The best-run meetings are brief and focused. Such meetings happen by design—that means that they have a clearly defined mission, operating ground rules, and a well-organized agenda.
Mission
A shared understanding of the meeting’s purpose is critical. Attendees need to know why they are meeting. You might have an operating meeting that is held every second week, or perhaps you lead a crossfunctional team. Regardless of the purpose of the gathering, attendees have to know what it is.
Ground Rules
These are the guidelines by which the meeting is run. Among the questions that such ground rules should address are:
- Where and when will meetings be held?
- How will the need for emergency meetings be handled?
- How long will meetings last?
- How will decisions be reached?
- How will the team work with other groups within the organization?
- Who will be responsible for preparation of meeting minutes?
- Who will handle communication with senior management, if need be?
- How will the team handle conflicts and disagreements among its members?
- Will the team evaluate each session after the fact to help improve subsequent sessions?
As head of the meeting, it’s your task to lead the group in setting the ground rules. To stimulate discussion, you might raise some questions. For instance, you might ask, “What was a major problem with the last meeting you attended? What could we do to avoid that problem this time?” or, “How can we be sure that we stay focused on the agenda?” or, “What will enable us to manage the discussions without overcontrolling the flow of ideas or information?”
When attendees help write the meeting guidelines, they buy in more to the end result. Members who don’t follow the ground rules are likely to feel group displeasure, which for many is worse punishment than any one-on-one criticism from you.
Here are some sample ground rules.
- All meetings will begin and end on schedule.
- The position of chair will be rotated.
- Discussion time will be limited to that set on the agenda.
- Meetings will be held every second Tuesday, from 9:15 to 11:00 AM, in the conference room.
- Three days prior to the meeting, members will receive a copy of the agenda and any handouts. Members will be expected to read these before the meeting. Those who have not read supporting documents will not be allowed to participate in related discussions.
- The focus will be on issues, not personalities.
- Only one member will talk at a time.
- Decisions will be made by consensus.
- The group will evaluate each meeting to determine progress toward its objective and the quality of the meeting itself.
Part of your responsibility as meeting chair is to ensure that these rules are followed. If a member violates a rule, you may want to interrupt the session to remind the individual. Alternatively, you may want to speak to the person after the session.
You are responsible for the group following some rules. For instance, if the rules state that all meetings will start on time, you need to start all meetings on time—you shouldn’t wait for late arrivals, no matter who they are. To be sure that the session ends on schedule, you and the meeting participants should prepare the agenda so it includes sufficient time for discussing each topic. If a topic goes over the allotted time, you may want to ask the group if it would like to pick up on the subject at its next meeting or continue on the current topic and postpone another agenda item.
So guidelines give meetings the structure they need to ensure greater productivity.
Agenda
Preparation of the agenda is, ideally, the group’s responsibility, although initially you may have to put one together. If you’ve been invited to participate in a meeting and haven’t received an agenda, you should ask for one before making a commitment to be there.
A well-organized agenda specifies not only the date and place for the meeting, the starting and ending times, and the subject matter to be covered, but also the amount of time to be spent on each topic. When you allocate time to topics, you explicitly weight their relative importance. This ensures enough time—no more and no less—is spent on each subject.
The agenda should also note if guests are expected. It should describe who they are and their roles during the meeting, whether they will be there solely to hear and contribute to the discussion, or if they have been invited to make a presentation to the group.
If the participants need to be informed about a topic to discuss it intelligently, provide the information they need in advance of the meeting. To ensure that material gets read, include summaries at the start of lengthier documents to explain their worth. Flag or highlight key parts of documents. If possible, see that white space and headlines are liberally used in the documents. Also, use double spaced or one-and-one-half spaced typing to make handouts easy on the eyes.
These preparations are as important, if not more so, for electronic meetings and videoconferencing. Companies have found that virtual meetings can be cost- saving and time-saving alternatives to bringing together managers from diverse parts of the world to speak together. As telecommunications and intranet systems become more powerful, you can expect to participate or even put together a telephone conference call or online videoconference in the future. In that event, here are some further rules to follow.
- Be selective with information and avoid overload. Plan to cover fewer topics to provide sufficient time to cope with the complexity of the technology.
- Take into account global time differences when setting up meetings with participants from different regions of the world.
- Be sure that all attendees have handouts they will need for the meeting. If members find they need additional handouts, you can fax or e-mail them. Have fax numbers and e-mail addresses handy.
- In a telephone conference call, repeat your name when you first introduce yourself. Speak up clearly.
- If you are part of a videoconference, remember that those not in the room can see you and be mindful of body language and facial expressions.