Serious About Improving Your Meetings?

If you are serious about improving your meetings, here are three ideas that you can try alone or in combination today:

Establish Clear Objectives

In planning your next meeting, use a 3x5 note card. You need to be able to write the objectives on one side of the card using 3 - 5 bullets. Use verb-noun pairs to ensure the focus is on results.

Involve Everyone in the Effort

A meeting involves a group of people, right? Well, successful meetings are a group effort. Here is a method to get your team more involved in that effort.

Create the role of Meeting Evaluator. This role can be assigned at the beginning of the meeting, requires no preparation, and, for regular meetings, floats among participants. Reserve the last 5 minutes for the evaluator to comment on the effectiveness of the meeting. The goal is to work together to make meetings efficient and successful, not to place blame. The evaluator should try to highlight one or two things that went well and one or two things that need improvement. A short discussion immediately, off-line, or at another meeting may be appropriate to take a harder look at those areas needing improvement. A checklist is helpful and covers the basics:

• Clarity of objectives
• Selection of participants
• Preparation and participation of participants
• Respect and teamwork
• Clarity of outcomes (decisions, action items, new information or perspectives)
• Value of outcomes
• Reality check (data driven decisions, realistic expectations)
• Good use of time

Keep an eye on the effectiveness of this evaluation too. The first few evaluations may be of questionable value, especially if you rotate the role. If you take it seriously and reserve the time for it, people will get into it. Part of the value is in making them active participants in the success of the meeting. Part of the value is in getting their perspective so you can improve. Be sure to include yourself in the rotation. If the evaluations start to sound like a broken record, challenge the evaluators or stop the evaluations.

Verify Outcomes

Are you achieving your objectives? Are people leaving the meeting with a common understanding of purpose, perspective, decisions and/or action items? Best way to find out is to ask.

At the end of a meeting, ask each participant to take 3 minutes to write down the main outcomes as they see them. (Obviously it is important to stress that the purpose is to improve meetings but your individual situation will determine how much care is needed to keep this from being too threatening. No names are needed and a neutral individual can collect and summarize the comments and then report back to the group or the leader.) You might be surprised to discover that the 3 main points that you thought you hammered home aren't mentioned.

The benefits of doing this include:

1. Participants will become more alert
2. Participants will start asking for more clarity
3. You will get better at providing the focus needed

Variations on this theme include:

• Ask participants why they were invited to the meeting.
  People unclear about the objectives of a meeting often become passive participants. Worse, others may interpret someone's passive silence as support. For example, suppose an expert attends a meeting and says nothing while an important decision is made. It is quite natural, but dangerous, to assume the expert agrees with the decision. Did this expert realize people were expecting him or her to fill the role of expert? Was this expert listening at all?
• Ask participants what they are going to do differently as a result of the meeting.
• Do this verbally, one-on-one or as a group, instead of in writing.

In summary, establishing and communicating clear objectives for the meeting is your first priority. Getting others involved in helping you make it a success is the second.

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