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The Learning Pages Guide to Productive Meetings

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Why do so many people hate meetings? Here are some tips on how to run meetings people want to attend. Running a meeting is like a juggler trying to keep three different shaped objects in the air:

The juggler also has to keep juggling these objects while walking along a tightrope, the end of which represents the purpose of the meeting.

The Four Keys to a Successful Meeting

- Purpose
- Objectives
- Participants
- Structure

This is easily remembered by the mnemonic POPS

Planning the Meeting

The more effort you put into the planning of a meeting, the more successful it will be, so it is difficult to overemphasise the importance of planning. The steps involved in planning a meeting are:

  1. P — determine the purpose and appropriateness

  2. O— determine the objectives and content

  3. P — identify the participants, interactions and roles

  4. S — design the structure and agenda

Determining the purpose and appropriateness

The purpose of the meeting is simply the reason for having the meeting. For meetings with only one topic, the purpose would be specific, such as: "To Allocate Training Places" or "To Agree a Price for Stainless Steel Bearings". The purpose would be more general for meetings that cover several topics, such as: "To Review the Manufacturing Operating Performance".

Once you know why you are having a meeting, it is far easier to determine whether you really need a meeting. For me, the first rule of meetings is:

Don’t have a meeting.

Okay, this is a bit of an extreme position — there are plenty of times when meetings are essential — but it is meant to redress the balance for all the times when the purpose of a meeting could have been just as easily achieved by a phone call, a letter, an email or poking your head round someone’s door.

Determining the objectives and content

With any meeting, you should have a clear idea of what you want to achieve by the end of the meeting.

If the meeting has only one topic, it is relatively easy to turn the purpose into an objective.

Using the two examples of purposes we identified earlier, we would get: "Training Places Allocated" and "Price of Stainless Steel Bearings Agreed".

Notice the use of both a noun and a verb. The noun lets you know what you are talking about, and the verb specifies what type of processing you need to do.

Leaving out the verb causes ambiguity about what needs to be achieved. "Car Parking Spaces Planned" is different to "Car Parking Spaces Allocated".

With a simple, single-topic meeting, the difference between an objective and a purpose is purely semantic — the purpose is the reason for having the meeting; the objective is what you will have achieved once the meeting is finished. So, practically speaking, it would not be necessary to have both an objective and a purpose for your meeting.

Where objectives really come into their own is when you run complex or multi-topic meetings

Beginning at the end, that is the final purpose of the meeting, consider all the things or tasks that would have to be completed during the meeting to achieve its final purpose. In this way you are identifying the content and objectives of the meeting. This is also a good time to think about what pre-work might be required for the topics.

Each of the tasks or topics should have its own objective — that is, what should have been achieved when the topic has been completed. Examples of this kind of desired outcome are:

‘Draft Presented”, ‘Concerns Listed’ and ‘Available Training Places Identified’.

Objectives allow you to check whether you have completed one topic before going on to the next.

Identifying the participants, interactions and roles

Now you know what has to be done during the meeting, you are in a much better position to determine who should really be attending the meeting.

Consider the chemistry of the meeting, that is, how the attendees will react to the topics, how they will react to each other, and what undercurrents are going on outside the meeting.

If you think you might get an adverse reaction from some individuals, consider ‘pre-presenting’ the issues to them so that you can draw their fire before the meeting and modify your approach.

Pre-presenting also eliminates the element of surprise. Senior managers do not like to be surprised in meetings. They are less likely to be positive towards a new idea, and ‘loss of face’ is a real danger.

Consider which roles you would like people to play during the meeting.

Designing the structure and agenda

The content of the meeting should be ordered into a logical structure — most people are aware of this, but you might not be aware of the technique of categorising the meeting content into "Presentations" and "Discussions".

This technique is "magic", and it allows you to get control of both the timing and the participation of the meeting by applying the following rule:

When a person is presenting, only questions of clarification are permitted.

The time for discussion, agreement, disagreement, building, and alternative proposals is when the "Presentation" item finishes and "Discussion" begins.

For me, two of the most important meeting tools are the flip chart and the agenda. I’ll be talking about the flip chart during the section on running the meeting, but for now, I want to concentrate on the agenda. The agenda is so important because it allows you to:

I am now going to show you how to use an agenda to design the structure of a meeting.

The characteristics of a good agenda are:

Notice that I haven’t included ‘Any Other Business’ (AOB) in the characteristics of a good meeting. Try to avoid AOB as it can send the meeting out of control — and certainly don’t ask for AOB at the end of a meeting. If you have to have AOB, ask for the topics (and their objectives) at the beginning of the meeting, estimate the time required and determine whether the topic can be handled properly within the time allocated for the meeting.

In fact, one of the difficulties most people have when they are putting an agenda together is estimating the time for each of the items. Invariably, the times are grossly underestimated.

You may have heard of Murphy’s First Law:

If anything can possibly go wrong, it will — and at the worst possible time.

But you may not have heard of Murphy’s second, lesser-known law of time estimation. It states:

In order to estimate the time a task will take, make a guess, double it and move it into the next time unit.

So, if your boss comes to you and says, “I’ve just got a small job for you to do — it’ll only take five minutes.” You think, “Five minutes, double it, that’s ten minutes. Move it up into the next time unit; that’s ten hours…”

Or if you are working on a car and a voice from the kitchen says, “Dinner ready in five minutes.” You reply: “Okay, I’ve just got to get this nut off, and then I’ll be in…”

These examples might be extreme, but they do give you a good idea of the principle involved.

If you are going to make an error in estimating times, err on the side of being too long — I have never had anyone complain about a meeting finishing early!

The division of the meeting’s structure into ‘Presentation’ and ‘Discussion’ also helps with time estimation because processing always takes longer than sharing (provided you follow the presentation rule).

To help you estimate the time for your meetings, here are the minimum times for some of the more common meeting activities:

So, if somebody comes to you with 10 complex slides and says that they will need only 20 minutes to present, you will know what to do!

Logistics

The importance of the following activities:

Roles

Tasks can be done in different combinations by different people — that is why there is often confusion about roles. The following four roles are those which I believe are essential to any meeting:

Meeting Leader or Facilitator

The person designated to facilitate and lead the meeting through the various activities required to achieve the meeting’s objectives. The meeting leader must control the direction, process and participation of the meeting.

Process Facilitators

The rest of the group share the responsibility for the successful facilitation of the meeting.

Timekeeper

The timekeeper monitors how long the group is taking to accomplish its tasks and provides regular time checks to make the group aware of where they are. The timekeeper is not responsible for keeping the meeting on time — this is the group’s responsibility.

Minute-taker

The person designated to capture and distribute the proceedings of the session, which, as a minimum, must include the actions: who has agreed to do what and by when.

The following are optional, additional roles that contribute to a meeting’s success:

Manager

The formal head of the group is the person with the authority to make the final decisions.

Scribe

The scribe is the group recorder who quickly writes on the flipchart what people say. The scribe is not the meeting leader, does not debate or challenge what people say, and does not twist, edit or alter what is said. If statements are confusing or complicated, the scribe asks the participants whether they can summarise them for the record. The scribe ensures that copies of the flip charts are distributed.

Presenter

When a meeting or session is divided into sub-groups, the presenter is the person who shares the sub-group’s output with the rest of the meeting. Ask the sub-groups to choose their presenter before they start their work.

In a large meeting, you may need all of these roles, with a different person taking on each role. With a small meeting, you may find it necessary to combine roles, as in the following example:

The manager often takes the role of the meeting leader even though balancing the partiality of the manager with the impartiality of the meeting leader can be a very difficult task. Ideally, meetings should have third-party facilitators who have no vested interest in the outcome. Of course, this can be a very expensive option and is very difficult to justify for staff meetings.

So you are left with either the manager or another member of the group taking on the role of meeting leader. In either case, meeting leaders can handle potential "conflicts of interest" by adopting a "split-personality" approach, making it very clear when they change roles, saying:

“Speaking as the manager of this group…” or “As the facilitator of this meeting…”

Some meeting leaders even think of themselves as wearing different hats depending on which role they are in.

Using Flipcharts

One of the most important tools for facilitating meetings and group sessions is the flip chart. It can be used for:

Like many aspects of training and facilitation, the secret of success lies in the preparation. In The Learning Pages Guide to Using Flipcharts, we look at flip chart stands, pads, fixings, pens and their preparation.

Keeping Meetings on Track

One of the most important tools for keeping the meeting on track is an agenda which has been displayed where everyone can see it. Just like fire — an agenda is a good servant but a terrible master. There is not much point in finishing every agenda item on time if the purpose of the meeting has not been achieved.

It is not a sin to knowingly adjust the agenda during a meeting. The sin is in allowing the meeting to "drift" out of control.

The timekeeper has an important role to play in keeping the group aware of the time, but the responsibility of keeping to time rests with the participants. This is why it is a good idea to have the agenda times displayed so everyone can see them.

The meeting leader has the responsibility to control the direction and participation of the meeting.

Dealing with Difficult Behaviour

People sometimes behave in various difficult ways during meetings. Dealing with them is a matter of judgement and experience, as are most facilitation skills. Notice that this section is about Difficult Behaviour — not Difficult People or Problem People. This is not to say that there are no such things as difficult or problem people — it’s just more productive for us to consider behaviour we have difficulty with.

For more information, see How to Deal with Difficult Behaviour.

Meeting Observation Form

Completion Instructions

Score each of the characteristics of the meeting using the criteria given below and enter the total score in the end column of the observation form. The maximum possible score for one meeting is 50. If you are observing the same meeting on several occasions, it’s a good idea to plot the scores on a graph to see whether the quality of the meeting is improving. An Excel spreadsheet version of this form, which does the additions and draws the graph, accompanies this resource.

Purpose/Objectives

The meeting has a clear purpose, and if more than one topic is being covered, each topic has its own objective (max 7 points).

Agenda

There is an agenda, and it is displayed so that the participants can see it throughout the meeting (max 6 points).

Leader/Facilitator

The meeting has a leader who has employed the services of a third-party facilitator or facilitates the process of the meeting and actively intervenes to bring the process back on track (max 6 points).

Decision maker

There is somebody present in the meeting who is able to — and does — make decisions when they need to be made during the meeting (max 5 points).

Agenda followed

The agenda is followed and any deviations from the agenda are done knowingly (max 5 points).

Time contract set

The agenda items have agreed times set against them (max 5 points).

Actions follow-up

Actions from the previous meeting are followed-up during this meeting (max 4 points).

Actions/Name/Date

Actions are recorded during the meeting and each action is assigned a name and a completion date (max 4 points).

Minutes taken

Minutes are taken during the meeting (max 4 points).

Timing

The meeting begins and ends on time (max 4 points).

Acknowledgements

The two people who have had the most influence on my thinking about meetings and facilitation are Tom Kayser and Laurie Turner. Laurie for his expertise on counselling and the people side of facilitation — and Tom for his insights on the meeting process and third-party facilitation.

If you would like to explore the material covered in this article, I can make no better recommendation than Tom Kayser’s book Mining Group Gold*.

*Affiliate link

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