Running the Meeting

“We may be very busy, we may be very efficient, but we will also be truly effective only when we begin with the end in mind.” — Steven R. Covey

Now that you’ve decided why to have a meeting, who to invite to your meeting, and what to talk abou at your meeting, it’s time to actually have the meeting.

“Have the meeting.” Sounds like I’m going to “have a hamburger.” Yet many times it feels like the hamburger ate us. Even with all the proper preparation a meeting can still fail. Conducting a meeting, whatever the purpose of the meeting itself is, has its own goal. That is:

To effectively and efficiently communicate information, share ideas, or make decisions.

Effectiveness and efficiency are two very different things. You need to have both for a meeting to be valuable. Effective means doing the right thing. Efficient means doing things right.

We can be very effective without being efficient (cranking out 5000 blue widgets when the customer ordered 5000 red ones), and we can be very efficient without being effective (buying beautiful, hand-picked roses for your anniversary and having them delivered to your spouse’s office, but getting the date wrong). You want both, so the meeting needs to :

• Start on time
• Stick to the agenda
• Give everybody a fair shake
• End on time

Sounds easy?

Start on time

This may be a big adjustment where you work. But if you start doing this, people will start showing up on time. This means you have to show up early. If people continue to be late even after making it clear that this is the expectation, then you have a different issue. This is where managers get paid the big dollars for having those uncomfortable conversations with people who aren’t performing as expected. Don’t want to have those conversations? Don’t be a manager.

Don’t go back and review or catch up for people who came late. This will only reinforce their behaviour for next time. Besides being rude it’s probably just a power play. I’m not saying people won’t occasionally be late because of a customer, or their boss, or a higher priority project. It happens, but if it happens consistently then you need to deal with it. This doesn’t have to be confrontational. For example, you might say: “Paul, I understand you want to catch up, but I prefer to carry on with the meeting so that we can keep to our schedule. Perhaps we can talk after the meeting and I’ll be glad to fill you in on what you missed.”

Stick to the Agenda

Stick to the agenda and the timetable you’ve laid down in the agenda. There’s no point starting on time and then running long. You’ve asked people to respect your time by starting promptly, now respect theirs by keeping things on track and finishing promptly. No point in making them late for their next meeting, or not getting out of the meeting room in time for the next team that has it booked.

If things go off topic, or issues come up that do need to be dealt with, use the “parking lot”. The best way to do this is to have a flip chart or white board where items that need to be discussed but are on the agenda for the day get written, where everybody can see it. The parking lot gets reviewed at the end of the meeting (second last agenda item). Now you can go through each one, decide what it is, what needs to be done about it, and who’s going to do it. This may mean it gets:

• Discarded – it wasn’t important after all, or later discussion made it a moot point
• Delegated – somebody gets an action item to take charge of the issue, and report on at an agreed time and place in the future
• Deferred – to the next or another meeting or another time & place, or
• Decided – because discussion since this item was parked makes it obvious what needs to be done

If you get ahead of schedule, don’t stretch the time for following agenda items. Keep to the original duration. If you can finish and adjourn early, even better. Some people will be pleasantly surprised, and you might find that people actually enjoy coming to your meetings.

Be Fair

Give everybody a fair shake. We know that some people like to dominate meetings, talk over others, or just throw roadblocks in the way of every discussion. We know some people don’t like talking in front of a group, or have a hard time with being talked over top of. It’s your job to make sure that everybody that wants to say something gets a chance to, but don’t force people to give. Fear of public speaking is common, and many people will come out of their shells only after they feel safe. This is not acceptable behaviour for managers, of course, but if you’re running a meeting of volunteers or junior staff, you’ll run into this.

It’s your job as the meeting facilitator to make sure everybody gets to contribute if they want to, and that discussion isn’t dominated by a few people.

End on Time

This is worth repeating. End. On. Time. If you run over, reschedule for next week, tomorrow, or later that day. If you can’t or won’t end on time, don’t expect anybody to stick to the timings in the agenda in the future. Sticking to the timings means staying focused on the topic. Being focused means being efficient.

Next time: Using meeting minutes effectively and why they matter