This week, I was involved in a meeting that got a little heated, and the discussion ran on pretty long but I feel like overall it was a success. I wanted to share the behavioural pieces I noticed the more senior people in the room did that enabled conversation to continue in a focused direction and allowed people to feel like they walked away with something accomplished.

Is it helpful to go around and say examples of ___?

At one point we were trying to define this super vague idea of an "aha moment" in our platform and all of us were struggling to pin it down. We went around in circles a little bit until we were able to each say our experience of an aha moment as a customer of the platform. It caused us to zoom in for a brief moment instead of waxing philosophical for a long time.

What is the problem we are trying to solve?

At this time, the conversation had gotten pretty specific and a little off topic. Once again trying to zoom in on what we were trying to solve and give to customers gave the conversation a focus.

Lets all give our summary of the meeting.

After spinning wheels for a little bit and running over time, we decided to call it for the day but first had everyone go around and state their main take-aways. It ensured we were all on the same page and knew what to chew on for the next follow up meeting.

That’s it! I feel like these are all simple questions to think about and integrate into the next passionate discussion you have ✌️