Conducting Excellent Meetings

As a business professional, are you always in meetings? Are you double-booked throughout the day? Do your meetings always seem to go past the scheduled time frame? Are you prepared for your meeting? Do you ever get to talk, or are you talking too much in those meetings? Do you ever leave a meeting saying, 'That was a waste of my time?' Do you fall asleep during the meeting or easily distracted? Do you find yourself planning for the next meeting o doing work unrelated to the topic of the meeting? If you have experienced any of these 'symptoms', the meeting was ineffective, for you and everyone else.

Few people will argue the importance of communication; but in our modern business environment, the importance of particular 'meetings' can be argued. To clarify, a meeting is any gathering of two or more people for the purpose of communicating face-to-face, or in a virtual space. The success or failure of the meeting is highly dependent on how effective the message of the meeting is disseminated; however, how often do you attend meetings where the message is unclear or missing. Meetings should be well-controlled and brief. They should facilitate action; that is, you should be able to walk out of the meeting with action items on your to-do list or knowing that others have action items that will complete. Ironically though, how can anyone complete their action items when they are consistently scheduled in meetings?

Five Basic Meeting Types

In general, there are five types of meetings:
- Planning meetings
- Informational meetings
- Training meetings
- Status meetings
- Working meetings

Planning meetings are typically scheduled at the beginning of an extended activity, like a project or production run. The intent of the meeting is to review the requirements, identify the activities, and allocate resources. The duration and complexity of the meeting is dependent on preparation and size of the project and can be as short as a couple of hours and as long as a few days. There are two mindsets to take in scheduling planning meetings: either the group is creating a plan or they are agreeing to a plan. Both mindsets are valid, but they should never be combined: that is, a single planning meeting should never be designed to create and agree to a plan. The result of combining the two intents will often be a weak plan with little consideration of the risks and issues affecting the area being planned.

Informational meetings are intended to pass on information considered vital to the participants. While effective communications assumes two-way communication, informational meetings can easily be one-sided. In reality, informational meetings are usually poorly planned and conducted: they are typically scheduled when someone needs to communicate a message and a meeting becomes the shortcut for communicating to the masses. As a general rule of thumb, if a message can be communicated by some other means, do not schedule a meeting. If a meeting is necessary, ensure everyone participating in the meeting is prepared.
The benefit of the informational meeting is the feedback to the message. Reviews are prime examples of informational meetings are poorly planned: that because the subject of the review is often provided to the participants at the time of the meeting. In most cases, a review of any subject cannot be completed effectively within an hour meeting. Provide the materials to be reviewed 24 hours in advance of the meeting to every participant and use the meeting to answer any questions, raise any concerns, and establish any action items - do not review the materials in the meeting. As a participant, if you cannot review the materials for the meeting beforehand, you are wasting the other participant's time. Acknowledge this fact and ask for a reschedule: in all likelihood you are not the only one.

Training meetings are not restricted to classrooms and can consist of walkthroughs or other activities where the majority of the participants are 'learning'. This may consist of a customer visit to see the operations center or to see a prototype in action. Training meetings may also include operational staff learning about a new service, changes to a service, or new technology. Every raining meeting should be planned, with appropriate syllabi, materials, and opportunities to take questions or have discussions. Whenever possible, materials should be sent to participants beforehand as 'homework' to prepare for the training.

Status meetings allow people to communicate the state of an action, service, or subject. These meetings are usually scheduled on a regular basis. They are also the most abused meeting type in an organization. First of all, status can be communicated without conducting a meeting: a simple ledger and email will allow everyone to understand the current status of any action or item. Secondly, most status meetings are not controlled to allow 'statuses' to be communicated: in most instances, what is communicated are issues and complaints which never get an action item assigned.

If status meetings are lasting up to an hour, here are some simple rules to enforce:
- No complaining - everyone will have reasons for not meeting expectations but those reasons do not need to be aired during the meeting, especially with people who do not have the authority to address the issue.
- Encourage commitments - for every action, the owner should be able to communicate what is being done, when it will be done, and any issues preventing the commitment. Anything more than this is superfluous and provides little value to the meeting. It is important to follow-up outside the meeting on progress.
- Take issues off-line - sometimes issues will arise that require more discussion; when this happens, make the commitment to continue the discussion outside of the meeting. While this may mean scheduling another meeting, it also keeps the intent of the existing meeting intact. A different meeting also allows the right people to be involved.

Working meetings are designed to allow people to collaborate. These are often the most informal of the meeting types and will allow people to 'drop in and exit' when they have the time. Ideally, working meetings are based on a shared schedule and will focus on a single subject, line item, or component at a time. In most cases, the facilitator of the meeting may simply be there to answer questions or address any issues that arise.

Not Relying on Meetings

A major problem surrounding meetings is not the meeting itself, but what the facilitator or participants do or don't do outside of the meeting. If the intent of a meeting is to facilitate action, then action must be taken outside of the meeting: both before and after the meeting. The effectiveness of most meetings would improve dramatically if participants are appropriately prepared for the meeting. This requires the facilitator to determine what materials the participants require and ensuring they have those materials well in advance of the meeting. While 24 hours may be sufficient time in most cases, longer preparation time should be allocated depending on the size, complexity and impact of the meeting's subject.
Set expectations for the meeting beforehand, such as what will be discussed and what will not, or who the participants will be. Facilitators of regularly scheduled meetings should set some ground rules. In practice, those meetings that are extremely well-run, controlled and brief are the meetings with the most active participants and have the greatest levels of productivity as a result.
Equally important is the follow-up to actions established within a meeting. Do not wait until the next meeting to find out the progress of the action. Contact the owner of the action and ask for status; find out how they are doing and what can you do to remove any obstacles or reinforce their efforts. Not only does this encourage completion of the action, but it also allows you, as the facilitator, to understand the influencing factors better.
In most cases, meetings should be used as checkpoints for sharing information. Most of the work required cannot and should not occur within a meeting. Additionally, if another method of communication can be used, use it; either in lieu of or in addition to the meeting.

Respecting Participants

The problem with everyone being in meetings all day is no one is available when a meeting is absolutely required. Chances are, those intentions of those existing meetings could have been fulfilled without holding a meeting. As the demand for participation in meeting increases, the respect for participants will typically decrease. The symptoms for this type of disrespect can be seen when:
- No preparation or follow-up for the meeting is performed
- Topics of discussion are not relevant to all participants of the meeting
- Meetings are scheduled during a participant's unavailable time or will double-book the participant
- Meetings allow unprofessional behavior
- Meetings run longer than necessary or allocated

Make sure that every participant has a reason for being in the meeting and that all participants know what that reason is, including the participant. In most cases, the reason will be a topic of discussion which will involve the person as an expert on the subject or stakeholder. If the person is an expert, find out their talking points beforehand and allow the participants to generate questions for the meeting. If the person is a stakeholder, give them enough information to understand what will be discussed, the potential impact and any related risks or issues before the meeting. If the meeting will cover multiple topics, manage when they are involved in the meeting. If the topic allocated 10 minutes of an hour meeting, they may not be required for the remaining 50 minutes. If they do attend the entire meeting, ensure the topic they are there for is raised.

In the other side of the coin, some participants are never invited to a meeting when they should. This will result in discussions which will either impact the uninvited participant or could be shortened with their participation in the meeting. If a discussion identifies a missing participant during a meeting, the discussion should end immediately and a new meeting scheduled. To prevent this from happening beforehand, facilitators should understand clearly the topics of discussions and the roles and responsibilities of the participants. Appropriate tools like the RACI matrix and stakeholder maps can provide clear distinctions about when to invite the right people.

Even when participants are clearly and correctly identified, scheduling conflicts may prevent getting all the right people together at an appropriate time. For most topics, a rating can be given to each person relevant to their contribution or involvement in the subject. When scheduling a meeting, focus on the available time of those people with the highest ratings: as these are the people who must be in attendance. Let the others know that the meeting is optional or can take a lower priority on their schedules: if you have given them sufficient materials about the topics to be discussed, they will support your decision or tell you why your assumptions are wrong.

When scheduling the key participants for the meeting and you have access to their calendars, respect their unavailable time. Do not schedule meetings during lunch, before or after work, or during another meeting. If you cannot obliged this rule because there are too many conflicts, then contact those participants you are double-booking and request their time during those unavailable hours. In many cases, they may be able to address the concern immediately without a meeting, send a representative to the meeting, or rearrange their schedule to accommodate you either during your proposed tie slot or a different one.

Unprofessional behavior will delay any meeting, so make sure everyone conducts themselves with respect and consideration. People like to complain in meetings and it should be ended immediately. While there are legitimate complaints which may need to be addressed; complaining is any situation where a person is talking without expectation or desire for resolution from the people participating. You may have a legitimate complaint about the customer, but if the customer or person of authority is not present when delivering that complaint and it takes longer than a minute, all you are doing is complaining.

Power plays, like yelling, pointing fingers or dominating the conversation, are not appropriate either: not just because they are undesirable in a meeting, but they are usually based on situations outside of a meeting. For instance, a person is under pressure to meet a final deliverable on a project but is required to attend this unrelated meeting: as a result, the person acts out within the meeting in frustration. While the person is responsible for their behavior, the meeting's facilitator should be attentive enough to understand and defuse the situation quickly.

Most reasons for meetings overextending their allocated times will be addressed by applying the guidelines already mentioned; however sometimes, meetings simply have too many topics to discuss. Be clear about the agenda of the meeting and enforce the timeline. If more discussion is required on a particular topic, acknowledge that and find another time or method to finish the discussion. Since most participants are likely to be overbooked, hour long meetings that take the entire hour are an inconvenience: ensure the agenda is based on a 45-50 minutes instead of 60 minutes. This small consideration allows participants time to travel or prepare for their next meeting and will reap goodwill for you as a facilitator.