Let Your Leaders Lead

I delivered a workshop last week about leading productive meetings and I learned something kind of concerning in it I was working with project managers and people fairly low in the hierarchy of a construction company and I discovered that many of the meetings that they are ostensibly responsible for they don’t get the final say in who’s going to be in those meetings and it occurred to me that that might be a symptom of them not really being in control of the meetings that they believe they are in charge of if somebody else can put themselves into a meeting or somebody else can invite someone into a meeting and the person who’s scheduling the meeting doesn’t have the final say about who’s going to be in the meeting there’s a problem there’s a book that came out about 20 years ago called traction that recommends that in every organization leadership should get responsibility the way that individuals get hats the idea is one hat can only be worn by one person so responsibility should be doled out the same way whoever is responsible for something is is the one person who can wear that hat of responsibility when a project leader is responsible for a certain aspect of a project that project leader should wear that hat 100% And if some other leader if an owner comes along and says oh hey do it this way or I’d like it to be done this way that project manager is Los a part of the hat or is being forced to share the hat with someone else and it creates problems it creates difficulty in how that meeting is going to happen so if you are a higher up in a construction firm my recommendation to you is this go with this recommendation from the traction book recognize that any leader who has the ability to schedule a meeting is in charge of that meeting they wear the hat for that meeting don’t try to take that hat away don’t try to shove another head inside that hat allow that person who’s in charge of that meeting to be in charge of who’s going to be in that meeting and if there’s any interference or potential interference from the owner or anyone on the owner’s side my recommendation is for you to give that leader that lower level leader some air cover if you have the authority to work with that owner to communicate with that owner and say listen this is how our meetings go the person who schedules them gets to control who’s going to be in them and there’s a very good reason for that the people in these meetings need to make decisions quickly and any interference any additional voices will slow things down and will get in the way of your project making the progress that it needs so as a leader with more Authority provide that air cover that your lower level leaders need provide the support that they need so that they can lead the meetings the way that they need to