The action: Foster a meeting culture where everyone takes responsibility for resolving the issues they bring up.
The long-form: Have you ever experienced the frustration of raising an issue in a meeting only to see it go unnoticed or quickly dismissed? Or perhaps your team members feel discouraged because their suggestions often get overlooked as the meeting swiftly moves on.
To address this challenge, Roger Schwarz offers an insightful analogy: picture each issue as an airplane. If everyone expects you to handle and close every issue, it leads to congested airspace and a disheartened team.
Instead, Schwarz suggests implementing the rule of “If you launch it, you land it.” This means that the person raising an issue is responsible for ensuring it receives a fair hearing and reaching a resolution.
Think of your question or comment as a plane—and you are the pilot. Your job is to get the plane off the runway, cover the ground that needs to be covered, and land the plane. This doesn’t mean that you will get the answer you want, just that the issue will be adequately addressed.
Roger Schwarz
In order to cover the ground needed for closure, you can ask others for their views on the issue, or ask to get it on a later meeting agenda. Then in order to land, you can ask each member of the group for their views – for example with a show of fingers (1 meaning strong disagreement, 4 meaning strong agreement).
By implementing the “If you launch it, you land it” rule and following these steps, you create a meeting culture where everyone takes ownership of the issues they raise, ensuring they receive proper attention and closure.
Further reading:
Schwarz’ article on how to get everyone in the meeting to think like a leader is also great: https://schwarzassociates.com/giving-up-the-one-leader-in-a-room-mindset/
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