Meetings are a mainstay of working in groups. They can be held to arrive at a collective decision, generate ideas, receive status reports, planning etc. Whatever the reason, the purpose of all meetings is at its core the same – to establish an objective and seeing it through.
Meetings that do not establish an objective are prone to getting derailed and turning into bad meetings. You know you have had a bad meeting when it seems to have gone on for ages, you don’t have a clearer idea of the objective at hand than when you went in and you wonder what purpose was served by having it. An effective meeting on the other hand should make you feel accomplished and motivate you to hit the ground running for whatever lies ahead.
Whatever the purpose of a meeting, an effective one hits three criteria – it reaches the objective the meeting has established, it does not waste anyone’s time, participants leave with a better grasp of what’s at hand and what their tasks are going forward.
Unless you are the one convening the meeting, it is not easy to steer the meeting towards a valuable direction on your own if everyone else keeps being distractive. However, whether you are merely a participant or the moderator, following are a number of tips that may help ensure the aforementioned three criteria for running effective meetings are met.
Establishing objective
Establishing an objective for a meeting gives it a roadmap to follow, without which all participants would simply be making disorganised contributions with no direction. An effective meeting serves a purpose, meaning it aims to achieve a desired outcome. Establishing an objective is figuring out what this desirable outcome is.
To make sure a meeting is not being called to discuss things at random with no consideration of the ideal outcome, ask yourself the following questions. Does the meeting require a decision to be made? Is it to generate ideas or for everybody to update one another? Is there anything in specific that you have to communicate to the rest of the group? Is there going to be any planning involved? For the meeting to be an effective one, participants need to be clear about what the objective of the meeting is.
The answers to the questions posed, among a number of other possibilities, are examples of a meeting objective. Therefore, this step is necessary before calling a meeting or planning for it. Once you have the desired outcome clearly defined, it is easy to determine things like how long the meeting should be or who needs to be present and who can sit it out.
Making the most of time
Time is a finite resource, and ought to be treated like it. Every participant of a meeting owes it to the others to not waste time. If a meeting has ten attendants, one of whom wastes ten minutes, they have just cost the company an hour and a half in total.
In the previous step, the meeting’s objective has been established, and the rest of the meeting should be conducted accordingly to further this objective.
There are a number of ways to trim the fat around the edges and making sure time is utilised perfectly. For example, if the meeting is to troubleshoot a problem, participants should arrive with viable solutions already in mind instead of coming up with ideas during the meeting. It is important to figure out if there are required tasks that can be taken care of before the meeting begins and to attend to them.
When a meeting involves multiple talking points, it is essential to prioritise which ones must be covered before others. It is important to sequence them in a particular order, and to allocate sets of time for each point.
A common source of time loss is when individuals are invited to the meeting simply as figureheads, with little to contribute. The person calling the meeting should list necessary participants and leave out redundant names.
Apprising all participants
Meeting participants should come out of a meeting better informed than when they went in. To ensure this, a number of issues need to be taken into consideration. If you are moderating the meeting, make sure everyone is aware of the meeting’s agenda before the start of the meeting, so they can offer suggestions such as taking items off the list or adding to it. If you are a participant, try to understand what the objective of the meeting is and at the end ask yourself if you recognise what your steps are to be, going forward.
Meetings often get unbalanced by certain individuals dominating the discussion time, but an effective meeting provides time to all participants for their contribution. At the end of each topic, one participant should summarise the discussion and repeat what deliverables are expected off which individual. All participants should agree it is a fair summary.
One participant must be assigned to keep note of all tasks generated during the meeting, and who has been assigned which. This person should ideally compile a meeting summary, and provide a copy for all participants and any other member concerned. This is a crucial step to making a meeting effective, one that often gets overlooked.
The success of a meeting can be measured against the completion of the meeting objective originally established.m
