SEL in EDU
Real stories. Practical insights. Everyday Social Emotional Learning (SEL).
SEL in EDU
088: Why School Meetings Stall and How Simple Shifts Get Them Moving with Chris Fenning
What if staff meetings ended with real decisions and classes felt like energizing workshops? We sit down with communication expert and author Chris Fenning to rebuild school time around clarity and outcomes using one simple framework: Topic, Purpose, Output. From IEPs and MTSS to department huddles and professional learning workshops, we show how to set relevance, choose the right activities, and leave each session with a tangible result you can print, share, or ship.
We unpack the difference between meetings and workshops and why that distinction matters for educators. You’ll learn how to write agendas as questions so anyone can lead with confidence, use the inverse time rule to handle niche items without holding everyone hostage, and stop “admiring the problem” by validating voices and shifting to solutions. Chris shares fast, inclusive techniques such as silent writing, quick polls, sticky-note clustering, and time-boxed sprints that surface ideas from the quiet, curb overtalkers, and keep momentum strong.
This conversation connects directly to SEL. Clear purposes lower stress. Named outputs build agency. Validation increases belonging. When we frame lessons as purposeful meetings - opening with a question, selecting activities that align with the goal, and closing with a visible product - students practice collaboration, focus, and reflective decision-making.
EPISODE RESOURCES:
Welcome to season five of SEL in EDU. This is a space for educators who believe social emotional learning isn't an add-on. It's part of how we teach, lead, and show up every day. I'm Dr. Krista Lay, and in each episode, we'll explore real stories, practical strategies, and the human side of learning that helps schools grow with intention. Today I'm joined by Chris Fenning, who helps people communicate effectively at work, from teachers talking with parents to teams trying to collaborate clearly under pressure. His practical methods have been used in organizations like Google, JP Morgan, and NATO, and taught at universities around the world. He's the author of multiple award-winning books on communication and training. In this conversation, we zoom in on his newest work, how to run effective meetings and why meetings in education don't have to feel like a drain. You'll hear simple, usable tools, especially Chris's topic, purpose, output framework, and one idea that reframes everything. Lessons are meetings too. Welcome back to season five of SEL and EDU listeners. I am again here with the amazing Chris Venning, who is the expert on communication, and he has a new book out on hosting effective meetings. Chris, thank you so much for spending more time with us and helping us figure out how we can streamline and be better in education.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, it's a real pleasure to be back. A returning guest means we gave some real value to listeners last time. So I'm up for doing the same thing again.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you. So the first book that we were talking about was around communication. And here it was about emails and how to communicate more effectively. Now we're going to look at the internal processes with effective meetings. And as I sat down to read your book, I kept thinking IEP meetings, team level meetings, MTSS meetings, professional learning meetings, faculty meetings, departments. So many meetings. And then I had this aha moment with even our lesson plans and our time with our students are meetings. And what were you hearing that led you to put this into something that is understandable and quick for people to use?
SPEAKER_00:Oh, the first thing is I really want to pull on something that you just mentioned, which is even lessons are meetings. I've not heard that before, but my eyes literally went wide as you said it, because they are. It is a bringing together of people to achieve a particular purpose. In a classroom, hopefully it's more of a workshop environment, a little more interactive. But meetings should be interactive and there's a clear purpose and a desired output and outcome at the end. What a great way to think of lessons as very topic-specific meetings. Love that.
SPEAKER_01:And I hope as you share, we're going to pull out some of those threads as well with our students.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, no problem. I get to learn things from these conversations as well. It's wonderful. But coming back to why did I write the book? Part of it was I'd spent a lot of time in meetings myself. I worked at about 15,000 meetings during my employed career. And I had to confess, I led a lot of terrible meetings, certainly at the beginning, and fewer of them at the end as I learned to do it better. So I had a lot of lived experience of very painful, unproductive meetings. And then in my role now as a communications coach and trainer, it was a topic that came up in many conversations. So I could be working with a client or an organization on something different, perhaps helping their software developers talk to non-software developers. And in those conversations, someone would always say, by the way, we have this thing with meetings. And it would always come up as a do you have any advice for it? And so I went and looked at what advice is already out there. And I bought probably the top 25 books on Amazon and Barnes and Noble on the topic of meetings. And I went through them and felt that something was missing. I wanted to fill that gap to give something that was very simple and practical for people to use.
SPEAKER_01:So in my research brain, I'm hung up on what was missing. That little hook in there, didn't that? Because all of a sudden I'm like, what did you find? What was your next step?
SPEAKER_00:So what I found in terms of a gap is that there's a lot of great advice, and I'm not knocking other meeting books. There's some that aren't great, and there are some that are excellent. There's always a range in every book category. But what was missing was that many of these books focused on one particular type of meeting. So there's a book that its title includes the word meeting. It's about running great meetings, but actually it's about running half-day workshops. And that's a very different style of meeting. It's not the thing most of us find ourselves sat through in our jobs, whether it's daily or weekly. Others would focus on just decision-making, meetings where decisions are made. And very useful, but only one type of meeting. And so the gap, when I looked across all these different books, and I have a stack of books filled with post-it notes and stickies and all my own comments, the gap was what are the fundamental rules that apply to every meeting, regardless of the topic? And they were in the other books, but not all brought together in one place. And I still felt there were some gaps that I could contribute my own ideas to as well. What are the just the simple things that make all emails better? In this case, what are the simple things that make all meetings better?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And you touched on two pieces that jumped out for me in your book. And the one was around picking the right activities to match the goal. So I highlighted all of that. Was it information gathering? Was it idea generation? Was it progress tracking? And making sure that what you were aligning was matching that. And I think that has to do with picking an activity with is it a meeting or is it a workshop? So definitely in my mind, as somebody who develops professional learning for educators, three hours is not a meeting.
SPEAKER_00:No, it's not, at least I hope it's not.
SPEAKER_01:I think of a meeting as being talked at. And honestly, that's where we're all like, that could have been an email, or even just a video with like short snippets of scent that we could read on our own. When you think about defining a meeting, what does that mean for you versus a workshop?
SPEAKER_00:Oh, yeah. First of all, I really hope that we can change in a positive way that view of a meeting. If your view of a meeting is I'm going there to be talked at, that speaks to an experience of really bad meetings. Perhaps not as effective as they could be, a much nicer way to say that. A meeting is absolutely not just a receiving of information. And you mentioned a great thing we can do instead, which is if I was planning to set up a meeting and I think, do I need input from others? Is anyone going to do anything in this meeting, or is it just a delivery of information? If that's the case, I should send an email, send a short video, which you mentioned, which is a great way to do it, send a voice note or something else. So a meeting should very rarely be just a delivery of information. And all meetings should be interactive. There is a clear purpose for a meeting. They should produce a thing. And that thing could be a decision, it could be a prioritized list, it could be a lesson plan, it could be an agreement with a parent on something, could be the plan for the staff Christmas party. But there's something that is produced in a meeting. The meeting is there for a purpose and there's an output. Whereas a meeting can be in any topic at all. It can be for the benefit of the individuals, for the organization, for a project, for a student. So those are the differences. Workshop is more of a learning-teaching, producing environment, and a meeting is production-based, but it's on any topic. People don't need to learn something during that session.
SPEAKER_01:I'm having a big aha because based on that, if we go back to this idea of the lesson plans and whether you've got 45 minutes, 53 minutes, or 90 minutes with students, I really think that maybe it shouldn't be a class, but it should be a workshop.
SPEAKER_00:I love that. Yes, that's from a very personal perspective. My background's not in sort of school-based education. I obviously went through it, but not from a professional perspective. And I love the idea of them being workshops because I went to school a long time ago, or it feels a long time ago for me, and I went to a chalk and talk or sage on the stage style of education, where someone would stand at the front and they would write on the blackboard a million words a minute is what it felt like. And we would busily scratch everything down. There'd be pop quizzes, which would be the extent of the interaction. Stress. And that's it.
unknown:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:Although at the time it wasn't stressful, it was I had the I want to show off whether I was right or wrong. Turns out I was wrong a lot more than I was right in those sections. But moving on from that chalk and talk style, that rote learning style was what I grew up with. But I was very lucky that towards the end there were far more interactive workshop-based. And as one example, a history lesson. History can be very dry. It can be delivered.
SPEAKER_01:This is my area now. You're right. It can be. I was a social studies teacher.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, lovely. So there's pick an area of history, and students can read, or they can be talked to, or it can be very dry. We had a lesson, one that really sticks in my mind was about the Battle of Hastings. It's a very important battle in English history when the then French king, William the Conqueror, came across, beat Harold. There was an arrow in the eye. It's all gripping stuff. But even that can be taught in a very dry way. But the battle itself was workshopped. We all stood up, all the desks were moved, we became the battalions, we became the cavalry, we became the archers and moved around the room. And then we got to choose where we think we would go next. And we were told what would work and what wouldn't, and what happened. And it was connected to the story. And that was so engaging that it was a far more workshopped event. And we got to come up with what the strategies might be. And so very different from just book learning.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, I love that. I had a chance to visit different areas in France. And we went to William the Conqueror's Castle, and the students were like, Oh, we're tired. We don't want to spend two euros to go inside. And we're like, well, we're gonna go there and look. We're outside of this gate at William the Conqueror's Castle, and all the kids are like, Why are we not going in? We're like, oh my gosh, you didn't want to go. But my history heart was dying inside because I'm it's right there. I'm looking at it and I can't get it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, absolutely. And one of the reasons that history in the UK is you have to learn it so fast is there's just a lot more of it there than there is here in the US from documented history and so on. So I'm becoming more familiar with the US history lessons as my daughter goes through the school here, but it tends to start at a slightly later date.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, and history teachers will still say there's not enough time.
SPEAKER_00:There's never enough time to go into the detail. Yes.
SPEAKER_01:But the way that you talked about making it engaging, and I wrote down from your book about validating with the participants. And when we look at SEL skills, that's about collective agency and how are we all coming together and making decisions toward a final outcome. In the work that you're doing and talking with people, what parts are people really grappling onto that that are meaningful for them?
SPEAKER_00:So the most common ones, and you've picked one of the ones which is it's the least common, but it's one of my favorites, that validation is so important. And make sure we don't move on. I want to come back to how that can work with children, why that's so important as well. But to answer the question about what do others come back with, it's the core concept. There's a three-part framework in the book that affects every part of a meeting. Before the meeting, when you're planning it, when you start the meeting and introduce it, when you want to keep the meeting on track, and when you close the meeting, and even afterwards when you're doing follow-ups, there is a three-part framework that makes every part of that easier. And so the thing that most people grab onto is the framework and it's TPO. And that's topic, purpose, and output. And I'm very specific on that. It's output, not outcome. Because an outcome can be how you feel, it can be long-term consequences. An output is a thing, the thing that you produced. And that is so important for a meeting being effective, because in a period of time, we're bringing a group of people together to produce an output. And again, that could be a decision, but it's something you can at least write down or print out. And so that framework is the thing most people will grab onto. And just as an example of how it's useful in the planning stage, if you are planning a meeting, it should have a clear topic. There should be a clear purpose. For example, updating the budget based on new advice from finance. And then the output is an updated budget. So you leave with that output. And when you know those three things, you can invite the right people. Who do I need to revise the budget? What activities do we need to do to revise the budget? We should review it, we should make the updates, we should agree the finalized item. Those are three different activities, or at least three different stages. And then you can put that in the invite and send an informative invitation that people can then use to compare that meeting against another one they've been invited to at the same time. And they can say which one is most relevant, most important. Can I ditch one? Do I need to reschedule? Topic, purpose, output. It's the core of every part of a great meeting.
SPEAKER_01:I love that because that is, as I held it up, one of the other pieces that I pulled out. And I appreciate that you talked about output versus outcome. I think sometimes in my work and with kids, we do focus on the outcome. How are you feeling? The affective piece. But we also need the output as well. I think what makes it a little bit different in education is that sometimes meetings overlap, but generally there's one that you are like, yeah, I have to be at this one because it's mandatory, or the students have to be sitting in my classroom.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, they have mandatory meetings back to back all day.
SPEAKER_01:And you talked about too, like the length of time and what's expected of us. So we're reducing maybe some stress barriers because when you're talking about the topic, purpose, and output, people know very clearly what their role is and how they're contributing to that output and how it's relevant to them.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. And in an education environment, do we fought the overall goal of academic year to be able to pass the exams at the end or to have learnt a certain amount of information or be able to be proficient with certain methodologies and frameworks, whatever the subject is. But each individual lesson has a particular output. And for a kid sat in the class thinking, oh, why am I sat through another math lesson? Like, why is this relevant? One or two sentences to say, what we're going to do today is learn this particular part of calculus. And the reason this is important is it's usually two questions on the final exam.
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:That ties it to something that's relevant and meaningful for the student. They may still not care that much, but at least they're being reminded of the importance. Even better is tying it into a day-to-day thing. And you might not think this is important, but when you sign your first rental agreement and there are three hidden fees in there, and you have to work out what they're actually going to mean for you month by month. This is the thing that teaches you to do that.
SPEAKER_01:One of the things that you reminded me of is just today a blog post went out in the newsletter about a student who wanted to be an automechanic and didn't want to read Romeo and Juliet. And we talked about finding out some commonalities there. And it reminded me of that math problem because that would have been me like, why do I need to know this? And yes, I know there's a test there, but I also think part of the relevance can be, hey, Krista, you are really good with a growth mindset. You persevere and can struggle through hard problems. Even you might not get the right answer, but you can show the perseverance. And maybe somebody else on your team gets the right answer, but doesn't have that skill set. And so the relevance for us, or even I'm thinking an adult in the room might not necessarily be the knowledge setup, but the skill set that they're bringing to advance the topic and the purpose towards the Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00:And we're talking about that from a very mature perspective of being able to understand the rationale. You mentioned Romeo and Juliet. The reason that was explained to me as being important was do you ever want to date a girl or a guy and understand the craziness that goes on in each other's heads? And have you ever heard of anyone who doesn't get on with their partner's parents? This will show you what not to do.
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:And that's very relatable to 14-year-old me.
SPEAKER_01:And to most. And I think that's why they keep it in ninth grade. The cautionary tale of where it could go if you're not in a healthy relationship.
SPEAKER_00:But how often is it explained like that rather than this is on the test, Shakespeare is great, you're going to learn about language. No, you're not. You're going to learn about some life and you're going to see how not to do some stuff and how messed up it can get quickly. Like it's a lesson in poor decision making.
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:So that tying it to the meetings, the purpose isn't always the thing that you make the biggest fuss about. And this is particularly true in a sales environment. Everyone knows that a sales meeting is about buying and selling and someone's going to try and convince you. But you wouldn't say the purpose of this meeting is for me to convince you to buy my product. We would say the purpose of the meeting is for me to answer any questions you've got about how this works. And so you can leave confident knowing how it's going to help you and your organization. And then with students, you make it applicable to a student. If someone's being called in for behavior, the purpose of the meeting isn't to make you in trouble. The purpose of the meeting is to understand what caused this situation. And we're going to leave all knowing a little more about what happened, better understanding, and having some clear steps to see if we can avoid this happening again.
SPEAKER_01:Which reinforces your part around validating with participants. So they're a part of the process and not feeling like something's being done to them.
SPEAKER_00:There's the I'm disengaged, which for any of us, not just kids, it's the arms crossed, leaning back, monosymbolic answers, barely in the room, in body, let alone in mind. That happens in the workplace. And then there's the other sort of extreme, which is not disengaged, but it's actively disrupting. If we have staff together in a meeting for the weekly staff meeting, but they're No clear purpose, or somebody is championing their topic, and someone else has an agenda, they are going to be pushing, they may push their agenda, actively disrupt other things with good intention. They're trying to achieve something that's good and positive, it's not all bad stuff. But that becomes actively disruptive. Or if you're talking about a policy change for a school, and there's two or three people who just don't agree with it. If the purpose of the meeting isn't made clear, they might bring that disagreement in and derail the discussion at every opportunity. Making sure people are aligned on what we are here to do and what we are going to produce makes you far more likely to have a successful outcome.
SPEAKER_01:I'm really happy you brought that point up because one of the things that I had written down that I really appreciated was that you gave specific statements for people who might have good intentions, but whose issue, what they're contributing, is solely to them. Because I have sat in meetings before where I'm like, we could we're ready to leave, and you're asking something that is keeping us all here but doesn't apply to us. I'm like, and I'm trying to be empathetic, but it's you know what? That's a great point. Let's talk about that right after this meeting or tomorrow because we'll let everybody else go.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, acknowledge and then move that conversation to where it needs to be. And in that case, that that person who brings up a 30-minute question in the last 30 seconds, like, oh no. And it's important, and people will care about it, but we have other stuff to go and do. Acknowledging the question and then asking, is this something that everyone here needs to be involved with? And if the answer is no, great. Now we move on to scheduling when to have that conversation. It could be immediately afterwards, it could be sometime in the future. But acknowledge, check whether or not it involves everybody. And I'll come back to that because that's quite an important thing to do for a few reasons, and then actually plan to have the conversation. And the reason that checking is important is that it gives that person the opportunity to either educate everyone in the room, say this is important for this reason, or it gives them that moment of saying, oh no, actually it's not. And hopefully they'll have some self-awareness to move that conversation elsewhere. And if they don't, it still gives you the opportunity to say, seeing as it doesn't involve everybody else, let's let them go. So it gives you three outs there.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you. Because I was thinking that, okay, now when we're planning these effective meetings, it's what not only am I task-oriented, but people-oriented. Do I have the right people here? Does everybody need to be here? And that is drawing upon that social awareness and the self-awareness. And I hadn't thought of it that way, like giving that other person an opportunity to think and reflect on themselves. Because sometimes it's just single-minded. This is my issue, so it must be everybody else's.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Or just, oh, this is an opportunity. While I've got you here, can I talk to you? Because there are so many things we wanted to talk to people about, work with people on, and so little time to do it, that it's that moment of efficiency, it's that drive for efficiency. What's the lowest amount of effort we can put into achieving this goal, which is how we survive. There are lots of good reasons for that to be around. But it results in the, oh, while I've got you, can we talk about? The trouble is we forget everyone else in the room. Again, all human nature, none of this is a bad thing. It's not terrible characteristics, it's not somebody sat there thinking, I can keep everybody here for an extra 45 minutes on a Friday evening. That's what everybody wants. It's rarely that, it's usually done with a good intention, but just a slight lack of awareness. So in the book, I put forward a rule or a method that I call the inverse time rule. And it relates to if you've got a meeting that has multiple topics, it's unlikely all the topics will involve all the people. So you place the topics that impact the fewest people later so that either people can leave, or if they're online, it's very easy, they can just turn the cameras off and leave, or they can mentally check out when it gets to that part. The smaller the proportion of the people in the room that are involved, the smaller the time that's necessary. So if there are 10 people in a meeting and your topic involves one or two other people, you get 60 seconds for your topic. And that 60 seconds should either resolve the entire topic. Good luck, that's very rare, or be used to schedule a time and get agreement that you're going to have a smaller discussion that doesn't waste time for the other eight that are in the room.
SPEAKER_01:In education, when people feel helpless and feel like something is out of their control of influence, they will often start admiring the problem. And you talk about that too. So that was another piece that jumped up. We have a purpose and an output, but people keep admiring the problem. You address that as well.
SPEAKER_00:That's a very polite way of describing it. Admiring the problem. It's also a very common thing. It's nice, it's cathartic to talk about the problem. Starts with either that sigh or with a sudden injection of passion in what's been otherwise a very flat, monotone meeting. And suddenly people are going, yes, this is what it frustrates me, and this is the pain. And let me share my experience as to why this is so bad. And let me tell you why we should do something about it. And then the next person says, Yeah, well, I have a slightly different experience, but I want to share why I think we should do something about it, which is very important, but it doesn't move the conversation forwards. As soon as the leader of a meeting, you can do this as a participant as well, but as the leader of a meeting, if the third person has started to add their story to support, provide evidence, expand on the problem, that's the point that you can do something very simple and say, so it's just going to interject for a moment. It looks and sounds like lots of you have things to say on this. So we've established this is important. I'd love to be able to hear all these different stories, but the purpose of this meeting is to find the solution. So if it seems like we are all in agreement that this is a problem, hearing some lots of examples, let's move on to what we can do about it. And there's one extra thing you can then say, a quick show of hands for everyone who was about to speak. Hands up if you were going to add an example from your own work that supports it. Okay. And hands up if you had something different to add before we move into the solution. And then everybody gets a chance to be seen that, yes, I wanted to contribute, I had something to say. And the person who's been waiting patiently to raise something significant for the meeting, but not another example, also has their turn to speak.
SPEAKER_01:I'm going to extend that. So somebody like designing professional learning, I have tools that allow people to give input and they can do it anonymously, but that might be a good time for me to pause the meeting and say, let me pull something up. We're going to take three minutes for you to all type in your story. I'm going to go back and look at this or skim it. And maybe it's something that, okay, we need to address this now, or let's now focus on the solution. And if there's any outliers, we'll come back.
SPEAKER_00:Now how you're talking about adapting on the fly for the meeting purpose and the meeting activities. So if something has come up and it's not part of the someone's raised a topic and it's not part of the purpose or the output that you've defined for that meeting, maybe it's important and the meeting should be changed to focus on that. But to get there, you've just mentioned a specific activity, which is an information gathering activity, whether they're writing it on sticky notes, bit of paper, doing it on a digital tool. Okay, it seems like there's something important here. Let's do a quick activity to make sure everybody can essentially contribute at the same time, which is very time efficient. And we don't get that bias of being led by others or you don't get into disagreements. Everybody, this is a writing-down information gathering activity, and then you're choosing whether or not to adapt your meeting based on that. Wonderful example of how you can adapt on the and choose relevant activities.
SPEAKER_01:And if you want more of those activities that go with what your output is or what your purpose is, they're all in your book. And I highlighted that whole section as well. And there were a couple of them I looked up, like and I'm gonna just leave this hanging for people, but there was like the Moscow method. I'm like, what is this? I haven't heard of this one before.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, Moscow.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So there were so many new ones that I hadn't considered that I now want to use as protocols.
SPEAKER_00:Then you're I'm gonna give you a sneak peek on something, and you're gonna love what's coming early next year. I have a it's another book, but it's also a card deck of meeting activities where all of these categories, information gathering, idea generation, problem solving, decision making, prioritization, feedback, status updates, there are lots of different simple short activities that you can do to achieve those purposes. And they'll be in a book, but they'll also be in a very colorful, handy card deck. So you can say, I've got a problem-solving meeting. What can I do? And you can pull out the cards, short descriptions, but very specific steps on the back, so that you can plan an effective meeting.
SPEAKER_01:And I can take it with me while I'm traveling. That's my love language right there. How can I curate information and keep it all with me?
SPEAKER_00:The card decks, digital and physical.
SPEAKER_01:So what I'm hearing now is that you might be willing to come back again in the spring to if you'll have me and if it's useful, yeah, absolutely. Because I'm taking in all these new pieces of information that helps me improve my practice. But then how can I pass that on for administrators or instructional coaches or curriculum directors? But then again, the teachers thinking about what we can do for our students?
SPEAKER_00:And oh, yeah, this definitely it would go in both. So for the administrators, we have a monthly meeting. Okay, the effective meetings book will help you plan that time effectively. We know we have this one-off idea generation thing. Please don't do brainstorming. It's such a poor, inefficient, biased method of doing things. Use one of the 15 other methods, and they'll just be able to pull out one of these cards and say, all right, I want to spend five minutes on it, or I want to spend 35 minutes on it. Each of the cards tells you how many people are involved, how long it would take, what kind of outcome you can expect. And you can just quickly say, All right, I want something that's 10 minutes to come up with as many ideas as possible. Maybe you'll use crazy eights. That's always a fun one. Yeah. And the kids would love it as well, because if you're doing something where, I mean, pick a topic, but one of the sciences, you can ask a question as to how many different ways we can find the answer to this experiment. And they get 60 seconds or two minutes, and they can do it themselves, they can do it in pairs, they can do a quick write-down, pass it on, they can do stickies, they can do organization, and you can build that interactivity into the sessions. Assuming there's enough time, you have the materials set up, etc.
SPEAKER_01:And that could be the hook right away. Instead of, okay, today we're doing this. Start with a question. It's framed as a question. They know they're going to have a voice.
SPEAKER_00:It makes it more relevant. So the agenda is one of the most common pieces of advice. People who teach a consultant will be brought in to improve the meetings and so every meeting should have an agenda. I disagree with that. Agendas by themselves are not a valuable thing because usually it's budget, and Anne will talk about budget. Staffing and Steve will talk about staffing, and they'll get 10 minutes each. And that's the agenda. It's a label and a name and a time. That does not tell you the purpose, it doesn't tell you what you can contribute, it doesn't tell you what you're going to produce. So you write them as a question. It could be what are current budget requests for February? Anne will lead this section. That's much clearer what you're going to talk about for 10 minutes. But just turning it into a question makes things much easier. Also, before we go a step further, it means anybody can lead that meeting. Because if the person who plans the meeting knows what Anne is going to talk about in the budget section, but that person is then not available, no one else knows. And you end up with that awkward position of hi, I'm Chris. I'm covering for Mary Sue as she's out today. Anne, apparently you're going to talk about budget now. Like that's terrible. Whereas the question would mean, oh, sorry, Anne's going to lead us through the discussion of current budget requests. Anne, over to you. That does better.
SPEAKER_01:Tomorrow I'm meeting with teachers from two different high schools virtually for 45 minutes. And the purpose is to give them shared opportunity to talk about their SEL integration experiences. There's four pieces of our agenda. And now I am going back to reframe them as questions.
SPEAKER_00:Each piece can be written as TPO. What is the topic, purpose, and output? The first piece may be you're sharing information. The purpose is to make sure everyone has the same understandings. And by the end, we'll all know the base three things that we need for the rest of the workshop meeting session. That is a totally legitimate TPO, but it's very clear. And then what is the purpose and what is the output from each of those other topics as well? Thank you. You're welcome. Now it seems like I've given you extra work, but you sound being able to prepare.
SPEAKER_01:It's relevant to me and my goal of having my professional learning workshops. Thank you. I want to go back to these cards. So I'm a subscriber to your email list and your newsletter. Is that the place I can go to find out when these cards are available?
SPEAKER_00:Oh, you'll know. But there will be a big thing. So yes is the answer. I'm in the very exciting product design phase at the moment. My design is doing an amazing job of I'm not an artist. I'm very practical. I could not create these things. She's created an amazing set of cards. We're close to doing the first print. We're going to put them in the hands of real people to get feedback on the quality. Oh, it looks like a volunteer there. Please. Excellent. I will absolutely be in touch because you'll give a wonderful perspective in an environment that I don't work in. So if there's an extra way it can be involved, that would be brilliant. And then there's going to be a Kickstarter campaign. So there'll be a ton of info coming out, probably February, March time in 2026.
SPEAKER_01:Awesome. So for those of you who are listening now, I'm going to put it all the information for being able to access Chris, you directly, your website, your books. And please know that as soon as I find out about how to access these cards, I will add how you can get access. Chris, how can people get a hold of you when they're listening?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, absolutely. The best, the two places you can find me, ChrisFenning.com. That's my domain is my name. And then LinkedIn is my social hangout from the business side. So one of those two places. And if you ask me a question, you will get an answer. I respond to absolutely everything that comes in.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you so much. It has been such a pleasure to have you on and to learn from you again.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, thank you, Krista. It's been a real pleasure.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you for being part of the SEL in EVU family. As you move into the rest of your day, I invite you to notice one small way social emotional learning showed up in your thinking, your relationships, or your work. Until next time, take care of yourself and keep making space for meaningful connected learning.
