The ruling paradigm on meetings is that they should be scheduled for one hour. If a manager sends a note to her administrative assistant to schedule a meeting sometime this week, he will instinctively assume the duration is one hour.

We come by this paradigm through convention, and it is an opportunity to challenge the status quo. Suppose the administration person scheduled the meeting for 50 minutes. What would be the outcome? In most organizations it would mean that everyone invited to the meeting saved at least 10 minutes. As a side benefit, the 50 minutes spent at the meeting would be far more productive because the standard paradigm has been broken.

There are numerous things that can be done to improve the time utilization at meetings, Here are seven of my favorite techniques;

Seven Antidotes:

1.  Suggest that the person leading the meeting be extremely mindful of the duration. After all, what we have at work is our time.
2.  Shock people into a realization of what is actually happening: Set up the meeting to start at 2:17 pm and end at 2:49 pm. That would be a 33 minute meeting (if my math is correct).
3. Put a premium on how the time is spent in meetings. Make sure the agenda is specific as to how much time will be devoted to each topic and stick to that schedule. Have a PITA assigned to keep things on track (PITA stands for Pain in the rear).
4. Acknowledge the need for important side issues, but do not let them derail the meeting. Handle them efficiently or find another venue to deal with them.
5. Start and end each meeting on time. Become known as a stickler for this. You can be courteous and bring stragglers up to speed on what has already been accomplished, but you are really enabling them to continue the practice. It is not polite to others to arrive late for meetings. It is also not polite to attendees for the leader to extend beyond the advertised finish time.
6. Have a set of expected behaviors for your meetings and post them. Hold each other accountable for abiding by these rules. Here is a favorite rule of mine. It is expected that when someone feels we are spinning our wheels or not making the best use of time, he or she will give the “time out” signal to the person running the meeting (finger tips of one hand touching the palm of the other hand). Nobody will be punished in any way for making this sign. It simply calls the question as to whether we are spending our time wisely right now.
7. Have some time set aside in each meeting to reinforce good behavior and feel good about things that are going well. If we spend 100% of our time dealing with the bad stuff that needs to be fixed, we will never smell the roses.

All these rules are common sense. It is too bad they are not common practice, because they help preserve our most critical resource: our time.

This is a great place to test your leadership capability. Outstanding leaders are expert at working the interface between levels. They clarify disconnects upward and interpret decisions downward. They recognize that there is always some tension between the layers, but find ways to keep things under control. Do this consistently and well and you will be among the elite leaders.

5 Tips to help you improve the interface between levels:

• Thoroughly understand the point of view of layers below you. Listen to input and test for understanding. Be careful to not let the views of the vocal few characterize the beliefs of the silent majority.

• Recognize that many of the desires of levels below you are human nature. What group would not want more pay, more personal freedom, more recognition, more time off, etc. Don’t discount these needs, but realize they are universal. Try to find more specific suggestions, and be alert for ideas that can be done without major investment. Often it’s the little things that can make a big difference to people.

• Interpreting these needs upward is also an art. Don’t be a whiner for your team. Clarify their needs accurately and objectively.

• Internalize the impact of management actions while they are being developed. Make sure top management knows how things will be perceived at lower levels before actions are announced. Avoid sounding negative in these discussions by offering possible alternative decisions or more creative ways of describing them. Ask questions instead of making blunt statements. For example, instead of saying, “They will interpret this as another attempt by management to line their own pockets,” you might offer, “Would it be better received if we coupled this announcement with the employee bonus plan?”

• Avoid being a “Chicken Little” in discussions with upper management. Ultimately, you need to support and sell these decisions downward, so work to influence your superiors. Do this from a viewpoint of “what is best for the business,” rather than “how to keep the masses from revolting.” Senior managers want to do what is best for the organization. They sometimes need help understanding the impact of poor decisions on their own destiny. You can be the voice of reason, but only if you maintain credibility and perspective.

Every day when people go to work in organizations, they give effort to further the cause of the group. That is about as much as we can say for the general population. The amount of effort as a percentage of what is available varies greatly from one person to another and from one organization to another. The effort for one particular person also varies significantly from one point in time to another.

Each of us has a vast storehouse of “discretionary” effort that we either give or withhold on a daily basis. Let’s examine the factors that govern why some people freely choose to give a lot more of their discretionary effort to their organization while others, equally qualified, habitually hold back most of their potential.

Of course, it has to do with motivation. On any given day, some of are motivated to go above and beyond the requirements and others are turned off. Can you imagine the power if there was a way to have most people in the organization fully engaged in the work most of the time? The result would be a huge productivity improvement for any organization.

The interesting thing to me is that the formula for giving maximum discretionary effort is different for each of us. No two people are completely alike, although there are many things that universally turn people off, the formula for turning an individual on is personal. What follows is a method to discover your key to maximum discretionary effort.

First, visualize a time in your life when you performed at a peak level for an extended period of time of your own free will. Remember the circumstances by which you compelled yourself to put forth incredible effort, often with little rest or breaks. Try to identify what it was in that set of circumstances that enabled you to perform at that level. Here are some examples of what people have thought of for this exercise:

• I had to do it because it needed to be done, and I was the only one that could do it.
• It was a huge challenge; I was told it was impossible.
• I felt empowered; finally I was cut loose to do it my way.
• It was just important for me to get this done.
• I was aspiring to prove something to myself.
• I had to show them what I was made of.
• It was do or die, so I did.
• My team believed in my, so I had to do it.
• I understood the goal and it was important to me.

Keep working at it until you have identified the true essence of what enabled you to perform at that level. Write it down in one single sentence.

The sentence you wrote will be your personal specification for giving your maximum discretionary effort. Many times in life you can configure work to align with this kind of statement. When you do, you will instinctively be performing with at least twice the productivity of your usual pace.

The beauty of this simple exercise comes when you do it as a group activity. I recall one meeting where I had a corporate Vice President with his whole team, and we did this exercise. It turns out the VP was most energized when he had to parachute into the jungle with a knife between his teeth. His subordinates were turned on when they were trusted and empowered to get things done in their own way. The ensuing discussion revealed why there had been so much tension in the organization. Subsequent retraining of the VP led to much higher performance among his direct reports.

You can do this experiment at any level in the organization. Not only will it help you understand yourself better, it will also give you new insight into how to lead your employees.

Assuming best intent is a simple concept that can save a lot of grief and acrimony in any organization. Human beings have a curious way of jumping to conclusions when something done by another person does not track with expectations. We jump to assign blame and think of all the evil things that might be behind the action. In doing so, we fail to take into account a myriad of alternate scenarios that might explain the paradox as being something more benign. We have all experienced this phenomenon, and there is a simple antidote. Assume the best intent rather than the worst.

A place to view this phenomenon most easily is in e-mail communication. One person will dash off a note and leave out a critical part of the background for an action. The person reading the note will say to himself, “Ed is clueless. He obviously is out to try to embarrass me with these statements. I don’t care if he is having a bad day or not, he has no business making these statements without getting his facts straight.” So, what started out as an innocent note from Ed, turns into the fuel for an e-grenade battle. The response coming back to Ed assumes the worst intent, so it is far off base in Ed’s mind. Ed writes back a blistering note, and we are off to the races.

Several days later, after numerous notes and escalating distribution lists some manager steps in and asks these two feuding juveniles to stop the food fight. All of this acrimony and conflict could have been avoided if the recipient of Ed’s first note assumed the best intent rather than the worst.

He would have gone over to Ed’s desk and said, “Your note was confusing to me. I am not sure I follow how you concluded there was no information coming out of my group.” Then Ed could have explained how that was not his message at all, the words just did not convey what he was trying to say. This gives Ed the chance to write a simple note of apology and clarification, which he is happy to do because he was approached in an adult manner.

This technique is helpful for all forms of communication, not just the online environment. If we teach people to assume the best intent whenever there is a disconnect, it prevents people from going off on each other inappropriately. This creates a significant reduction in conflict, and since conflict often gets amplified in the pressure cooker of the work environment, this little remedy can save a lot of hurtful turmoil.

I am a big fan of documenting expected behaviors for a team. Reasons: 1) expectations are clearly stated, which improves performance and 2) it is easier to call out members who are not abiding by the rules.

Every team should spend time upfront to construct and document rules of behavior and engagement. Here is an example set of rules one of my teams came up with that helped us perform well over several years.

• When in conflict we will try to see the situation from the other’s perspective
• We will not leave our meetings with “silent nos”
• We will listen to each other but not beat dead horses (80/20 rule)
• We will build an environment of trust
• We will work together on a finite number of common goals
• We will be more inclined to ask for and offer help

The team that created this set of rules was a high performing group of mature managers.
In many offices and teams, there is an additional rule that would be most helpful. That is

• We will try to remember we are all adults and act that way most of the time.

It seems so simple, yet all of us have witnessed adults acting like children at work. If you have not seen this, check your pulse – you may be dead! The problem is that when we get into petty squabbles, the real issues are deeper than the symptoms that are driving us nuts on the surface. So those childlike behaviors come out all over the office.

Operating in close quarters, human beings have a remarkable talent for driving each other crazy. This problem is ubiquitous, no demographic is exempt from this kind of bad behavior. You can find petty squabbles and childish actions on the part of lawyers, doctors, construction workers, bellhops, auto mechanics, ballet dancers, rock bands, people on assembly lines, farmers, office workers, top managers, etc..

If you observe a typical work environment for just a couple days, you will see ample evidence of all the aberrant behaviors grade school teachers witness every day in the class room and on the playground. Here are a few examples you will quickly recognize.

Being selfish – Kids like to hog the remote control. Well, so do adults (and don’t deny it). At work, the idea is to cooperate and give as much or more than you get, but since equity is in the eye of the beholder most people have the perpetual feeling they are doing more than their fair share. They put up with it for a while, but eventually the perceived inequity flares beyond the tolerance limit and fights erupt.

Whining – Oh boy, is that ever common in the working world. You would think some people are living in a prison camp the way they moan and cry about everything that is not up to their personal liking. We had a sign in one of my work areas that had a big red circle with a line through it and the word “Whining” in the center. The “no whining” symbol was actually useful in many cases. When people are called for whining, they tend to do less of it. Some offices have Olympic quality whiners. They need to be called on it.

Shouting or grandstanding – Sometimes the level of yelling in the workplace is amazing. In school, bullies find out that most kids do not have the courage to stand up to them when they bluster. It is a great trick to be able to out shout the competition and often get your way. Supervisors in many organizations have a habit of using a tone of voice that people interpret as yelling. I often find that word to be hard to define because it really is in the eye of the beholder. Sometimes a supervisor will be accused of yelling at an employee when he has not raised his voice at all. So, “yelling” does not always mean shouting, but it can mean that. I know one supervisor who really does yell at people – loudly. This kind of approach has no place in the working world, in my opinion, but there is still some debate.

There was an article in the Harvard Business Review indicating that for large scale change or innovation initiatives, a healthy dose of dissent is necessary. For example, it is said that Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer were famous for yelling at people. In my book on Trust, I share a cute story about Jack Welch. “One former GE executive who had been dressed down by Welch for daring to question his boss, admitted to the moderator of an Aspen Institute Seminar that Welch’s furious tirade ‘caused me to soil my pants.’ ” I think most of us would agree the bully approach is most often working at cross purposes to the organization’s best interest. Short term it may get compliance, but it destroys motivation.

Hitting – I guess this is not so often seen in the working world, but I have actually witnessed it in rare situations. Usually the hitting is with words rather than fists, but sometimes cat fights do erupt that involve pushing and shoving or an occasional slap in the face. Sometimes there is a type of sexual harassment that goes along with the physical contact sports being played by the children at work.

Sulking – This is so common that you will recognize it immediately. Watch for it whenever someone is called out for another one of the child like behaviors. The person will sulk and mope about for days because his or her ego has been bruised. This childlike behavior occurs because people just do not know what else to do, so they hang their head and sigh deeply that the world is so unfair.

Passive Aggression – We see this all the time when people do not feel motivated to do their work. They will go into a “Flight Controller Slowdown” and do only exactly what they are told to do. Then they will sit and wait for more instructions. It is a way to get even for the sins done unto them by the big bad bosses. Kids do this to try to get out of doing their homework or eating their vegetables. Adults practice it to punish those in control. It is exactly the same driving force.

Getting even- Back stabbing or in some way paying back an individual or group for some perceived wrong doing only serves to escalate the hostility. The easiest way to witness this is in the e-mail grenades that go back and forth in every office in the world. Each time a note comes from the other person, the situation becomes graver and additional top brass are copied on the note until the final string becomes really laughable. It is the exact equivalent of a food fight in the Junior High School cafeteria. It gets messy very fast. The antidote is so simple. Don’t take the bait!

There are probably dozens of other childlike behaviors you can witness every day in the working world. I think having a rule that indicates we are going to try to avoid this kind of thing is a good defense that can work. There needs to be a highly visible effort to act like adults and not resort to immature tactics to get our way. When you set that expectation as a leader, it flushes out the individuals who like to practice these techniques and they are far less disruptive. Soon the embarrassment of the whole thing forces the perpetrators to grow up and join the adult working world. Try it, and see if it helps improve things in your place of work.

In today’s environment, most leaders are over-committed, which can lead to mistakes and omissions. Following up on commitments is essential, but often neglected by busy leaders. It is so easy to say to someone, “I’ll get back to you on this,” and then forget it in the crunch of critical work. You may rationalize and say, “Well, it wasn’t really a promise and they know how busy I am. This is only a minor issue anyway.” That kind of thinking will harpoon your trust-building efforts. If building trust is all about consistency, nothing is more basic than doing what you say.

Whenever you make a commitment, no matter how small, make sure you do it.

Tips on following up effectively:

• When you promise something, put a time frame on it. Rather than “I’ll get back to you,” say “I’ll get back to you on this by the end of tomorrow. If I get derailed and you don’t hear from me by then, please give me a call.” The person knows you really do intend to answer their question.

• Keep an action item list. Whatever form, whether a 3″x5″ card in your pocket or a handheld computer, get the item written down along with a time frame to answer. It helps to write it in front of the person with the concern. You can say, “Just a second – let me jot that down so I don’t forget to get back to you.” The person feels honored that you are considering the issue strongly enough to document it and will tell everyone about the exchange during the next break.

• If you delegate the issue to another person for follow-up, make sure they preface their response with, “Bob asked me to get back to you on this question.” Also, make sure your agent confirms with you when it is done. Cross it off your list when your agent tells you it is closed, not when you delegate it to him. In some cases, you should circle back to the person with a note or call saying, “I asked Mike to get back to you on your concern about the slippery floors. Did you hear from him and was his response satisfactory?” Doing that gives you the opportunity to jack up any agents that shirk their duty. In a staff meeting you can say something like, “I have been following up when I ask some of you to get back to employees on their concerns. Some of them have complained that their concern is downplayed. When I ask you to act as my agent, I expect you will keep working on it until the situation is resolved satisfactorily to the employee. If you can’t resolve their concern, get back to me. Don’t let it drop.”

• Use handwritten notes to people. A brief note, along with a “thank you for bringing this up,” will be prized by the individual and shared in the break room. Be careful to use a tangible note only when the response is positive and difficult to misinterpret. Otherwise, you may find your note tacked to the break room bulletin board next to a Dilbert cartoon. For difficult issues, it is always better to deal face-to-face.

Closure on action items is not confined to personal discussions. The same logic holds when you promise something to a group. If you say, “I will make a decision on overtime by noon,” make sure they hear from you on that schedule. It is important to state a deadline or things tend to stretch out. You may think a week to unveil a new organization is reasonable, but for some people it feels like, “he promised to do something about that but never got back to us.”

The best approach is to set a personal expectation that you will always be prompt and helpful with getting back to people. Think of it as a personal trademark that will set you apart from most other leaders. This is not to say that you need to resolve every issue in the original expected time frame. That would be impossible. Just do not leave people hanging wondering why you are not addressing their concern. It is a common courtesy that most leaders neglect.