How to Know If There Are Too Many People in Your Meeting

When setting up a meeting, the people you invite are just as important as what you need to get done. Including too many people — or too few — can be a waste of time for everyone involved. The following excerpt from the book Running Meetings will help you decide who should be in the room to make your meeting most effective.

It may be easy to default to inviting a crowd of people to a meeting — that way, you don’t really have to identify the most critical participants, you’ll avoid any ruf?ed feathers, you’ll have everyone involved on hand for a decision, and you won’t have to repeat your communications separately afterward. Or maybe your tendency is to want to keep things small: You may be tempted to invite just a small group of people whose opinions you most value.

But for a meeting to be useful, you have to have the right people — and only the right people — in the room. With too many attendees, you may have trouble focusing everyone’s time and attention and accomplishing anything; with too few, you might not have the right decision makers or information providers in the room.

As you plan your attendee list, consider who will help you to accomplish your meeting’s goal and those who will be most affected by its outcome. Most likely this is a combination of people who will offer a variety of perspectives. Take the time to methodically list the individuals in each of these categories to make sure you include the right people:

The key decision makers for the issues involvedThe ones with information and knowledge about the topics under discussionPeople who have a commitment to or a stake in the issuesThose who need to know about the information you have to report in order to do their jobsAnyone who will be required to implement any decisions made Managing People Book 12.95 Add to Cart

Feel free to consult with other stakeholders to make sure you’ve made the right list. Often another key stakeholder can remind you of a perspective you forgot to bring into the room.

Just because someone’s name is on your list, however, doesn’t mean he or she must be at the meeting. How many people should you actually invite? There are no hard and fast rules, but in principle, a small meeting is best to actually decide or accomplish something; a medium-sized meeting is ideal for brainstorming; and for communicating and rallying, you can go large. Some people use what’s known as the 8-18-1800 rule as a rough guideline:

If you have to solve a problem or make a decision, invite no more than 8 people. If you have more participants, you may receive so much con?icting input that it’s dif?cult to deal with the problem or make the decision at hand.If you want to brainstorm, then you can go as high as 18 people.If the purpose of the meeting is for you to provide updates, invite however many people need to receive the updates. However, if everyone attending the meeting will be providing updates, limit the number of participants to no more than 18.If the purpose of the meeting is for you to rally the troops, go for 1,800 — or more!

If you decide not to invite individuals you listed as likely to be affected by the meeting’s outcome, have a plan to communicate the substance of the meeting to them afterward.

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Leadership & Learning Executive

Leadership & Learning Executive London

Championing innovative approaches to leadership learning, you’ll help to ensure the future for British Airways is stronger than ever. Your remit will have a truly global scope. As one of the leading brands in aviation, we have 44,000 staff based in a range of countries. Their specialties range from customer service to IT and commerce. We’ll look to you to ensure everyone’s leaders benefit from excellent learning and development provision, so we can all fulfil our promise ‘To Fly. To Serve.’

You will work with closely with a wide range of people – from HR and Finance Business Partners, to subject matter experts and, of course, leadership and management learning delegates. Taking care to find out what our business needs, you will scope, design and deliver business-wide learning solutions. Building leadership capability and behaviours, you will help to power high performance worldwide. You’ll also enjoy the opportunity to help Global Learning Academy colleagues create brand new leadership initiatives. Benchmarking trends and supplier knowledge, you’ll make sure everything you do is cutting edge.

To join us, you’ll need to demonstrate a track record of managing end-to-end learning and development with proven ROI. Your expertise spans everything from partnering and consulting, through to design, delivery and evaluation. Ideally, you will be accredited and experienced in the use of psychometrics such as MBTI, SDI and Hogan’s. You’ll certainly be an innovative thinker and a creative problem solver, with impressive influencing and coaching skills and a naturally collaborative approach.

To apply, please click on the apply link to visit our website.

LocationLondonSalaryCompetitive salaryReferenceUKWTS572Contact NameRecruitment

Championing innovative approaches to leadership learning, you’ll help to ensure the future for British Airways is stronger than ever. Your remit will have a truly global scope. As one of the leading brands in aviation, we have 44,000 staff based in a range of countries. Their specialties range from customer service to IT and commerce. We’ll look to you to ensure everyone’s leaders benefit from excellent learning and development provision, so we can all fulfil our promise ‘To Fly. To Serve.’

You will work with closely with a wide range of people – from HR and Finance Business Partners, to subject matter experts and, of course, leadership and management learning delegates. Taking care to find out what our business needs, you will scope, design and deliver business-wide learning solutions. Building leadership capability and behaviours, you will help to power high performance worldwide. You’ll also enjoy the opportunity to help Global Learning Academy colleagues create brand new leadership initiatives. Benchmarking trends and supplier knowledge, you’ll make sure everything you do is cutting edge.

To join us, you’ll need to demonstrate a track record of managing end-to-end learning and development with proven ROI. Your expertise spans everything from partnering and consulting, through to design, delivery and evaluation. Ideally, you will be accredited and experienced in the use of psychometrics such as MBTI, SDI and Hogan’s. You’ll certainly be an innovative thinker and a creative problem solver, with impressive influencing and coaching skills and a naturally collaborative approach.

To apply, please click on the apply link to visit our website.

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Investors Always Come Back … Even to Argentina

by Justin Fox  |   9:45 AM June 26, 2014

Argentina lost big to a group of American “vulture” hedge funds in court last week, when the Supreme Court declined to reconsider an appeals court decision that the funds had the right to demand that the country make good on a bunch of old bonds they owned even though it long ago renegotiated the terms of that debt with most creditors. (For explanations of the case, see Felix Salmon in Foreign Affairs and Matt Levine at Bloomberg View.) Short-term, this represents a crisis for Argentina, which has until June 30 to either pay out or default. Over the long run, though, it may be a step toward removing such cases from unsympathetic American courts and letting countries like Argentina battle it out with creditors on friendlier turf.

This is an outcome that Laura Alfaro, a professor in the Business, Government, and International Economy unit at Harvard Business School and the former Minister of National Planning and Economic Policy of Costa Rica, thinks would be healthy for all parties involved. In a piece published on HBS Working Knowledge in April, Alfaro argued that the U.S. Congress took a wrong turn in 1976 in passing the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA), which allowed foreign governments to issue debt in accordance with U.S. law, and creditors to sue those governments in U.S. courts in the event of a default.

“One of the most damaging results of the FSIA,” Alfaro wrote, “is a false perception that foreign debt was made less risky than it is. The limited enforcement rights of investors means that sovereign debt remains risky, regardless of whether it is issued under foreign law.” It would be better, she concluded, to return to the pre-1976 practice in which each country issued sovereign debt under its own laws, a change that would “allow debtors and creditors alike to better understand and acknowledge the risk inherent in sovereign debt lending. If you lend to Argentina, you are dealing with Argentina.”

I caught up with Alfaro, who is currently in Brazil cheering on her country’s surprisingly successful soccer team, to ask a few questions by email. Here’s what she had to say:

You’ve been arguing that the sovereign debt of Argentina and other countries should in fact be treated as sovereign and thus not subject to U.S. laws. Last week’s Supreme Court decision was a pretty powerful statement that U.S. law does prevail, whatever the consequences for global debt markets. Does that pull us farther away from the outcome you want, or push us closer to it?

Alfaro: When bonds are issued under foreign law, creditors can sue a defaulting debtor in a foreign court and typically obtain a favorable judgment, since the sovereign debtor is in breach of contractual obligations.  However, the value of this judgment can be limited for two reasons.  First, the creditors generally cannot recover a sovereign debtor’s local assets since these are typically protected by domestic law.  Second, sovereign debtors benefit from foreign governments’ sovereign immunity laws, limiting creditors’ ability to seize sovereign assets held abroad.  For example, foreign assets held in a diplomatic capacity, such as military assets or an ambassador’s residence, are always protected in the United States.  We still need to see if Argentina chooses to pay everyone or default.  Sovereign debt continues to involve a risk. It is best if this is acknowledged explicitly by all the parties.

Does the U.S. need to amend/repeal the FSIA to get us to the sort of sovereign debt markets you’d like to see, or are there other solutions?

Perhaps the one positive effect of the ruling is that we may engage in a serious discussion of these issues (although sadly I still do not envision grand changes emerging).

Sovereign debtors can overcome collective action problems in restructurings by including ex-ante contractual provisions in the bond documentation that make it more difficult for dissenting creditors to hold out and litigate their claims, and using ex-post negotiating strategies that encourage collective action amongst creditors. The most widespread contractual mechanisms for dealing with these problems are collective action clauses that empower a qualified majority of creditors to bind dissenting creditors and thereby limit the potential threat of litigation from “holdout” creditors.

Another important issue is to change the pari passu clause, which limits the ability of debtors to privilege one group of creditors over another. Argentina’s bond offering featured the broadest version of the pari passu clause, providing for equal priority and equal payment of similarly situated creditors. In 2012, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that this prohibited it from paying one class of creditors while other creditors that are owed payment receive nothing.

In future bond offerings, sovereign debtors can avoid this interpretation by changing the wording of the clause or deleting language that provides for equal payment.  They also have the option of issuing bonds under their own law.  Bonds issued under local law typically limit the ability of creditors to litigate in foreign courts.

The question of why a sovereign debtor would ever choose not to insert such contractual provisions into its bond documents or issue under foreign jurisdiction remains. Sovereign debtors have an ex-ante incentive to commit to greater creditor enforcement rights in order to attract more favorable financing terms. But sovereign nations are sovereign nations.  Less creditworthy countries must therefore decide whether the premium for including contractual terms that limit creditor litigation rights is worth paying.

Is there a chance that this Supreme Court decision will damage New York’s standing as a financial center?

On the one hand the decision of the Supreme Court strengthens creditor rights. On the other hand, some sovereigns may prefer alternative laws to issue their debt. As mentioned, this is a tradeoff between most favorable terms ex-ante and limitations ex-post. The important point, however, is that this is an ex-ante bargain between the sovereign debtor and the creditor and is priced into the financial terms of the transaction.  Again, perhaps moving to a world where everyone explicitly acknowledges the risks would be better.

What do you think Argentina should do next?

They should start negotiating in good faith.  There are attempts also to move the debt to local jurisdiction. A payment is due June 30, so we will find out what they will do.  But again, showing good will matters.

With no protection in U.S. courts, would anybody outside Argentina buy Argentine debt?

History has shown that investors always come back … even to Argentina.

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Training & Competence Specialist

Training & Competence Specialist City of London

A leading, city based financial services firm has a new, urgent, requirement for a Training & Competence Consultant with experience of rolling out Senior Manager Regime training to join them on a long term contract basis. Reporting into the Head of Training, the role will focus on the following:

- Work with key stakeholders to ensure that the bank implements the FCA's new regulatory regime to a consistent standard including: Senior Manager's Regime, Certification Regime and Conduct Rules

- To assist the bank in implementing the new FCA Regulatory framework for Individuals in accordance with regulations.

- To help embed T&C procedures and establish appropriate training for relevant staff and in supervisory roles.

This is a 12 month contract, paying up to £70,000 with an immediate start. Candidates must have experience rolling out FCA competence training previously and ideally have experience specifically with Senior Manager's Regime, Certification Regime and Conduct Rules. To be considered, please apply with an updated CV as soon as possible.

SR Group is acting as an Employment Business in relation to this vacancy.

LocationCity of LondonSalary£60000 - £70000 per annumDuration12 monthsReferenceKA/6070TCContact NameKunaal Arora

A leading, city based financial services firm has a new, urgent, requirement for a Training & Competence Consultant with experience of rolling out Senior Manager Regime training to join them on a long term contract basis. Reporting into the Head of Training, the role will focus on the following:

- Work with key stakeholders to ensure that the bank implements the FCA's new regulatory regime to a consistent standard including: Senior Manager's Regime, Certification Regime and Conduct Rules

- To assist the bank in implementing the new FCA Regulatory framework for Individuals in accordance with regulations.

- To help embed T&C procedures and establish appropriate training for relevant staff and in supervisory roles.

This is a 12 month contract, paying up to £70,000 with an immediate start. Candidates must have experience rolling out FCA competence training previously and ideally have experience specifically with Senior Manager's Regime, Certification Regime and Conduct Rules. To be considered, please apply with an updated CV as soon as possible.

SR Group is acting as an Employment Business in relation to this vacancy.

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How to Get Your Team to Coach Each Other

No one grows as a leader without the support of other people. Effective peer-to-peer coaching can offer the encouragement people need to overcome the fear of starting something new. Peer coaches, like professional coaches, can also hold their “clients” accountable for moving in a new direction.

Setting up a peer-to-peer coaching network on the team you manage can accelerate your team’s learning. I’ve been providing peer-to-peer coaching opportunities for decades, in my Wharton courses and in all kinds of organizations, and most recently in a MOOC (massive open online course) I teach on Coursera called Better Leader, Richer Life. In this piece, I’ll explain how to set up a non-directive coaching peer coaching network, in the Socratic tradition (in which the client discovers solutions to problems via dialogue), as opposed to instructional, evaluative, and directive feedback (in which an expert coach solves the client’s problem).  Through compassionate, caring inquiry, everyone can develop and improve their abilities through practice and reflection on what works (and what doesn’t).

Of course, it won’t absolve you of responsibility for making tough personnel decisions about pay and promotion and of everything else you must do with your authority. But there is a sense of camaraderie and good feeling that comes when you have positive impact as a coach on another person’s well-being, and peer coaches learn things about themselves both through the act of coaching others, and, of course, by receiving coaching themselves.

To construct a peer coaching network, start small. Set people up in trios or ask employees to find two other people so the three can take turns serving as both coach and client for each other: A coaches B, B coaches C, and C coaches A.  Suggest each person start by discussing their goals.  The more open we are about goals, the more we increase our commitment to them, and the more likely they’ll be realized.

It’s also useful to talk about how the triad will work together, establishing expectations, time to meet, and understanding each other’s interests, hopes, and fears. Clarify how each member will play the coach and client roles and suggest adjustments as needed.  Encourage each person to gain a preliminary understanding of each other’s key relationships at work, at home, and in the community. But the most important ground rule is this: “You choose what you want to disclose.” Respect privacy and preferences for how much information members are willing to disclose.

Provide your team with some basic guidelines followed by most coaches. Ask your team to follow to these guidelines to get the most out of their peer-to-peer coaching relationships:

Show you care about helping your clients achieve their goals.
Share your experiences only to help the client feel accepted, not to focus on you.Be as aware as possible of your own biases as a coach.Stay in touch with the reality your client is facing — listen well.Don’t hide your ignorance — ask questions, even ones you might think are dumb.Encourage your client to get more help when needed, from all sources.Try not to criticize your client’s ideas; usually it’s best to listen and offer alternatives.Don’t promise more than you can deliver; this will decrease your credibility.

The heart of non-directive, or developmental, peer-to-peer coaching is asking useful questions. Many people fear change because it forces them into unknown territory, where things are unpredictable and unfamiliar. And yet there are predictable stages people go through when they undertake intentional change. Coaches help others to see and feel the need to create meaningful, sustainable change. Here are the stages and some of the key questions peer coaches can ask in helping clients face the challenges associated with each:

What’s the problem?

Simply identifying the need for change can be difficult, as many of us ignore information that disconfirms our current perceptions or threatens the status quo. Coaches can help identify blind spots by encouraging self-reflection about things that aren’t obvious to their clients. Asking these basic questions increases awareness:

As you think about your goals, what’s not working well in your life?What are the consequences of this issue for you and the important people in your life?What is the source of the need to change — is it in you or is it external?Why bother?

Because we naturally tend towards continuing the status quo, if doing something new doesn’t feel urgent, it’s not likely to occur. Coaches can help raise urgency by asking questions such as these:

Looking ahead, what will happen if you don’t change?What will happen if you do change?What’s your decision?

The decision to change is a crucial moment because it marks the point when your mind shifts and you begin to see a different future. It is also a fragile point in planned change processes, fraught with temptations to revert to the way things have always been and with distractions away from the focused effort that’s required to do something new and make it stick. Coaches can help clients reach and move beyond this point by asking:

What have you decided to do differently and why?What is the ideal outcome?What are your new goals?

4: What steps exactly?

Good coaches ask clients to think out loud about what to do differently, how to overcome obstacles, and what skills or sources of support are needed. You can help your client discover specific ideas for how to better accomplish goals by asking:

What exactly will you do, and when will you do it?How will you measure progress?What stands in the way, and how will you overcome these barriers?How will you generate needed support?Are you really in?

Because commitment wanes without a sense of urgency, coaches should continually test for this. Coaches can ask:

What if this is harder than you think?What are the first steps — and the next steps — you will take?How will you maintain your sense of urgency?How will you sustain it?

Encouragement at every small step builds momentum. As a coach you should provide frequent reinforcement and celebrate your clients’ successes to bolster confidence and help them avoid backsliding. The key questions here are:

What impact has your new behavior had on you and others?What accomplishments are you proud of achieving?Is there a smarter step that might help you build momentum?How can I (as your coach) reinforce your commitment to action?

Getting good at both providing and receiving peer coaching requires some investment. Very few people are naturally gifted in this essential skill. But like any other skill, it can be learned – with practice. As the leader of your team, establishing a peer coaching network can empower your colleagues, expand their skill sets, enrich them personally and professionally, and ultimately help your organization. It’s free, it’s fun, and it’s rewarding.

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Storytelling Exercise: Make a Story with Three Images

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The True Cost of Hiring Yet Another Manager

by Michael C. Mankins  |   8:00 AM June 2, 2014

You can have terrific people working in the right teams and still not see the financial results you’re hoping for. Why? It could be that your organization’s structure is creating obstacles that compromise your workforce’s performance.

One common culprit is out-of-control tooth-to-tail ratios. In a war zone, some soldiers fight on the front lines. Others maintain supply chains, handle logistics, and otherwise support those front-line troops. Military commanders know they can’t let the tooth-to-tail (or combat-to-support) ratio get too low, or they’ll wind up with a force that costs too much and can’t win the battle.

It’s the same in a company. You have front-line employees who create what you sell or who deal directly with customers: software developers, sales reps, call-center staffers, and so on. You also have support staff, including the people in marketing, finance, HR, and other functions. When the tooth-to-tail ratio gets too low, front-line people find that they have to send every customer request or idea for improvement up through the bureaucracy and wait days or weeks for a response. That not only creates long delays for customers; it also makes front-line employees feel disempowered and demoralized. How can they serve the customer when they’re burdened with so much bureaucracy?

A second likely culprit: too many supervisory layers. Unnecessary supervisors create work and don’t increase efficiency, thus lowering an organization’s productivity. And companies often underestimate how expensive all those supervisors really are. Not long ago my colleagues and I studied the cost of adding a manager or executive, and we found a kind of multiplier effect (see the graphic below). When you hire a manager, he or she typically generates enough work to keep somebody else busy as well. Senior executives — SVPs and EVPs — are even more costly. These high-priced folks typically require support from a caravan of assistants and/or chiefs of staff. The support staff generates a lot more work for other people, too. The extra burden comes to 4.2 FTEs per hire, including the executive’s own time.

We’ve found three steps to be helpful in liberating your people from the organizational mire:

Manage your tooth-to-tail ratios closely. Appropriate ratios naturally vary from one industry to another. But a company can gauge its performance against benchmark levels and make adjustments as necessary. If you can create standard processes for handling queries and ideas from front-line people, that will help them make and execute good decisions faster. You may find that all those support personnel aren’t really necessary — that the tooth can be more effective with a much smaller tail.Trim your supervisory layers. Compare your managerial spans — the average number of direct reports per supervisor—with industry benchmarks, and adjust your structure accordingly. Take into account, however, that different jobs require different spans of control. The lawyers in your legal department probably do highly specialized work that needs close supervision, thus requiring a narrower span of control. The custodians who clean your facilities, by contrast, can operate under a supervisor with a much broader span of control. Selectively removing supervisors (sometimes referred to as “delayering”) can reduce workload and costs throughout your organization.Limit the caravans. It does little good to eliminate unnecessary supervisors if those who remain are as costly and inefficient as ever. In some companies, it’s common for senior VPs to have not just an assistant but a whole coterie of helpers, complete with a chief of staff. These caravans can generate just as much work as the executives themselves — again, a perverse multiplier effect. Limiting (or eliminating) these caravans reduces work and cost.

Some companies have begun to attack these organizational barriers. A large software company we worked with recently eliminated more than 40% of its supervisors, ensuring that the people who actually develop the product aren’t overburdened with managers and other functionaries. When Alan Mulally first became CEO of Ford, he did away with the CEO’s chief of staff position. It was a double-barreled message on Mulally’s part: not only wouldn’t he have a chief of staff; he wouldn’t have a staff at all. His decision precipitated similar moves elsewhere in the organization; no EVP wanted to have a chief of staff when the CEO didn’t.

Chances are that your top performers want to live up to their full potential. Don’t let organizational obstacles get in their way.

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