My time spent in meetings has been increasing the last couple of weeks. I’m no fan of meetings. One of the reasons I don’t like meetings is that most of the time they are not as productive as they could be.
So last week I had an idea, or rather two, I thought I’d share.
- Some meetings you can almost instantly spot that the participants have different views about what the meeting is about. So start of the meeting by having the participants what they hope the outcome of the meeting would be. This could probably be done as an intervention if you identify this problem.
- A good meeting organizer will summaries at the end of the meeting. A good summary will contain what each participant takes with him or her as action items, to-dos, as a consequence of the meeting. If none of the participants have any action items with them after the meeting, the meeting was most probably waste.
Naturally there are meeting techniques to increase the formality of the meeting, but these shouldn’t be necessary unless you need a formal protocol from the meeting.
#1 by anna forss on October 28, 2009 - 15:59
I think you can really look back at the 7 habits when you host a meeting.
Be pro active – have a clear idea about how you want the meeting to be
Work with the end in mind – as you say, have a clear objective in the meeting
Focus on what is important – when forming the agenda and controlling the meeting, make sure that you focus on what is important with the objective in mind. Work with the sector 1 and 2 tasks
Think win-win – don’t get stuck in useless discussions but try working with winwin
Listen to understand, then talk to be understood. Make sure to work with this habit. If it doesn’t work, what’s the use of the meeting?
Find synergies – the reason for the meeting should be to find that third option which you can find together.
Constant improvement – after the meeting consider what to improve during the next meeting
But the bottom line is making sure that people feel that the meetings are important, and not by someone saying so but because they have an effect