Please stop leading with “we” in meetings

Have you ever spent an hour (maybe even hours) of your life sitting in a meeting only to leave with less clarity about what the next steps are?  

Have you had multiple meetings, conversations, and email threads about the same project with a ton of repetition and redundancy, yet no apparent progress is being made?

Is nothing specific is ever assigned to you in meetings, but somehow you still end up executing ideas that you didn’t even suggest?  

You, my friend, have got a “we” problem. 

A “we” problem is what happens when a team or organization engages in a pattern of assigning new ideas, projects and endeavors to everyone and nobody at the same time. Suggested responsibility is just clear enough to gain approval while being just vague enough to kill productivity.

The thing is that this problem usually starts as a quest for solutions. The “we” pattern typically forms when an organization decides to begin brainstorming in meetings without an actual process for the communication and implementation of new ideas. 

Maybe it starts when a manager hears the advice that they should be soliciting innovative input from their team. So they do! Until this point, success in meetings was measured by progress updates. Now the staff is not only encouraged to generate new ideas, they are assessed on their ability to do so.

As a result, a tentative energy creeps into the meetings. Does a good idea mean that it will immediately be implemented? What even constitutes a good idea? What if someone suggests an idea that creates more work for their colleagues? What if someone suggests an idea that creates more work for themselves?

Enter the grand “we.”

“We should explore new programming that attracts new audiences.”

“What if we launched an expanded marketing initiative around this event?”

“I think we need to create a process to better onboard people onto the team.”

All of these ideas may be valid, and even exactly what the organization needs. But they all raise the question….

“Who’s we?”

“We” could be anybody or nobody. Usually, the work suggested in “we” land either remains in a suspended limbo, or falls to the person least practiced in shoving work off onto others. So while the work might eventually get done, the credit and acknowledgement is diffused across the group. And the cycle continues on.

The good news? Stopping the “we” cycle is wildly simple. The next time you’re in a meeting and someone makes a “we” suggestion, be sure to ask “who specifically will be responsible for taking lead on this?” 

Seriously, it’s just that easy. It might feel a little awkward at first, but you raising that question a few times will eventually create a cultural shift towards clarity.

The “we” problem is only a problem as long as it remains silent and unseen. As soon as you spot it, you can stop it, and save you and your colleagues hours of confusion, anxiety, and tension.