Leaders consistently rate their own meetings very favorably, and much more positively than attendees do.
Be a leader who valued reflection, learning, flexibility, taking reasonable risks, not being complacent, and trying new things, and the team rewards with proactive problem-solving.
Leading meetings might seem like a small part of a manager’s job. But positive change in this one arena can lead to real gains for companies and their employees. If your organization isn’t training you in this key skill, it’s time for you to develop it on your own using these strategies.
How to assess and improve meeting skills?
Did the attendees engaged in critical thinking?
Has the meeting failed?
Have a “premortem” (also known as prospective hindsight), which involves imagining that the meeting has failed and working backward to ascertain why. Then plan the meeting in a way that avoids or mitigates those problems.
Have a “premortem” (also known as prospective hindsight), which involves imagining that the meeting has failed and working backward to ascertain why. Then plan the meeting in a way that avoids or mitigates those problems.
Managers must learn to diagnose their meeting problems, better prepare for and facilitate the gatherings they lead, and seek feedback to further hone their skills.
When managers assume that their meetings are going well, they are less apt to solicit feedback and seek opportunities to improve. As a result, frustrations that attendees commonly cite (such as irrelevant agenda items, overly long duration, lack of focus) persist, leaving people disgruntled and disengaged.
Meetings must help establish and promote consensus. Thus, serving as a focal point for collective drive and energy.
Eliminate the ineffective or unnecessary ones and improve the quality of those that remain.
Assess, Prepare, Facilitate, Reassess
Self observe
Reflect
Think about attendee behavior, conversational dynamics, and the content that was covered.
Ask yourself:
Engagement - Who did most of the talking?
Did the discussion stray to irrelevant topics? Were all the opinions and ideas that were expressed fairly similar?
Scan people who attend your meetings.
Emphasize feedback. A three-question online survey to ask
What was working?
What needed improvement?
Any other suggestions?
Once you’ve reflected on your own and solicited feedback from others, identify your key strengths and weaknesses and create a plan for improvement.
It’s easy to
Simply show up
Default to the usual way of doing things
Make modest upfront investment
Define your goals to set the stage for achieving them
Ask others to suggest agenda items promotes relevance which increases ownership and engagement.
If you don’t have a clear mission or a list of agenda items, you should probably cancel.
Why you’re meeting? Who needs to be there to help you?
Think carefully about key decision makers, influencers, and stakeholders.
Outside circle feel included. Asking for their input before the meeting and promising to share it and keep them in the loop.
Consider a timed agenda in which attendees join only the portions of the meeting pertinent to them.
Too many attendees can lead to a cacophony of voices or social loafing (whereby individuals scale back their efforts under the protection of a “crowd”), not to mention logistical challenges.
Focus on time and place. It’s human nature to stick to the same room, same hour, and same general setup. But those routines can cause people to glaze over. Instead, find ways to introduce variety: Move to a different venue, meet in the morning instead of the afternoon, experiment with nontraditional time blocks (such as 50 minutes instead of an hour), or change the seating arrangements so that everyone is next to and across from different colleagues. For groups of two to four people, you might suggest a walking meeting. For larger groups, try standing, which has been shown to boost meeting efficiency and attendee satisfaction provided the sessions are kept short (15 minutes or so) to prevent discomfort.
Preparation should go even further for high-stakes meetings.
Held too many recurring weekly meetings that happened whether he had a compelling agenda or not? Are we doing it out of habit rather than necessity? Create something he called “magic time” — a slot that everyone on the team agreed to keep empty for either heads-down work or an impromptu meeting should an urgent issue surface. This significantly reduced the quantity of meetings, while also improving the quality of those that were held.
Improve quality. Reduce quantity.
Improving meeting facilitation: Tactics to help people feel welcome and primed to tackle the task at hand
People often experience meetings as interruptions, taking them away from their “real work”.
Promote a sense of presence among attendees
Greeting at the door
Express gratitude for their time
Start with a purposeful opening statement explaining why everyone is gathered.
Recognize group or individual accomplishments
Remind attendees of “meeting values” - previously agreed-upon rules of engagement, such as keeping comments succinct.
Leaders at times will need to offer their own opinions and directives to move the discussion forward, but the key to successful facilitation is understanding that you’re primarily playing a supportive role.
As the conversation gets started, try to adopt a stewardship mindset, asking questions, engaging others, modeling active listening, drawing out concerns, and managing conflicts.
Ensures there is genuine give-and-take, attendees feel safe speaking up, and they leave feeling committed to the outcomes.
Some techniques for getting attendees to actively participate:
Ensure equitable “air time" by using time allotments for each agenda item to see whether that helps.
Gauge interest in an idea, ask for a show of hands or, if you think anonymity might help, use a quick-survey app or website to poll people using their cell phones. Then share and discuss the aggregate results.
Prevent group-think by incorporating periods of silence throughout the meeting to let people to come up with ideas or form opinions without hearing others’ thoughts. “Brainwriting,” for instance, involves having individuals quietly reflect and write down their ideas before sharing them out loud; research shows that this approach yields more creative thinking than brainstorming does. Silent reading can also be useful. Asking attendees in a meeting to read a proposal to themselves before discussing it can increase their understanding and retention of the new idea — and thus their engagement with it.
Two facilitation issues to address:
Get more people talking
Engage people in real dialogue and debate.
Address the participation problem
Periodically remind attendees that everyone to be involved and expected teammates to encourage one another to speak up.
Solicit people’s ideas and opinions in advance to make sure that their concerns are highlighted
Ask quieter attendees to contribute their thoughts or lead particular agenda items.
Use body language to signal when someone was starting to dominate the conversation — for example, by shifting the gaze and turning shoulders toward others to indicate their their reactions are expected.
After beganning to see better dynamics, reinforce the behavior by offering comments such as “I’m loving this discussion and really appreciate everyone’s engagement and participation. Thank you.”
To push the team toward more robust and in-depth conversation, appoint some people to play devil’s advocate in meetings. If the goal was to address a specific issue, create PowerPoint slides listing all the potential options privately suggested by team members (without using their names) and open each one to group discussion.
Separate the evaluation of an issue from the decision making, to ensure that debate wasn’t hampered by the pressure of having to make a choice on the spot.
Even when managers proactively diagnose their meeting problems and learn to better prepare for and facilitate the gatherings they lead, there will undoubtedly be room for improvement.
After a few months of experimenting with the tactics, ask team for another assessment.
Leaders consistently rate their own meetings very favorably, and much more positively than attendees do.
Be a leader who valued reflection, learning, flexibility, taking reasonable risks, not being complacent, and trying new things, and the team rewards with proactive problem-solving.
Leading meetings might seem like a small part of a manager’s job. But positive change in this one arena can lead to real gains for companies and their employees. If your organization isn’t training you in this key skill, it’s time for you to develop it on your own using these strategies.
How to assess and improve meeting skills? Did the attendees engaged in critical thinking?
Has the meeting failed? Have a “premortem” (also known as prospective hindsight), which involves imagining that the meeting has failed and working backward to ascertain why. Then plan the meeting in a way that avoids or mitigates those problems.
Have a “premortem” (also known as prospective hindsight), which involves imagining that the meeting has failed and working backward to ascertain why. Then plan the meeting in a way that avoids or mitigates those problems.
Managers must learn to diagnose their meeting problems, better prepare for and facilitate the gatherings they lead, and seek feedback to further hone their skills.
When managers assume that their meetings are going well, they are less apt to solicit feedback and seek opportunities to improve. As a result, frustrations that attendees commonly cite (such as irrelevant agenda items, overly long duration, lack of focus) persist, leaving people disgruntled and disengaged.
Meetings must help establish and promote consensus. Thus, serving as a focal point for collective drive and energy.
Eliminate the ineffective or unnecessary ones and improve the quality of those that remain.
Assess, Prepare, Facilitate, Reassess
Think about attendee behavior, conversational dynamics, and the content that was covered.
Ask yourself:
Scan people who attend your meetings.
Emphasize feedback. A three-question online survey to ask
Once you’ve reflected on your own and solicited feedback from others, identify your key strengths and weaknesses and create a plan for improvement.
It’s easy to
Make modest upfront investment
If you don’t have a clear mission or a list of agenda items, you should probably cancel.
Why you’re meeting? Who needs to be there to help you?
Think carefully about key decision makers, influencers, and stakeholders.
Outside circle feel included. Asking for their input before the meeting and promising to share it and keep them in the loop.
Consider a timed agenda in which attendees join only the portions of the meeting pertinent to them.
Too many attendees can lead to a cacophony of voices or social loafing (whereby individuals scale back their efforts under the protection of a “crowd”), not to mention logistical challenges.
Focus on time and place. It’s human nature to stick to the same room, same hour, and same general setup. But those routines can cause people to glaze over. Instead, find ways to introduce variety: Move to a different venue, meet in the morning instead of the afternoon, experiment with nontraditional time blocks (such as 50 minutes instead of an hour), or change the seating arrangements so that everyone is next to and across from different colleagues. For groups of two to four people, you might suggest a walking meeting. For larger groups, try standing, which has been shown to boost meeting efficiency and attendee satisfaction provided the sessions are kept short (15 minutes or so) to prevent discomfort.
Preparation should go even further for high-stakes meetings.
Held too many recurring weekly meetings that happened whether he had a compelling agenda or not? Are we doing it out of habit rather than necessity? Create something he called “magic time” — a slot that everyone on the team agreed to keep empty for either heads-down work or an impromptu meeting should an urgent issue surface. This significantly reduced the quantity of meetings, while also improving the quality of those that were held.
Improve quality. Reduce quantity.
Improving meeting facilitation: Tactics to help people feel welcome and primed to tackle the task at hand
People often experience meetings as interruptions, taking them away from their “real work”.
Promote a sense of presence among attendees
Start with a purposeful opening statement explaining why everyone is gathered. Recognize group or individual accomplishments Remind attendees of “meeting values” - previously agreed-upon rules of engagement, such as keeping comments succinct.
Leaders at times will need to offer their own opinions and directives to move the discussion forward, but the key to successful facilitation is understanding that you’re primarily playing a supportive role.
As the conversation gets started, try to adopt a stewardship mindset, asking questions, engaging others, modeling active listening, drawing out concerns, and managing conflicts.
Ensures there is genuine give-and-take, attendees feel safe speaking up, and they leave feeling committed to the outcomes.
Some techniques for getting attendees to actively participate:
Two facilitation issues to address:
Address the participation problem
Even when managers proactively diagnose their meeting problems and learn to better prepare for and facilitate the gatherings they lead, there will undoubtedly be room for improvement.
After a few months of experimenting with the tactics, ask team for another assessment.
https://hbr.org/2019/01/why-your-meetings-stink-and-what-to-do-about-it