings are marketing in real time with real people. (A conference is not a meeting. A conference is a chance for a circle of people to interact).

There are only three kinds of classic meetings:

1. Information. This is a meeting where attendees are informed about what is happening (with or without their blessing). While there may be a facade of conversation, it’s primarily designed to inform.

2. Discussion. This is a meeting where the leader actually wants feedback or direction or connections. You can use this meeting to come up with an action plan, or develop a new idea, for example.

3. Permission. This is a meeting where the other side is supposed to say yes but has the power to say no.

PLEASE don’t confuse them. Confused meeting types are the number one source of meeting ennui. One source of confusion is that a meeting starts as one sort of meeting and then magically morphs into another kind. The reason this is frightening is that one side or the other might not realize that’s actually occurring. If it does, stop and say, “Thanks for the discussion. Let me state what we’ve just agreed on and then we can go ahead and approve it, okay?”

While I’m at it, let me remind you that there are two kinds of questions.

1. Questions designed to honestly elicit more information.

2. Questions designed to demonstrate how much you know or your position on an issue and to put the answerer on the defensive.

There’s room for both types of questions, particularly in a team preparing for a presentation or a pitch. Again, don’t confuse them. I like to be sure that there’s time for the first type, then, once everyone acknowledges that they know what’s on the table, open it up for the second, more debate-oriented type of question.

via Seth’s Blog: Three kinds of meetings.

TR Stimson’s Comments:

I like to read Seth Godin and have added him to my RSS feed so I can easily see his daily updates. I thought that this particular entry would be not make it to my contemplation list. But things work in the back of my mind and I soon realized that Seth falls short on this one. So, I want to add one more item to his list and explain why I think it’s not covered by his categorization.

4. Planning. This is a meeting where the leader wants the participants to share information and then reconcile the ensuing conflicts and devise next steps. The input is the planning to date in the various information silos related to a project. The output is Action Items that will allow the silos to progress towards shared goals as opposed to the inevitable drift apart if planning goes on unchecked.

This is a combination of discussion and permission meetings, but the need and outcome is fundamentally different. Seth’s three meetings all contain a Leader (with capital L) for whom the meeting satisfies some need to know. In a plannng meeting, the event is run by a facilitator – guiding and refereeing the discussion to keep it on track and goal-focused. This may or may not be a Leader but it is always a vested party with the ability to remove obstacles to progress.

It is just as important that a Planning meeting not digress into any of the other three, but it is likely that unresolved conflicts from planning will necessitate one of the other three kinds of meetings. So meet if you must, just stay on topic for everyone’s sake.