Julie from Scranton PA wrote to me a few weeks ago. We have been working this out one on one but the more I thought about her dilemma, the more I thought it was a good topic for the rest of this audience. Here it goes, meeting management.
Meeting management is a very visible part of your organizational skills. Everybody in your meeting will get a glimpse of these skills and will attribute the level of chaos to your ability to manage others. In the past few weeks I have seen several meetings go off the tracks, and one of them was my own so I needed to fall back and retrain myself.
I understand that in this day and age, time and schedule are tight, poorly managed meetings can kill your productivity, not to mention your attitude. Good successful meeting management is often the product of a well thought out plan. Phases of a meeting should be separated and planned to ensure you gain attain the expectation. Lets look at the three main (basic) phases.
Planning Phase: Plan, Plan, and Plan. Every meeting should be planned just like you would any other important event. (You wouldn’t just run out and wing it for your child’s 1st birthday would you?) Define the expected outcome, member interactions, agenda and timeline, topics, Q&A requirements, note taker and presenter roles to name a few. You need to deine the topics, their order and the time allocated to each one. How much time will be needed for Q&A? Publish an agenda with timelines. If possible ask someone that will be in the meeting to keep notes and the meeting on track.
Execution Phase: KEEP TO YOUR PLAN. The execution phase is about achieving your goal. Start the meeting no later than 3 minutes after the published time, waiting for the late ones is a complete disrespect of on-time attendees. Do not recap for late arrivals unless they are of a higher level on the corporate food chain. Any deviation from this will enable the exact behaviors you are tying to eliminate. Tell the attendees if you will be sending something out or not, whether they should take notes or just pay attention. Tell attendees if you want to address Q&A real time or in the end. If the latter ask them to kindly write their questions and present them in the “xx Min Q&A Session”. If you allow people to ask questions real time they may take you meeting in the wrong direction or at very least not let you finish your entire message.
In the beginning, state the objectives, timelines and expectations. Explain that to reach your goals the timelines are incredibly important and you will expect to close each topic at the prescribed time. Do not let the meeting run over; schedules are dependant on reaching your meeting goal on time. Always be respective of others time. Be patient with others as they work to understand your position or topic, they will be patient with you as well.
** Don’t let others in the meeting take you down a rat hole, this in itself is a major contributor to poorly managed meetings. The “Parking Lot” system is an effective way to stop individuals from taking over your meeting, but is incredibly ineffective at resolving issues. How many times have you actually went back and addressed these parked issues?
Closing Phase: Allow at least 5 minutes for closing, even without Q&A. Restate the objective and the outcome. Did you meet your expectations, if not why and how will you recover? (Suggestion: For the first few times you try this method, tell your attendees that the information they provided is very valuable and you and a small team of others will put it all together to meet the expected outcomes. Future meetings they will help you reach your goal.) Make sure you thank everyone for their input and tell them if you will be distributing anything defining the meeting and outcomes. Be sure to immediately send out anything that you said you would. This is more important than most people think.
It is important that each of the members understand how to be a good meeting attendee as well. Too often people will re-direct the discussion that kills your agenda and doesn’t allow you to meet your goal. You must be stern with these self-absorbed “meeting killers” , make it clear that you want to stay on track with the meeting agenda. If this persists stop inviting them to the meetings, when they ask explain that their disruption doesn’t allow you to meet the meeting goals and thought they were best served doing other things (you may want to be nicer).
A good book on making meetings work is ironically “How to make meetings work”, authors Michael Doyle and David Strauss. A great addition to any professional library.
Be the one that talks about how easy and productive your meetings are, everybody will want to be invited.
In the next update I will talk about an even more important message, how to be a good attendee.
Regards,
Coach.
Productivity
JeffA
Published on 05 June 2010
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