All right, we're back. And we are going to prepare for your collaborative event now. So in this lecture, you guessed it, we're talking about preparation. We're still not even at the event yet. We're getting there, we're super close. It's like coming up in a day or two.

But preparation is the key here. Before you even set foot in the room, or the virtual room, in this case, you are going to be sending a really big message about how you value your team and you value their time. You need to be respectful of everyone's time. And don't just wing it. If it's not important enough for you to prepare, then you really need to be reconsidering if this is the time and the place to be having this collaborative event. Because if you can't even bother to prepare for this meeting, you're showing everyone that this is not something that is You feel as worth your time, you feel like their time isn't valuable because you're still going to make them sit through this.

And it's just really a disrespectful feeling. It's a negative vibe to get the entire event off to. So do not just wing it. At bare minimum, you need to have an outline so that you know when you're done. That's what your outline needs to include. When will I know I'm done?

Um, anecdotally, we used to tell my mom, like a whole bunch of stories, just lots of stories when we were kids, and she ended up coming up with a rule. There needs to be a beginning, a middle and an end. When you have all those things, then you may tell me a story. So we're basically going to take that approach. Thank you, mom. You need to have the end in mind.

So you could also think of it as a warranty like on a car when five years or 60,000 miles is up, then Our warranty is over. So when 20 ideas happen or the hour is over, then we know our event is over. And we will either schedule a new one or we'll continue in a different day, something like that. So know when it will be over because no buddy likes an event that lasts even 10 minutes longer than it was supposed to, but God forbid it last two hours longer than it needed to. You need to know what personalities you're dealing with. And I alluded to this.

I talked about it actually a lot in the last lecture. This is this is the hallmark to me of a good manager. Do you know the personalities you're working with? So for example, Rob might have some really, really great ideas, but maybe he is uncomfortable speaking up in a group, even if it's a remote group, he's just But that's not his personality. He's just not comfortable with it. And even if you say in the meeting, hey, Rob, I know you have great ideas, I would love to hear some of them.

Even though you sound and you think you're being super nice and you're being inclusive, by bringing him in, he might feel attacked, because you just dragged him into the limelight, where he doesn't want to be and he is defensive when he has to go to that place. So really, really important to know what personalities you're dealing with, and to help bring out the best in them beforehand. So you got to prepare them as well. So spend a few minutes with Rob asked him, maybe what would make him feel comfortable in the meeting to come forward. So is there some way you know, is there an ability for him to just have a moment? Is he okay if you prepare him for the fact that you may call him him out.

Is that okay? brainstorm with him, he probably already knows what is going to make him most comfortable. So just ask him because you're grown. You're grown people, he should probably already know that. On the other hand, maybe Jennifer is a talker, as I tried to politely call them us in the last lecture. So one of the ways to help Jennifer back down from talking over everyone would be to have her become a facilitator.

Ask her to help you find the best ideas by listening and to maybe maybe she's your note taker. Maybe you can't talk and type somebody else's thoughts at the same time, just saying, so find a way to redirect that energy, because that's what you really should see it as she has energy and passion for this. She's not necessarily trying to talk over everyone. She just kind of Can't help herself. So help her, help her help her. You don't want to over flavor.

It's again, going back to the cake analogy. You knew I'd come back to the cake analogy. If you have like a whole bunch of eggs and not very much flour and not very much sugar, then maybe you get a custard. Like if you're lucky. But it's, it's going to be pretty gross. It's not going to be right.

So this is the part of the meeting where you or collaborative event where you need to really work on balancing the ingredients that you have, so that you get the right result. A couple other pieces for preparation. If you were using new tech or new software, you need to train on it beforehand, do not have tech training as part of your collaborative event. Not even for like the first 15 minutes and then Okay, we'll use the last 45 to talk about ABS See together? No, it's distracting. And I promise people will still continue to talk about learning the tech during what should have been your collaboration.

So just schedule it completely separately. If If you are in charge of any hiring, onboarding, anything like that, you may really want to consider adding that collaborative tech software, whatever you're using to your onboarding, training. If you're not in charge of that, then you may want to talk to your HR or whoever is in charge of your onboarding, so that you can make sure your team members are trained in advance so they can be up and running and not worrying about all the tech and just focusing on their ideas because that's in collaboration while you're obviously really trying to get out of people. Lastly, if this was something that was planned in advance, I strongly advise sending a reminder The day before. And your reminder should include any login details. So if you have a phone call bridge line conference calls, sort of, you know, number system sort of thing, you'll have to have login for webinar, send the link, again, send any shared documents, just even if you think people should have the link, re send it, I promise, one person at least is not going to have the link.

And at a minimum, you've just made everybody's lives easier because they don't have to sort through their inbox for 15 minutes to find those details. So again, you want the login details you want any documents or spreadsheets that are going to be shared. And you also want your expectations of what your team members are going to bring to this event. So are they going to bring ideas about A, B or C are they you want their fresh reactions maybe to a thought maybe they need to be coming in With something already, maybe they need to come with a draft in place. So remind them of those responsibilities. And that's why you want to send it at least 24 hours in advance.

So it's not too far away from the actual event that they had a chance to forget. But they still have time to prepare if they need. So hopefully now you will be fully prepared for your collaborative event because we're going to just go right into it tomorrow. fictitiously we're talking about, you know, a sequence of time. You can watch the lecture immediately after this. But again, be respectful.

Have a plan, have an outline, know when you're going to be done, know the personalities you're working with. Don't train on new tech during your meeting or event, and send a reminder. All right, so you're prepared, and now we're able to walk into our collaborative event.