The right way to do a town hall

Last week, I saw a really cool Town Hall meeting. And no, that is not an oxymoron . . . though I've sat through enough boring Town Halls to start to believe it might be.

This CEO was terrific. Down to earth, funny, honest . . .and not afraid to tackle the tough questions. And he also did a couple of little things that really made a difference:

· He wasn't introduced. That's right, rather than have the plant manager (the Town Hall was at 5 in the morning, for about 200 third shift workers at a glass-making facility) get up and treat the CEO like a celebrity with a long, windy introduction, the CEO just grabbed the mic and started talking. Establishing right away as a down-to-earth guy.

· He swore a couple of times. That's right, he cursed. He said the occasional 'bullshit,' and referred to 'kicking the competition's ass.' Since that is exactly how most of the people in the audience talk, it really resonated with the crowd.

· He refused to ramble. In fact, he insisted that the audience not let him ramble. At the beginning of the meeting, he told the crowd he wanted to give them an industry update before moving to the Q&A—but he wanted a volunteer who would raise her hand if he took too long with his update. A woman volunteered, the CEO took too long, she raised her hand, he stopped in mid-sentence and started answering questions. What a brilliant masterstroke: give the audience power over the content of the Town Hall.

· He didn't play footsies with the local leadership. One of the tough questions came from a line worker who was pulling all kinds of overtime, working seven days a week. When he asked when it was going to end, the CEO kicked it over to the plant manager, who fumbled through a bullshit response about falling behind because two trucks got stuck in a snowstorm and blah blah blah. But he ducked the main question: when would it end? When the CEO took the mic back, he said, 'You sound like Bush . . . no exit strategy.' Then he made the manager commit to getting a hard date by the end of the day. And he did.

I don't know if these little things would have mattered if the CEO was a jerk to begin with . . . but I know that they helped make an already good communicator a lot better.