Death by Meetings - Part II
Welcome to the exciting conclusion of Death by Meetings. During Part I we covered six topics that can help your meetings run smoothly. This newsletter details the remaining items that will assist in ensuring that your meetings are more meaningful and productive.
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Effectively use flipcharts and whiteboards. Strategic use of visual aids can emphasize important information, reinforce skill building, help ideas come to life, and encourage brainstorming. Don’t be shy about standing up and writing concepts and ideas on a flipchart or whiteboard. In addition, encourage other participants to do the same. Not only will this add an interesting flavor to your meeting, but it will allow you and others to practice presentation skills in a comfortable environment.
- Entertain. You do not have to be a standup comedian, but look for opportunities to add levity or proactive thought to your meeting. People love to laugh. Don’t lose focus while searching for humor, but certainly do not pass up opportunities to place smiles on the faces of your valued team members.
- Ask appropriate questions. By asking appropriately timed questions, leaders can flush out important ideas and thoughts that would otherwise have been missed.
- If it’s not on topic, park it. Prior to the start of your meeting place a piece of flipchart paper on the wall and entitle it: Parking Lot. When a topic or idea comes up that contains merit, but would hi-jack your meeting, write it on the Parking Lot. This technique gives recognition to people who come up with good ideas, yet respects everyone else’s time and focus. It also shows that you are agile enough to be open-minded, but disciplined enough to maintain focus during your meeting. Items on the Parking Lot can be revisited if time permits or given their own separate meeting time, if merited.
- Break it up. If your meeting is projected to last for more than two hours, consider holding breaks every 1½ - 2 hours. Breaks should be limited to ten minutes – I guarantee you participants will not come back after just five minutes. Also, request that people are back in their seats within ten minutes – make this an integrity challenge.
- Delegate action items. During the course of most meetings participants either volunteer to complete tasks or are assigned certain deliverables. Seek to have a majority, if not all attendees, walk away with some type of action item. This element will add substance to your meeting and support your mantra of delivering results.
- Summarize key outcomes. At the end of the meeting, verbally summarize the key outcomes that have occurred. This action signals that you were paying attention and provides a sense of value and accomplishment to participants. You may also find that participants add items to your list. This signals that they were engaged. The task of summarization calls for you to think on your feet. Many leaders are uncomfortable with this challenge. When you successfully nail a summary, however, you will not be disappointed by the result. The art of summarization will put your meetings in a class by themselves and assist you in garnering well deserved respect from your team.
- End on time. Just as important as starting on time is ending on time. If you represent that your meeting will last one hour, it is your responsibility to craft and manage the event so that you finish within an hour. On those occasions when the meeting will run over, I recommend seeking buy-in to carry on – as opposed to simply ignoring your time commitment. This highlights that you are sensitive to other’s schedules and interested in remaining in integrity.
- Distribute minutes after the meeting. Since you have already summarized the meeting verbally, it should take only a moment to jot down a few notes that can be transformed into coherent minutes. Once this is accomplished share the minutes with the attendees and other interested parties within a few days of the meeting. By creating minutes you are making a statement to the attendees that the meeting was valuable and their time was well spent. In addition, it shows that you are striving for accuracy, as well as effective communication.