Deanna Doss Shrodes

  Dustin moved out on Sunday night. I always expected I would break down and sob when this happened. Instead, I was too preoccupied with the tasks at hand, to have a meltdown. I'm sure Dustin was grateful. Since there was only a day to get the room ready for Lexi and Brody to move in, I had to get busy. Everyone knows how much I adore Dustin. Not that I don't adore all my kids, for I do! However, everyone remarks about how much Dustin and I are alike and it's true.  We are both INFJ's. Musicians. Poets. Preachers. Writers. We both crave quiet spaces and places. Being away from noise. Out in the woods. Books. We are hard working people. (Neither of us can stand laziness.) We both go to the wall for what we believe. We'd die for it. We're both deeply introspective introverts. We interact with people when we need to in order to lead. Because we can't help but lead. It's in our blood. In our bones. We came out of the womb

“Avoid meetings, if you can…they are a waste of time.”  I’ve heard some prominent leaders say this. Some people are part of the school of thought that meetings have little value, failing to produce anything significant. My experience with meetings is that they are a key factor of success over my years of leadership. My pattern as a leader has always been to clearly establish a purpose for meetings and make sure initiatives are developed before we adjourn. Then, I inspect what I expect over the coming weeks and months. When I became leader of the current team I serve with, it became clear we would need some new guidelines to have successful meetings and make the reaching of our goals a reality.   I was thankful when Joy Conley, one of our team members, shared the idea of  "Group Norms" with us. Group Norms are the four rules of every meeting that Joy utilizes in her teacher meetings at the public school where she serves a teacher trainer. We tried Group Norms and hav