May 8, 12:39 pm
Three tips for effective meetings
Most people hate meetings. And for good reason — most people have never been taught how meetings work best. Why should meetings occur? What should be their end result? So many people get frustrated about meetings that Patrick Lencioni penned a best-selling book, Death by Meeting (which I highly recommend).
I’m not going to summarize his book here (you can read that at Amazon.com), but I do want to point out a few things I’ve personally learned about meetings over the years –
1. Like time management, meetings are like ink blots. What looks like a good meeting format for one group can be a very poor format for another. One size does not fit all.
2. Much time is wasted in meetings by the presentation of information. Overviews, reviews, and summaries can be presented prior to a meeting via group e-mail or internal blogs. Problem: Too many people don’t take time to read these time-saving communications. The real issue isn’t lack of communication, but lack of discipline.
3. Another time killer is the policy of making sure everyone addresses the issues on the table. Every team member should have the right to challenge anything on the table without being personally rebuked, but such participation should not be mandatory.
One more thing — clearly identify the purpose of each meeting. Detailed screening and hiring policies should not be discussed in a corporate strategy meeting. Budgeting issues for marketing should not be discussed at an engineering meeting. You get the picture. Keep people focused on the issue at hand, decide what needs to be decided, and call the meeting to a close.
Having a meeting with no clearly identify the purpose for simply for passing along information is pretty much a waste of time.
Solution: Train everyone who has the authority to call meetings on how to run effective meetings. And make it mandatory. Letting even one person off the hook devalues the training.
Even more beneficial: Periodically evaluate the quality of meetings. Whether it’s quarterly or semi-annually, survey employees to see what they like and don’t like about how people are running meetings.
Books that may help:
Filed in Work, Business, Training, Management, Leadership, Workplace, Train the Trainer, Meetings
I heard a really good tip, but never seen it implemented personally:
Take out the chairs and make it a stand up meeting only.
This will encourage people make their points succinct and get to the heart of the matter. Peole who have seen this technique in action have said participants do not feel they have wasted their time.