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Here are some practical tips for how you can enhance the quality, productivity and outcomes of the meetings you choose to hold.
1.Before calling for a meeting, think about its real purposeanddefine what you want to accomplish. If you don’t feel the purpose or likely outcomes are adequate, then don’t hold the meeting.
2. Develop a solid agenda in advance, and ensure each item on the agenda supports your defined purpose and helps move you toward the desired outcomes.
3. As the meeting leader, be prepared. Treat your meeting time like the precious commodity it is, and that means no winging it!
“Time is your most precious gift because you only have a set amount of it.” —Rick Warren
4. Invite only those who need to be at the meeting and can contribute. You want to have the optimum (not maximum) number of appropriate people. Make sure the right people are there and the wrong people are not. Note that fewer people typically means more engagement and ownership.
5. Allow people to enter and leave any portions of the meeting that are relevant to them. It’s possible that only a certain part of your meeting will be relevant to a specific person at a given time. If so, then invite them for that part of the meeting, and allow them to go when not needed.
6. Balance out involvementto ensure everyone participates, everyone is heard, and no one dominates the meeting. Don’t allow anyone to drift or mentally check out.
7. Engage peopleand their unique perspectives, drawing out their individual and collective gifts and wisdom.
“For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. …” (Romans 12:4-6 NIV).
“As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God's varied grace” (1 Peter 4:10 ESV).
8. Focus on interactive conversation and collaboration, not just information sharing and data reporting.
9. Only one person speaks at a time. Eliminate interruptions and don’t allow unnecessary “sidebar” conversations, tangents, pontification, and other fillers, distractions and time-wasters. Ask everyone in the meeting to help each other stay on track with the central topic and get to the point when talking. If a good idea or question emerges outside the core topic, capture it in “parking lot” notes for future reference and follow-up.
10. Promote active listening, and ask each person to agree to key discussion points only if it makes sense for them to do so.
11. Encourage honest feedback and constructive disagreement,all while maintaining a spirit of mutual respect. Participants should feel comfortable in freely sharing their thoughts, while always remembering to challenge topics, positions, and information, not people.
“Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, dignity, and sound speech that cannot be condemned…” (Titus 2:7-8 ESV).
12. Use meetings as opportunities to build relationships and enhance trust.Be open-minded in order to engage different perspectives and explore all possibilities. Seek collaboration and joint decision-making as much as possible.
13. Manage your meeting time wisely. Make sure everyone is on time (especially the leader), start the meeting on time, monitor the meeting’s length (shorter is better) and always end on time.
14. After-meeting follow-up and action are critical. Identify and discuss the specific actions to be pursued as you wrap up the meeting. Anticipate possible challenges and discuss ways to overcome them. Check for each person’s commitment to their action plan. Document and review next steps and assign to people to own and follow-up on them. Who will do what and by when?
“All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty” (Proverbs 14:23 NIV).
Meetings can be places where you gain clarity, make better decisions, enhance engagement, develop new leaders and identify appropriate actions—all of which can connect people more deeply to the organization’s vision and purpose, align individual thoughts and efforts, advance progress and ultimately fuel success.
Photo source: istock
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