4-Step Model for Productive, Whole-Brained Meetings

To run effective meetings it is helpful to have insights into the personality types of your colleagues using a tool like, DISC, which you can access for free here, Myers Briggs which you can access for free here, and Neethling Brain Instrument (NBI).  

This was the tool of choice at a recent workshop I attended led by Coaching Psychologist Yaron Prywes (@Yaron321) who specializes in innovation. He selected this tool, because unlike some of the others with many types this one has four basic personality types to focus on connected to left brain and right brain thinking. The test costs about $30 per person, but if that’s not in your budget, you can look at an overview of personality types from a resource such as this article from Success Reboot.

From here you can identify these four personality types:

• Right Brain 1 - Big Picture Thinkers
• Right Brain 2 - Interpersonal Connectors
• Left Brain 1 - Analyzers
• Left Brain 2 - Implementers

If you want to quickly get a sense of the personality types of the people on your team, let them read the descriptions of each and have them determine those with which they most identify. The most high performing teams have a distribution of types, but it is important to note that most people have strengths in more than one quadrant, so even if one of the types is not their “most” dominant they may be able to pull from a quadrant that is close to it.

For example, I took the test and was R1 dominant (score of 82) with L2 (score of 76) as my next highest. So, I am someone who might be good at tasks in either of those quadrants.

Once you know the personalities in the meeting, you have the elements necessary for conducting what Yaron described as a whole-brained meeting.

That allows you to move to this four-step meeting model where all brain types are recognized for their strengths and each member has a purpose.

Here are the types of questions each dominate brain type will be good at addressing:

• L1: What does success look like?
• R1: How we are going to solve a problem?
• R2: Who needs to be there?
• L2: What is the plan and what is the timeline?

Next time you have a meeting, try putting this four-step model into place and see if it increases the effectiveness and productivity in your meetings.