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Meetings
What's Wrong With Our Meetings?
There are very many things wrong with our meetings. Conventional efforts to address them usually involve attempting more of the same, better - or run into non-productive arguments. To help you become quite specific about what happens at your meetings, scan this list. I've generated it over many years of listening to people complain about Meetings, bloody meetings! and from questioning them about what they actually notice when they pay close attention. Regard the list as one that could help you to become very specific about problem events, the first step in productive problem solving.
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A Meeting Planner (Template and Illustration)
A competently facilitated meeting in which focus, energy, creative thinking and group achievements are high is much more than a tool for efficiency and effectiveness; it is also a powerful strategy for enhancing people's development. This (MS Word) template serves as a guide to implementing other suggestions in this section, and should be read in conjunction with Planning Successful Meetings (see below).
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Planning Successful Meetings
When a meeting begins with a vague plan capable of differing interpretations, whether or not what is done is relevant, important, right, or whether where, when and how it is approached it is appropriate, are matters open to confusion and irresolvable argument. That this is so often the case partially explains why meetings are amongst people's least preferred and organisations' most inefficient activities. The foundation of a successful meeting is a simple, methodical plan.
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Making Full Participation in Meetings Possible
The main prerequisite of people's full and mature participation at meetings is their own sense of security or safety. Providing for that is more of an art than a science but there are specific techniques which have the desired effect. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs helps us to understand the psychology behind them and their place within the meeting process.
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Meetings: the Challenge and the Potential
The customarily wasted human energy that detracts from efficiency and effectiveness in every organisation is nowhere more clearly evident than during their meetings. This discussion paper discusses the problem and introduces generic pre-requisites of constructive meetings, designed to direct improvement efforts.
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Paying Attention at Meetings
By having someone attend a regular workplace meeting, briefed to observe and later report on the meeting’s process without participating in any other way, a group can easily identify some of the obstacles to success as a precursor to incrementally improving its meeting strategy. Here’s what I reported to a client group when asked to take up this role, and some “start here” tips.
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Ground Rules for Meetings
Ground rules are guidelines for participants' behaviour at meetings. They create an environment of purposefulness and safety, help keep activities focused, anxiety low, and encourage full participation.
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Applying the Ground Rules at Meetings
A meeting's facilitator (its chairperson or leader) is the guardian of progress and process, within the agreed boundaries. Where ground rules have been set, the facilitator also has a responsibility to remind people of their existence, apply them to the proceedings, and. model and reinforce them. Otherwise they are meaningless.
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Monitoring Meetings to Improve Them
Meetings are systematically enhanced when participants periodically monitor them against pre-set KPIs. This feedback serves as a basis for improvement, and encourages people to pay attention to both Task and Process (What and How) - an important part of improving efficiency and effectiveness of any group/workplace project. Start with these, and eventually discard those routinely scored high. Contact me for a simple method of reporting back.
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All material on this site is © 2007 Tom Watkins.
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