Research shows that a great percentage of meetings are
run poorly, resulting in huge losses of time and
productivity. I believe that there are three main
reasons that meetings continue to leave us wanting:
1) We underestimate the complexity of group thought.
2) Few of us are trained in meeting facilitation skills.
3) Boggled by group complexity and lacking requisite
skills, we fall into dysfunctional patterns, failing to
do anything to change meeting dynamics.
Given that there are eight times more participants than
there are meeting leaders in your average group,
targeting meeting leaders alone to improve meetings may
be missing the mark. What if we were to arm meeting
participants with the basic knowledge, skills, and
attitudes they could use to keep their groups on track
and moving forward? The 12 Acts below were written to do
just that, and to frame leadership as a quality anyone
can exercise, no matter what their official position.
Meetings used to be a way of discussing important issues.
Meetings took place in our personal lives, as well as during our
day of work. Seminars, conventions, conferences, or simply,
gatherings and discussions -- various kinds of meetings offered
people a chance to have their say. In the days gone past, people
would necessarily have to assemble at a specified place. But
then, that was back in the days when people with similar needs
and topics of discussion lived in close proximity to each other.
Those who lived far away would most likely have different
attitudes and varying needs to take care of.
Now, jet across to the present day. Times sure have changed. We
are constantly in touch with people who live not just in
different towns and cities but in different time zones, and on
different continents. We can no longer claim that people who
live miles apart have nothing in common. The various social
networking websites that dominate our lives suggest the
contrary. We share many interests with people of varied
backgrounds who live across the oceans.
I had big plans for this column. I was going to write about an exciting,
engaging, energizing, enlightening, adjective-filled topic. But
something happened to change all that -- something that had all the
pleasantness of major abdominal surgery.
I attended a meeting.
More accurately: I was imprisoned in a meeting. It lasted two painful
hours, during which I became convinced that the laws of physics had
somehow broken down and caused an actual stopping of time. It was that
bad.
Millions of people are similarly locked down in time-wasting
get-togethers each and every working day. According to a recent survey
conducted by BetterWorkplaceNow.com, people spend an average of nine
hours each week in meetings. That's nearly 500 hours a year -- and who
knows how many aspirins.
So while meetings aren't the most exciting topic, they're important
because they fill up so much of our time. Even a few improvements here
or there can translate into sessions that get more done more quickly and
cause fewer headaches for everyone.
Don't
allow phones in a meeting room
From the Desk of Time & Productivity Specialist Robyn
Pearce
A very large
international IT company asked for a course on 'How to run effective meetings'.
It was the weirdest session I've ever run; a brilliant example of how not
to run meetings. The trouble was, the CEO had a different work ethic to the rest
of the company. She'd been sent to Australia from the States to do the job, and
had no family in the country. Her work was her life and she expected her
managers to behave in the same way.
The session was a bun
fight! People came and went like yoyos, phones rang constantly, and although
everyone had chosen to come, the activities of a number of the group were so
(unintentionally) disruptive that it minimised the learning of the rest.
Prepare a written agenda for your meeting.Make sure that everyone at the meeting is aware of it, and if necessary,
have the meeting agree to it.Then
you can refer to the agenda to keep discussion focused.
International meetings made easier
Emailing members of your organisation in other parts of the world
has become second nature these days, but it is not so easy to set up a meeting
when they are all in different time zones.
Here is a device that makes it easier.
Go to
www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/meeting.html and enter the various
cities. The website will then produce a table that shows you the local time in
each city. Each cell in the table is color-coded as follows:
· RED represents nighttime or normal sleeping hours.
· YELLOW represents the second half of the day, when people are awake but not
necessarily at work.
· GREEN represents the first half of the day, when most people are at work.
Search the table for the rows where most or all of the colors are green. You'll
then know the best time to schedule your call.
Sit
where you can be seen. Place yourself with the most powerful people, so
you get the halo effect. If you are presenting, face them. Sit in the
middle of the row, not the end, to maximise your contact with the other
people at the meeting. At a table, sit the head of the table. These
are external symbols of validation.
If you want to have more effective meetings, first
you have to learn the basics. Here are some simple,
easy-to-follow and proven guidelines that should be
followed each and every time your group meets.
Print this page. Hang it on your meeting room wall.
Write the guidelines on a poster. Memorize them by
heart. Do whatever it's going to take to improve your
meetings!
Guidelines you
and your group can follow before, during and after your
meeting
If
you want everyone's opinion, take note of those who have said nothing.
When everyone is quiet, ask those people for their ideas.
Make
Meetings work for you
This eBook
gives you the secrets of organising your
meetings so that they are more efficient and
more effective.
Save time and money - yours
and the company's.
You
can be part of meetings that run well.
Learn how to use those meetings to work for your
own outcomes, to be a team player and to
establish your image.
Discover the basics of parliamentary
procedure that you can use to make meetings work
for you, whether you are chairing the meeting or
participating.
Learn effective
presentation techniques so that you can communicate
your message and your image effectively.
When collaborating about work to be done, how would you rate online
meetings in your company? ¨
Less than face-to-face.
About the same as face-to-face.
Better than face-to-face.
No
online meeting will be as warm and comfortable as meeting face to face,
such as to go out to lunch together or meet after work. But when people
collaborate about the work, if your virtual meetings aren't at least as
collaborative as face to face, or even better, then you could be missing
a 36 percent increase in performance of people that do. (Meetings Around
the World, 2006)
Does it feel like you
spend all your volunteer time, or time at the office in meetings? You know, the
endless meetings, the ones that frustrate everyone and accomplish little. This
is a common complaint among workers and volunteers, of all types and levels.
Does it have to be this way? I do not believe so. Here are some guidelines for
conducting a productive and as short as is practical meeting.
Remember the last time you were in
a meeting and someone said something that seemed completely off-track? What
happened next? If your group is like most, someone probably said something
like, “Dan, that’s off-track” or “Let’s get back on track.”, or simply
ignored Dan’s comment. As a result, Dan may have checked out for the rest of
the meeting or continued to press his “off-track” point. The meeting may
have dragged on with members getting more frustrated with Dan or you may
have lost Dan’s critical input and support without realizing it. There is a
way to avoid these negative outcomes – I’ll get to that later.
Skillful facilitation can significantly improve your meetings. And, your
brilliant product idea will actually have a chance! Effective facilitation will
not only rev up your company’s meetings, with patience it will lead to a more
collaborative way of making decisions.
Billions of dollars are wasted each
year because of poorly managed business meetings. We've all been to them; those
meetings where we begin lamenting in the first five minutes that "this is going
to be a long meeting", or those where as the facilitator rambles on, we
wonder "why am I here?" These types of poorly run meetings are typically the
result of poor preparation.
With today's high stress of lots to do
and not enough time to do it in corporate environments, managers skimp on the
preparation for meetings; they don't "think it through." Adequate preparation,
which takes some but not much time, can keep a meeting on track and on time. The
key components are setting appropriate goals for the meeting, setting a
preliminary agenda with timeframes, and preparing meeting participants.
What You Can Accomplish in 6 Minutes
Your meetings will be more
powerful, persuasive, and memorable if you keep your presentations to
six minutes or less. The idea, says Ron Hoff in his book Say it in Six, is that by using fewer words, each one
carries more weight.
Think
about some of the most memorable speeches ever made. Lincoln's Gettysburg
Address took less than three minutes to deliver. Lou Gehrig's famous farewell
speech lasted just two minutes. On the day Nelson Mandela was released from
prison in South Africa (after 27 years), his speech that marked the end of
apartheid (see "Word to the Wise," below) lasted only five minutes. Winston
Churchill's famous "Never Give Up" speech took six minutes, and many of his
other speeches were even shorter.
While meetings are wonderful
tools for generating ideas, expanding on thoughts and managing group activity,
this face-to-face contact with team members and colleagues can easily fail
without adequate preparation and leadership.
Article
continues
Meeting success
Tip - Is your meeting necessary?
Before you go
ahead with your meeting, ask "Is this meeting necessary?" Look
at alternatives in terms of cost effectiveness, what need is to be filled, more
effective formats, levels of accountability and the possibility of using policy
or procedure checklists instead.
Conducting Power-Packed Meetings
That people will love attending!
Hugh’s 10 secrets for Group Synergy Conducting Power-Packed Meetings
1. Clearly state the purpose for the meeting.
2. Plan the meeting thoroughly
3. Identify the leader/moderator/facilitator of
the meeting
5. Design ways to prompt input from each attendee
6. Create a group list of “norms” for process together
7. Record the group’s information where all can see
8. Review the entire agenda for the session at the beginning
9. Stay in control of the meeting
10. Do not adjourn without setting accountability standards
Hugh Ballou
is a Speaker, Trainer and Motivator. He outlines ways to implement
these secrets in his document
List key topics
