Stop Running Meetings. Start Leading Them

Leadership is more than formal authority; it’s influence. And in a work culture that’s ruled by meetings, your ability to lead effective meetings is critical to your impact.

One of the best tools you can use to approach a meeting strategically is to design it for success, which is where Carl focused his preparation.

The KNOW-FEEL-DO framework is Wolf & Heron’s go-to framework for defining success for any meeting (or presentation). It asks you to answer the following questions:

At the end of the meeting:

• What do you want your attendees to know?
• What do you hope they feel?
• What do you want them to do?

Clarity around this will help you plan everything else: draft materials, design a conversation flow, build slides (but only if you need them), identify critical questions, and more. Ambiguity around  your KNOW-FEEL-DO outcomes will result in a meeting that jumps around, is hard to control, and will likely end up being inefficient (at best) or a complete waste of time (at worst)..



As part of using the KNOW-FEEL-DO framework, make sure you’re actually getting clarity. Let’s look at some examples of KNOW-FEEL-DO statements and compare the Okay ideas to Better ones.

• Okay - I want attendees to know why we’re pursuing this initiative.
• Better - I want attendees to understand that this initiative is critical to the new product launch because it will help us roll out at the optimal time (Q2).



Why it’s better: When you’re specific about what you want people to know, you’re also clear about what’s less important. The Better statement suggests that the meeting will focus on how the initiative connects to the timing of the product launch. The Okay statement only hints at the fact that the initiative is important, but doesn’t tell us why.

• Okay - I want attendees to feel motivated.
• Better - I want attendees to feel excited to participate in the working group because they see how their individual efforts will help create new opportunities for our users.



Why it’s better: The Better statement connects the emotion to the Working Group, and suggests that the motivation will come from seeing their efforts as part of a greater mission. The Okay statement identifies the ideal feeling, but not what is going to activate that feeling.

• Okay - I want attendees to help the project.
• Better - I want attendees to raise their hand and offer themselves up to lead different workstreams within the project, before we end the meeting.



Why it’s better: The Better statement is extremely specific about what attendees are expected to do. This specificity suggests that a good portion of the meeting should be reserved for assigning lead accountability to the different workstreams, and that social pressure will be a key tool in motivating the action. Again, this shapes your meeting design more effectively than the Okay statement, which hints at the big-picture goal, but doesn’t suggest how to get there.

Your ability to leverage the KNOW-FEEL-DO framework effectively has everything to do with how specific you can be. That specificity is what shifted Carl from feeling anxious about resistance to feeling confident about leading. Specificity gives you guard rails and narrows your focus to what really matters. And this gives you clarity. 

Once you have clarity on what you hope to achieve, you’ll find several ways in which this clarity impacts your meeting design: 

• Double check your invite list: Are you inviting the right people? Who should you exclude or include?
• Validate your timing: Is this too much to do in one meeting? Can you break it into several or make it more achievable?
• Look at your meeting ramp-up and ramp-down plan: What do you need to do to prepare? What do your attendees need before the meeting to be truly effective? How will your follow-up help to drive your outcomes further?
• Design your materials: Slide decks aren’t always the best approach. If you want input, give your attendees a template to complete. If you want alignment around priorities, imagine how you will vote on ideas both publicly and privately.
• Examine your structure: A presentation with a Q&A is common, but may not always serve your goals best. A weekly “go around and give me the update” makes the team leader feel informed, but doesn’t give attendees a clear understanding of why they all have to sit through the whole thing. Consider the meeting structure that will best meet your goals.
• Consider the emotional arc: How will you engage your audience emotionally based on how you want them to feel?

If you want to be a more effective and influential leader in your workplace, approach your meetings more strategically, especially the high-stakes moments that matter most. When you lead meetings well, you lead the work.

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