http://mergespeaks.com/blog/">Turning Managers into Leaders

The word “meeting” seems to elicit a reaction (not usually positive) from virtually every supervisor or manager I talk to. Turns out that most people’s experiences with meetings are not encouraging. This has come up often enough that I have devoted past blogs to this topic:

• Ineffective meetings have a bottom-line financial cost
• One powerful way to run effective meetings
• Agendas are a necessity for effective meetings
• Three key roles are necessary for effective meetings
• Use “the parking lot” to manage unexpected or extended issues that arise in your meeting

So here’s one more critical success factor for effective meetings – always take minutes of meetings, and issue them within 48 hours. Minutes provide a written record of what happened at a meeting, but because it sounds like a lot of work, many people balk at this rule. However, meeting minutes do not need to be long or complicated. An effective and popular approach is to focus only on recording action items. Read the rest of this entry »

Often in meetings, unexpected agenda items crop up, or certain topics generate legitimate discussion that go beyond the time frame allotted in the agenda. What should you do when such subjects threaten to take your meeting off track and off schedule?

When unexpected or lengthier issues arise, it’s the chairperson’s job to take control by considering two choices – either get agreement from everyone to adjust the agenda by reducing or eliminating another item, OR send the item being discussed to the “parking lot.” The parking lot is a designated whiteboard or flipchart where outstanding issues are logged, with an understanding that they will be tabled as agenda items at a future meeting. The parking lot approach is a very effective way to keep a meeting moving while still respecting other points of view.

So have you used the “parking lot”? What has been your experience? Or do you take another approach? Please share.

If your meetings aren’t as effective as they could be, here are some other posts that you might find of value:

• Ineffective meetings have a bottom-line financial cost
• One powerful way to run effective meetings
• Agendas are a necessity for effective meetings
• Three key roles are necessary for effective meetings

Meetings continue to be the bane of managers and supervisors everywhere – I mean how many times have you attended the meeting from hell? Yeah, thought so!

In previous blogs, I have offered ideas on how to make your meetings more productive (see links at the bottom of this post), and today I have one more proven idea – establish three key meeting roles for every meeting — chairperson, timekeeper, and minute-taker — filled by three different people. The chairperson is responsible for facilitating the meeting — making sure all relevant input is being solicited and gathered, and smoothing over rough spots as necessary. The timekeeper’s role in a meeting is paramount — he or she is responsible for letting participants know when the allotted time for an agenda item is up. The timekeeper may need to be firm with participants to ensure that they stick to the agenda. The minute-taker’s role is exactly what it sounds like — he or she is responsible for producing a written record about key aspects of the meeting … more about this in a future blog post.

Another thought: if you hold recurring meetings, rotate the roles of the chairperson, timekeeper, and minute-taker for each meeting. The benefits of rotation are two-fold — all participants develop meeting skills, and, perhaps more importantly, there is greater awareness and respect for the challenges inherent in these roles.

By the way, these three key roles are just as applicable to unplanned or emergency meetings as well: if you don’t assign these roles, an emergency meeting can quickly turn into a waste of time.

So what do you think? Are these three key roles necessary? What advice do you have to offer to prevent the “meeting from hell”?

If meetings are driving you crazy, then these previous blog posts may be of value:

• Ineffective meetings have a bottom-line financial cost
• One powerful way to run effective meetings
• Agendas are a necessity for effective meetings

In previous blog posts, I’ve explored the bottom-line financial cost of ineffective meetings as well as offered ideas on how to make your meetings more productive.  Here’s one more thing that you can do to ensure that you maximize the potential in your meetings.

Always issue an agenda, distributed at least 48 hours in advance of the meeting. If you find yourself calling an unplanned or emergency meeting, use the first 10 minutes to develop a quick agenda on a whiteboard or flipchart, and don’t proceed until you’ve reached agreement on it. One of the best and easiest ways to develop an agenda is to use a table format with a minimum of four columns as follows:

1. The agenda item
2. The name of the person responsible for leading and/or facilitating the agenda item
3. The required outcome for the agenda item, e.g. group discussion, information, update, decision, consensus, action, round-table reporting
4. The allotted time for the agenda item (Make sure that the total of the allotted times does not exceed the total time set aside for the meeting!)

So for example, your agenda may contain the following items:

• Purchasing software rollout: Amy Harris, IT lead; project update; 10 minutes
• Customer service survey results: Reena Davis, customer service manager; information and action on complaints; 30 minutes
• Software training vendor selection: Bob Edwards, procurement specialist; decision; 15 minutes

Now obviously, this is the basic format, but you can choose to add additional columns to your agenda based on your specific needs.

I cannot overemphasize the importance of an agenda … without it, you may well end up in the meeting from hell!  Have you attended meetings from hell?  Was the lack of an agenda the problem, or was it something else?

Have you ever attended the meeting from hell? Yes, you know the one – the objectives are undefined, the meeting crawls on for hours, personalities clash, disagreements take over, and progress grinds to a halt.  In short, nothing gets accomplished.  If you’ve been to even one bad meeting, then in my opinion, that’s one meeting too many!

Have you ever stopped to consider exactly how much these non-productive meetings are costing you and your organization?  Let’s just say you have a regular weekly meeting with five attendees that runs for two hours.  At an average salary of $50,000 per year, that translates roughly to $25 per hour.  If you add in benefits, that takes you to about $35 an hour.  Five people at two hours times 50 weeks a year equals $17,500.  And this total doesn’t include any additional costs such as travel, equipment charges, and catering expenses, nor the costs of replacement coverage while people at the meeting.  Unquestionably, there is a bottom-line financial cost of ineffective meetings.

What’s happening in your organization?  Are “meetings from hell” widespread and frequent?  Or have you figured out how to avoid the meetings “trap”?  Do tell.

Start your meetings promptly. No matter who is there, or not there, start your meetings at the time when you said you would.  It is a powerful gesture of respect to those who choose to respect your time.  When you start late, what you are really saying to the people who respected your time is “thanks for respecting me, but guess what, I don’t respect you.”  Even worse, you are teaching others that your time has no value and is meaningless.

Now before you all turn on me , I understand that this can be a huge challenge if you happen to work in an organization where punctuality is not a virtue.  Nevertheless, persist!  For the very reason I just gave you!  I believe that as leaders, we teach others how to treat us, and sometimes, we have to re-teach them.  If you work in an organization where you have inadvertently taught people that it’s acceptable not to respect your time, then recognize that you may need to re-teach them.  Here’s the thing: if you get a reputation as someone who starts your meetings on time, then you will teach people to respect you.  People will “learn” to be on time.

Having said that, despite your actions, there will always be, for some reason or another, latecomers.  When a latecomer finally arrives, don’t disrupt the meeting to review what’s happened prior to their arrival, just continue onwards.  If you stop to catch the person up on what he or she has missed, you will undo your hard work in re-teaching others.

So some people say that I’m playing hard ball.  Do you think I’m being too tough?