Death By Meeting
A Leadership Fable...About Solving the Most Painful
About the Author
Patrick Lencioni
Patrick Lencioni is the founder and
president of The Table Group, Inc., a
specialized management-consulting firm
focused on organizational health. Since
establishing the firm in 1997, Lencioni has
become one of the nations leading experts
on executive team development.
While coaching and consulting to hundreds
of CEOs and executives, Lencioni began to
observe fundamental behavioral patterns
among his clients that later formed the
basis of his original theories on leadership.
Lencioni penned his first best-selling book,
The Five Temptations of a CEO (1998),
positioning him as a leader in the trend of
business fiction. Two years later in the fall
of 2000, he completed his second
leadership fable, The Four Obsessions of
an Extraordinary Executive. His highly
anticipated book, The Five Dysfunctions of
a Team, was added to the Lencioni
Leadership Collection in the spring of 2002.
And his latest page-turning fable, Death by
Meeting, was released February 2004.
In addition to his books, Lencioni's
leadership theories have appeared in a
variety of publications, most notably
Harvard Business Review, which featured
Pat's original theory on corporate values
(July 2002). Other publications include
Drucker Foundation's Leader to
Leader, California CEO, Executive
Excellence, Association Management,
Human Resource Executive and The San
Jose Mercury News.
Problem in Business
Author: Patrick Lencioni
Publisher: Wiley, John & Sons, Inc.
Date of Publication: 2004
ISBN: 0787968056
Number of Pages: 260 pages
The Big Idea
Not to be dismissed as mere drudgery, Patrick Lencioni reveals
that the conduct and way meetings are managed; actually mirror
the organization's leadership and management skills and
competencies, its culture and true state including where it is
likely headed. Executive meetings provide visible snapshots of
organizations flawed by mediocrity, disenchantment,
complacency or if companies are fired up by passion, creativity,
and excellence.
Related to this, Lencioni shares a meeting model grounded in
drama, positive conflict and context as a means to improve
meeting structure, participation, productivity and output. The
result is engaging and dynamic interactions that lead to positive
business performance.
Drama
The first ten minutes is the most crucial in any meeting. Avoid mind-
numbing conversations that will allow your participants' attention to
drift away. Set the stage, hook their attention and get them truly,
meaningfully involved.
How To Meet
· Do not start meetings by rambling. Use dramatic,
relevant opening statements likely to provoke
intelligent debates and discussions.
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 Death By Meeting By Patrick Lencioni

· Encourage healthy conflict. Avoid watering down

differing opinions.
· Do not be autocratic and unilaterally influence
outcome of meetings. Instead, foster passionate
discussions of issues. Ultimately, it may lead to a
more effective decision-making process and
resolution.
· Thrive on collective wisdom. Use the executive
meetings as forums for healthy discussions of
important issues affecting the departments
represented. Do not wait to resolve the issue in one
to one discussions in the confines of an executive
office.

Mining Positive Conflict

The key is intuitiveness. The leader must be keenly sensitive to recognizing people
with opposing views and resolute to table items with conflicting issues.

How To
· Force participants to air latent issues, buried
conflicts, or differing opinions.
· Be paternal. Occasionally compliment and reassure
meeting participants that airing different points of
view is actually helpful and effective at objectively
looking at an issue.
· Tow the line. The leader reminds the group that as
soon as a decision has been arrived at, regardless of
the outcome, it must be wholly supported.

Develop the Context

Meetings lose structure and meaning precisely because there is lack of focus and
too many issues saddled in one weekday or monthly or bi-monthly meeting.

How To
· Set the right number of meetings with the appropriate
objective, agenda, and function. Most meetings
become unfocused and unwieldy because there are
far too few meetings organized and too many issues
requiring resolution in a single meeting. Lencioni
recommends the following number and nature of
meeting prototype.

[2]

Type of Meeting
Daily check-in
Weekly Tactical
Monthly strategic or ad-hoc
strategic meetings (may be
limited to once a month or
more when an urgent need
arises to convene meeting
participants; issue/s can not
wait until the next meeting to
be settled)
Quarterly off-site review
Death By Meeting By Patrick Lencioni
Meeting Time Objective/Purpose
5 minutes · Informal, casual
discussion.
· Keep tabs with daily
schedule and activities of
other department heads.
· Opportunity for follow-ups
and some quick discussion
and immediate resolution
with another department
head.
45 to 90 minutes · Formal, sit-down weekly
meeting reserved for
purely operational, tactical
issues, report of weekly
activities and metrics.
2 to 4 hours · Raise, analyze, discuss,
and resolve critical and
immediate strategic issues
influencing long-term
business success.
· Limit to one or two items.
1 to 2 days · Review strategy; discuss
environmental scan,
competitive landscape,
people and resources.
· Focus on task at hand,
limit social activities.
· Participants must come prepared for meetings to
ensure healthy discussions. Hence, identifying the
nature of a meeting will help them focus their
presentations and issues.
· Get the people on the same page. It is extremely
important to resolve issues and reinforce
agreements in meetings.
· The leader breaks the tie. In all meetings except the
daily check-in, a passionate discussion of unfiltered,
differing points of view is critical and encouraged to
allow the leader to make the resolution. It is crucial
that the leader makes the final decision after
weighing all points of view specially when there is no
compelling argument to swing a vote to one side.
· Recognize that meetings are a venue for intelligent
people to come together and debate issues.
Disagreement naturally occurs but resolving the
conflict is what makes the meeting productive,
dynamic and engaging.
[3]
 Death By Meeting By Patrick Lencioni

· Avoiding issues that merit debate guarantees the

likelihood of boiling frustrations and boring
meetings. Eventually, these frustrations manifest
itself as unproductive personal conflict among
managers and with leadership thus, leading to
politics.
· Leaders must remember that bad meetings exact a
toll on human beings who must endure them. Bad
meetings provoke in an organization negative
emotions like anger, lethargy and cynicism.

[4 ]
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