How can meetings be more effective

In other words, a large number of ad hoc meetings means that your company has an unhealthy need for coordination. Maybe this need could be eliminated by giving people more power to make decisions? Telecommuting is great: no need to travel to work and back home, and virtual meetings are usually efficient. But be careful: choose only a few, very specific topics for virtual meetings. A complex agenda will not work. When choosing the attendees, do not look at the organizational chart or job titles.

Think about actual impact. Who do you need to have at the meeting in order to make decisions? Do you know someone to be opposed to the issue? Include them as well. People say that they hate meetings—but take offense if they are not invited. You can always say that you simply wanted to save their precious time. In my experience, you should not have more than eight people at an efficient meeting.

You can have more only if yo u plan the meeting well and work in smaller groups. Want more tips for making your meetings more effective? Check out our Digital Facilitation Playbook. Topics workshop facilitation. The number of virtual events is growing at a pace, especially because of the restrictions and challenges associated with organizing physical events.

This means that a growing number of Facilitation is a craft that requires many very different types of expertise. The best facilitators know how to pick and choose the right skills and methods for any situation, which often happens Howspace is based on 20 years of change management consulting experience. After a few meetings, all present readily understand this nonverbal language of chairmanship. He is still the servant of the group, but like a hired mountain guide, he is the one who knows the destination, the route, the weather signs, and the time the journey will take.

So if he suggests that the members walk a bit faster, they take his advice. This role of servant rather than master is often obscured in large organizations by the fact that the chairman is frequently the line manager of the members: this does not, however, change the reality of the role of chairman. The point is easier to see in, say, a neighborhood action group. The question is: How can the chairman combine his role with the role of a member advocating one side of an argument?

The answer comes from some interesting studies by researchers who sat in on hundreds of meetings to find out how they work. If he wants a particular point to be strongly advocated, he ensures that it is someone else who leads off the task discussion, and he holds back until much later in the argument. Then, he can summarize in favor of the one he prefers. On some subjects, the chairman might well be the task advocate himself, especially if they do not involve conflict within the group.

A subject is raised, people say what they think, and finally a decision is reached, or the discussion is terminated. There is some truth in this. Moreover, it would be a mistake to try and tie every discussion of every item down to a single immutable format. Nevertheless, there is a logical order to a group discussion, and while there can be reasons for not following it, there is no justification for not being aware of it.

In practice, very few discussions are inhibited, and many are expedited, by a conscious adherence to the following stages, which follow exactly the same pattern as a visit to the doctor. But until the visit to the doctor, or the meeting of the European marketing committee, that is about all we really know.

The doctor will start with a case history of all the relevant background facts, and so will the committee discussion. A solid basis of shared and agreed-on facts is the best foundation to build any decision on, and a set of pertinent questions will help establish it. For example, when did French sales start to fall off? Have German sales risen exceptionally? Has France had delivery problems, or less sales effort, or weaker advertising?

If the answers to all these questions, and more, are not established at the start, a lot of discussion may be wasted later. The doctor will then conduct a physical examination to find out how the patient is now. The committee, too, will want to know how things stand at this moment. Is action being taken? Do long-term orders show the same trend? What are the latest figures?

What is the current stock position? How much money is left in the advertising budget? When the facts are established, you can move toward a diagnosis. A doctor may seem to do this quickly, but that is the result of experience and practice. He is, in fact, rapidly eliminating all the impossible or far-fetched explanations until he leaves himself with a short list. Again, the doctor is likely to take a shortcut that a committee meeting may be wise to avoid.

The doctor comes out with a single prescription, and the committee, too, may agree quickly on a single course of action. But if the course is not so clear, it is better to take this step in two stages: a construct a series of options—do not, at first, reject any suggestions outright but try to select and combine the promising elements from all of them until a number of thought-out, coherent, and sensible suggestions are on the table; and b only when you have generated these options do you start to choose among them.

Then you can discuss and decide whether to pick the course based on repackaging and point-of-sale promotion, or the one based on advertising and a price cut, or the one that bides its time and saves the money for heavier new-product promotion next year. If the item is at all complex or especially significant, it is important for the chairman not only to have the proposed course of the discussion in his own head, but also to announce it so that everyone knows.

A good idea is to write the headings on an easel pad with a felt pen. The essence of this task is to follow the structure of discussion as just described in the previous section. This, in turn, entails listening carefully and keeping the meeting pointed toward the objective. At the start of the discussion of any item, the chairman should make it clear where the meeting should try to get to by the end.

Are the members hoping to make a clear decision or firm recommendation? Is it a preliminary deliberation to give the members something to go away with and think about? Are they looking for a variety of different lines to be pursued outside the meeting?

Do they have to approve the proposal, or merely note it? The chairman should make sure that all the members understand the issue and why they are discussing it. Often it will be obvious, or else they may have been through it before. If not, then he or someone he has briefed before the meeting should give a short introduction, with some indication of the reason the item is on the agenda; the story so far; the present position; what needs to be established, resolved, or proposed; and some indication of lines of inquiry or courses of action that have been suggested or explored, as well as arguments on both sides of the issue.

He has to head discussion off sterile or irrelevant areas very quickly e. If he does not follow an argument or understand a reference, he should seek clarification from the speaker. If he thinks two people are using the same word with different meanings, he should intervene e.

He may also have to clarify by asking people for facts or experience that perhaps influence their view but are not known to others in the meeting. And he should be on the lookout for points where an interim summary would be helpful.

This device frequently takes only a few seconds, and acts like a life belt to some of the members who are getting out of their depth. Sometimes a meeting will have to discuss a draft document. If there are faults in it, the members should agree on what the faults are and the chairman should delegate someone to produce a new draft later.

The group should never try to redraft around the table. Perhaps one of the most common faults of chairmanship is the failure to terminate the discussion early enough. Sometimes chairmen do not realize that the meeting has effectively reached an agreement, and consequently they let the discussion go on for another few minutes, getting nowhere at all.

Even more often, they are not quick enough to close a discussion before agreement has been reached. A discussion should be closed once it has become clear that a more facts are required before further progress can be made, b discussion has revealed that the meeting needs the views of people not present, c members need more time to think about the subject and perhaps discuss it with colleagues, d events are changing and likely to alter or clarify the basis of the decision quite soon, e there is not going to be enough time at this meeting to go over the subject properly, or f it is becoming clear that two or three of the members can settle this outside the meeting without taking up the time of the rest.

The fact that the decision is difficult, likely to be disputed, or going to be unwelcome to somebody, however, is not a reason for postponement. At the end of the discussion of each agenda item, the chairman should give a brief and clear summary of what has been agreed on. This can act as the dictation of the actual minutes. It serves not merely to put the item on record, but also to help people realize that something worthwhile has been achieved.

This lets people know what to expect and can help table side discussions. And if you can have a designated facilitator to keep things humming along, even better. Sources: Lynda.

On the day of the meeting, try to make the most of it by preparing people to really listen. You can do this in various ways:. Instead, think of inclusivity as a mindset. By removing the power structure from the room, as Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull did in his meetings , you remove a stumbling block on the path to creativity.

There are many ways to keep people engaged and involved. For teams with people working remotely, you can beam them in via video conferencing for valuable face time.

Learn how to build a more connected, secure, and productive workforce with a single, scalable platform. You might even have the entire group join remotely from their desks. This is something we do at Atlassian, even if even one person is remote.

It puts everyone on a level playing field and encourages more balanced participation. Plus, nobody likes being the giant head on the TV screen at the front of the room.

Known as psychological safety, this is one of the leading indicators of a high-performing team. And what is a group of people in a meeting, if not a temporary team? As the meeting organizer and facilitator, you have a chance to lead by example and be the first to broach a controversial topic or offer an unusual perspective or idea.

You can also build trust by asking questions that prompt a deeper discussion , even when you think you know the answer. The only introvert … the only person from finance … the person who just started last week. Your job now is to take advantage of that diversity by making sure everyone is and feels heard. Ask the new hire how things look from their still-fresh point of view.

Encourage the lone representative from finance to share how the decision would affect their team. If one person starts to dominate the meeting, ask them to take over the role of capturing notes on the whiteboard.

This transitions them into listening mode and gives the rest of the group a better chance to discuss their perspective.

You crafted an agenda designed to achieve the goal. Now stay the course!