Remember the magic shows you or a friend put on as a kid? You planned, and practiced your tricks, and thought about how to distract the audience at the right time while you pulled off the “impossible”?
Having gathered the family together, your grand entrance sets the scene and you take the stage. Displaying a multitude of tricks and jokes, you entertain and delight. You finish with an illusion and then disappear to the audience’s clapping, oohing and ahhing. Trying to pull a rabbit out of a hat whilst maintaining a cool air about you isn’t the easiest thing to do when you are eight or nine years old. But you had a plan and you executed it. The crowd loved it.
What your family never told you, was that they could see your card up your sleeve, they could see you had marked the card and the rabbit ears were clearly visible when you turned your hat to the left. However, they loved that you tried and enjoyed your show. Despite your inexperience as a magician, you had the support of your audience as you controlled the show. They went with you on the journey and smiled with you when you dropped your cards. They gave you permission to make mistakes, as you were having a go and trying your best.
Fast forward to your adult hood and you’re in the audience of a magic show in Vegas. The illusions are grand and there’s no way to tell how they are doing what they are doing, it’s mind blowing! The audience is keen to participate and be a part of the show, hands go up when volunteers are called for. From your early years as a magician you have a vague idea of what is happening behind the scenes, but it is so well done, you get caught up in the magic unfolding before you and feel yourself being swept away with the energy and excitement of the magician.
Meetings are a bit like a magic show, even your childhood magic show had the elements for success. The master chairperson or meeting leader uses a range of tricks and techniques to involve the audience and bring them along for the ride. They are able to get people to suspend their disbelief and to get involved in the process of the meeting. This might be a belief that meetings are a waste of time and that nothing can be achieved. Perhaps the meeting participants need to suspend their organisational scepticism. A good chair will evoke the same oohs and ahhs as a magician elicits as they produce an outcome which at first the group may not have believed possible. This is done with a plan and with the right tools for the job.
Like the fledgling magician, the tricks used by an outstanding meeting leader can be learned and refined with practice. Your group will be thankful that you have a plan for the meeting, that you have the stage all set and that the tools you will use will help unite and focus the group. Before you know it, you will become the master magician, the one who can achieve what others thought was impossible when more than two people get together under the banner of “a meeting”.
What tricks and tools do you have in your meeting kit bag and how do you use them to lead your meetings? How proficient are you in the magic of meetings?
Article written by Adrianne Harris, July 2016.
Adrianne Harris has often been called “the meeting queen” as she is passionate about efficient and effective meetings. Supporting and coaching meeting leaders to clarify the meeting aim and to encourage participation is her way of improving the leadership skills of our chairs and to improve the culture of meetings in organisations.
The next Meeting Leadership Workshop will be held on the 23rd of August.