The Meeting Blues

Have you often heard talk around the water cooler about what a waste of time meetings are? How employers complain about time away fom production? How meetings are intrusive to the day and breaks up the momentum or even the ability to regain focus?

Oh my goodness not another boring & unproductive meeting! We keep having meetings, but nothing ever changes besides the meeting times!

Design with Ease

As a manager I have heard the talk, I've seen the eyes and I have read the body language. I had to ask myself the question, "is it me, is it them or is it about meetings in general"? We all know that meetings are a way to stay connected, dissiminate information, stay current on events,network & brainstorm. Meetings are tools used for managing and can be very resourceful if used correctly.

So how do you conduct a meeting? begin with a purpose. The first 5 to 7 minutes are critical, sets the foundation, establishes parameters, it references & tells why the meeting is being held and it is time-bound... Ask yourself the se questions, is the meeting necessay what do I want to achieve, who needs to be a part of the meeting, location and are materials needed?

When facilitating there are 5 key elements of an effective meeting and they are as follows: the opening, ground rules, time-bound, evaluation of meeting & the closing. Be sure to start the meetings on time and make meetings interactive, i otherwords have an open discussion at some point in the meeting. To keep the meeiting relevant & interesting delegate meeting leadership.

Press for closure. Track whose doing what and what the desired outcome will be and be sure to close out each agenda item. Two major time waste and major complaine from meeting attendees is the meeting non-effective & the inability to keep on track of the purpose of the meeting, not holding meetings within specified time-constraints and not having a closing that would tie all the parts of the meeting together.

Finally, summarize each point at the end of the meeting. Take a vote, ensure all are in agreement or not and record that. Once the meeting is over you need to pass agendas out within 24 hours of the meeting. Keep the meeting interested by having different facilitors, props, material, a well thought out purpose and do not be afraid to grab the attention of your audience