In this episode of 5 Minutes With Andy, Virtual, Inc. CEO Andy Freed explains why the best leaders don’t just talk — they make space for others to join the conversation. Drawing on a theme from his upcoming book, Lead Like The Boss, Andy shows how sharing the mic turns passive listening into active participation — whether it’s a one-on-one, a board meeting, or a conference.

Andy covers:

• When to stop talking — and start listening.
• Agenda shifts that change the dynamic — and the outcome.
• How to spark engagement in the first minute — and keep it going.

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Hi. Welcome to Five Minutes With Andy. My name is Andy Freed. I'm the CEO of Virtual Incorporated. For the last 25 years, we've been helping organizations that are forming, growing, and changing as they make their mark on the world.

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You know, I talk a lot about Bruce Springsteen. And when you go to his concerts, it's not just Bruce that you hear. Sometimes you hear the folks around you as they're singing along. And that's not by accident. There are times during the show when Bruce takes the mic and points it out to the audience because he wants to hear from them. He wants to make them not just part of the audience, but in many ways, part of the show.

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Now, I compare that to a lot of board meetings that I go to. Sometimes you wind up having board meetings, and they’re less participatory, and they're more about just a dramatic reading of the pre-reads of folks who will show up, and then they'll deliver the pre-read PowerPoints, not even dramatically for two hours. As a board member, you're left saying, I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to do here.

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Because at the end of two hours of talking, if they just say, “Any questions?” — well, by that point, the honest truth is you're probably so deep into your email that you have no questions at all. If it's Zoom, who knows what you've been doing. If it's on Zoom and your camera’s off, you might not even be at your desk anymore.

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But when things are interactive, when you get people engaged, it's a real chance to be able to drive involvement and drive participation on another level. That's why, for me, one of the measures of any agenda that we pulled together for an organization for a board meeting is to see how fast we can take the microphone and take it away from just the presenter, but make sure that we're putting that microphone outward.

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If you remember in Good Will Hunting, Robin Williams said to Matt Damon, “There's nothing I could learn about you that I couldn't learn from some book.” Well, it's the same thing at some board meetings. I don't want it to be something I could just learn from the pre-reads. I want to learn from my other board members. I want to learn from the discussion. That's why making sure you're looking for those opportunities to be able to engage people is so important. Now that's not just in board meetings. That's not just in one on one meetings. It can also be in conferences. I love tools like Slido that let people participate. I love asking the questions of the audience, just get them engaged.

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One of the realities is, is that audiences sit down in the first minutes of a presentation or first minutes of a meeting. They'll quickly determine whether there's something where they're going to be just listening, or something where they're really engaging. And if you set the standard that you're going to engage them, the reality is they're going to listen that much more and listen that much more closely, because they know that they might be getting called upon to participate.

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That's what professors do. It's how the Socratic method has worked for years in schools. The idea of engaging people by asking them questions and making sure that they're not just part of the class, but they're part of the lesson. As leaders, we can do that all the time. So make sure that when you're communicating with folks, you're not just talking, but every now and then it's important to give a chance for them to speak and for you to listen.

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So how are you engaging the folks that you work with? There's a QR code on the screen. Click it and let me know different ways that you've been using to engage audiences that you work with. This has been Five Minutes With Andy. Hope you'll join us again by liking or subscribing. See you soon.

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