Meetings are common place but few people give thought to how effective they actually are and far fewer to how effectiveness and productiveness can be improved. Far fewer have been trained on how to conduct more effective meetings or be a more productive participant. Consequently meetings are often far less effective/productive than they should be.

Meetings often drift along with too little focus, purpose or outcome.

Indeed virtually everyone will, at some point, have come out of a meeting feeling, that was a waste of time.

The Chair and/or Facilitator plays an important role in encouraging and managing the contributions of all participants but equally all attendees need to understand how their behaviour and performance can contribute to a more productive outcome.

It is all too easy for attendees to unknowingly and unwittingly derail progress and effective outputs. This can be compounded when the Chair or Facilitator has learned the role “on job” often without formal training and has rarely experienced the benefits a well-managed meeting can deliver.

The task of the Chair is to utilise the talents of the group and move them towards the meetings objectives or expected outcomes. This is often difficult to achieve. The Chair may need to exert more control at the beginning of a meeting when a group is newly formed, or when the meeting is particularly large.

Being over controlling, however, will inhibit debate and may reduce participants’ sense of ownership of the tasks. The trick is to strike a balance between control and participation.

In a similar vein it equally important that attendees do not inadvertently disrupt or derail the meeting. It is all too easy to raise poorly thought through comments or when passions are high to speak or rough ride over others.

Management often spend up to 60% of their time in meetings so it is well worth considering how much all these meetings cost. But what is more thought provoking is just how much is wasted through ineffective meetings.

Chairs and participants can benefit by thinking more about the following

Organising and conducting meetings
Think about the characteristics of effective and poorly run meetings
• The Chair’s tasks (with others) before any meeting
• Agenda management
• The environment
• Opening the meeting
• Keeping control
• Encouraging participation
• Summarising and closure

Agreeing tasks and targets before during and after the meeting
Consider what is happening during a meeting

• Identifying differences between parties
• The use of open questions/asking the right questions of the right person.
  Open Questions
  • Probing and Supplementary Questions
  • Closed Questions
  • Hypothetical Questions as well as Leading or Loaded Questions
  • Group Dynamic Theory
  • Taking notes for minutes of the meeting

How to reach common ground and agreement
Think about:
• Planning and Preparation
• Opening
• Stating –Testing – Questioning
• Moving
• Agreeing

Explaining and summarising decisions – closure
Consider what needs to be done by whom and by when after the meeting has closed including action by:
• The Chair
• The Secretary
• All Participants
• External stakeholders

Image Credit: “Partnership to End Childhood Hunger Core Advisory Meeting” by Maryland GovPics used under CC BY-SA 2.0