Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko
I love meetings! (sarcasm)
Many of us have been to some really bad meetings. In the team collaborative environment we live in, meetings are necessary to get the job done. And if we want our services to be good, we need to spend time in meetings figuring stuff out.
I have found that much of the time, my feelings about a bad meeting are based on my perspective going in. I'm amazed at how bad meeting can change when I change my posture going in. If you are a leader of a technical arts ministry at your church, much of your job is to clear the way for your teams to get work done. You do that by attending meetings. And if you are attending meetings with a bad attitude, you aren't helping your team.
Here are a couple things that really changed me from hating the dreaded meeting to leveraging them for the benefit of my team, and therefore my church.
Assume the Best
“We want to fly some angels in the from the ceiling and then have lasers shoot out of the tomb!”
How many of us have heard something crazy like this in a creative meeting before? I used to think that people were trying to come up with the craziest ideas “just because”. I would get so frustrated with creatives always messing with my perfect plan. Don't they know that their idea isn't efficient?
I have to admit that I went into so many production meetings just waiting to shoot down ideas. I would brace myself for the onslaught with as many “No's” as I could muster. This put me into a very negative space, really hating every meeting that I went into…and making me a pretty bad team player.
Bad meetings don’t help anyone.
One day, I turned a corner. I'm not sure how, but I started to realize that the creative people I was fortunate to work with, were doing their very best to come up with ideas to create moments for people to encounter God. Instead of killing every idea right away, I started to view my role as trying to figure out how to do their idea. Maybe not exactly how they saw it, but making it happen within the realities of our situation.
I began to assume the best in the other people in the meeting. We both wanted a great service, we were just coming at it from totally different angles.
How could we leverage the best of what each had to offer to make the best service?
Assuming the best of people at the meeting changes the dynamic of every meeting.
OK. Now that everyone loves each other, now we need to get down to business!
Never assume (OK, except when you assume the best!)
Since we do come at the same challenges from completely different perspectives, there tend to be dropped balls because we assumed other people were handling things when they weren't and probably wouldn't.
If you have a question, ask it. If you need a particular answer, get it. Don't think that someone else is figuring it out.
When I went through my first building program, I assumed that the architects knew everything and that the AVL integrator had a lock on what our church needed. As it turned out, these groups didn't know how we used the building or how we needed technology to support our ministry. There were so many questions that I never asked because I assumed someone would catch it, only to find out that he bad thing I thought would happen, did.
One of the great parts about you (yes, you), is that God created you uniquely. Nobody thinks like you. Therefore, your church needs you to bring your full self to the table. Don't hold back your questions. Don't assume someone else is thinking about every angle.
Meetings need to happen to help our churches function. Bad meetings don't help anyone.
In your next meeting, assume the best about the people sitting across the table from you and watch how the tone of the meeting changes.
In you next meeting, don't hold back on the questions you need answers to. You'll find you figure more stuff out and probably learn better ways of doing something.
Your church will be better because you've decided to show up to meetings to make them better.
