People and Projects Podcast: Project Management Podcast · Andy Kaufman, PMP, PMI-ACP

PPP 503 | How to Facilitate Meetings That Actually Lead to Decisions, with Evan Unger

·43 min·2 clips

Evan Unger's 'simultaneous chat': type your answer but don't hit enter until everyone does.

1. People and Projects Podcast episode 503 covers how project leaders can facilitate meetings that end in decisions, using Evan Unger's POPR model and a flight metaphor of takeoff, cruise and landing. 2. Host Andy interviews Evan Unger, who has spent more than 30 years training leaders in collaborative decision-making and began as Director of Change, Leadership, and Development at Merck after finishing business school in 1989. 3. Unger's thesis is that meetings fail at takeoff, because leaders skip the thinking about why the group is meeting and what it must get done, and that confusion passes straight to the group. 4. He says he has asked clients about 6,000 times how effective their meetings are on a scale of 0 to 100%, and the answer is often below 60%. 5. The POPR model asks five questions (purpose, objectives, process, roles, agreements), and Unger separates a task force's purpose of improving morale from a kickoff objective of identifying root causes. 6. On authority, he describes a continuum from leader-as-expert to neutral process expert, advises working from neutral by asking questions, and explains how to manage the 'HiPPO' (highest paid person's opinion), for example by having senior people open a meeting and return later. 7. For dominant and quiet voices, he recommends round-robin turns, timers and time-keeper roles in a room, and a 'simultaneous chat' online in which people type without pressing enter until a signal, with a raised-hand emoji as a cue. 8. On landing, he says 'time is fuel' and that meetings should close the parking lot, revisit objectives, name who does what by whom, and run a process check, noting that AI note-takers still require the group to confirm what was decided. 9. He describes using ChatGPT to prepare for contentious meetings, coach around Myers-Briggs or DISC profiles, and decode unfamiliar acronyms, while expecting consulting firms like McKinsey and Bain to shrink within five years. 10. Project managers, facilitators and team leaders who run high-stakes meetings will get the most from it.

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