Meeting Management

(LB) For many of us meetings can be the bane of our work day. We attend, sometimes pretend to be interested and often see them as an interference to getting work done. Too many of us see meetings as this cartoon illustrates. So this blog is a little primer in how to manage meetings and make them more effective.

Meetings come in all shapes and sizes. In general, they fall into the following categories:

• Information sharing


• Work assignments & updates


• Morale raising


• Team building


• Brainstorming

In my last job I had regular morning meetings with my staff. The meetings were quite brief, involved a cup of tea, a quick update on the plans for the day and reports on completed tasks. The meetings became a little longer when we added in support time for one of the staff whose husband had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Since we were a small work group it was important for us to offer support and have a clear understanding of why work sometimes did not get completed in a timely fashion.

To make each one more effective and efficient it is a good idea for the meeting convener to ask themselves the following questions. Sometimes, meetings accomplish several of these purposes at once.

• What is the purpose of the meeting?


• What is the intended outcome?


• Who absolutely needs to be there?


• What is the agenda?


• How much time needs to be scheduled to accomplish the items on the agenda?

Once all that is clear then it is time to schedule the meeting and make it happen.

There is one other type of meeting which is a bit more difficult to categorize and that is a community development meeting. That sort of meeting involves bringing together a disparate group of people usually around one theme and then working to create cohesive action. These meetings can be messy and it often takes longer to get to action than some of the participants would like. However, in this case process is as important as product. Community development meetings are strongly built on relationships, when one or more of the players change the group may well be thrown back into chaos as they reform the group. A good introduction to this process is covered in the book “Getting To Maybe”.

(JL) I have been in many environments where meetings are plentiful, long, dull and fruitless! As a person who now facilitates meetings I try to remember those times so that my meetings CAN BE FUN! Yup! I said it. They can be fun. I believe that the following ingredients need to be part of a FUN meeting:

• 
  Comfort: Both physical and emotional


• 
  Trust: There must be an agreement around trust


• 
  Purpose: The reason for the meeting must be clear; the goals reachable


• 
  Ownership: When people really have a reason for being there, they will often relax easier

It never hurts to have the coffee pot or tea kettle ready and some snacks either.

Another meeting that I love to facilitate is Retreats. Now there again is a whole different bag. Retreats are set up by various groups for various reasons. They can be social or religious groups who are ‘training’ or just reviving themselves. They can be business retreats to cloister the management team or directors so that they can strategize, organize, energize, review, recruit and so much more. Of all the types of meetings I believe this is the one that takes the most time to plan and can usually be the most relaxed and often the most productive. All this because the attendees are not interrupted by the usual stuff and the time frame is longer so more work can be accomplished.

Stay tuned: Next week, Agendas and Note taking

James Latour is the owner and coach of JLP Solutions and writer on Life’s Roller Coaster. James has over 25 years of experience working with the profit and not-for-profit sectors with project management, human resources, fundraising and volunteerism and industry – related consulting.  He is known for his team approach and follow through.  If you are looking for an enthusiastic coach/consultant who walks the walk and talks the talk, you’ve found him. Recently James has turned his passion, writing, into a blog and is using his talent in more direct ways.

Lynne Brown is the owner and coach of Orca Coaching & Consulting. Lynne Brown has been a coach and mentor for the last 30 years. She has a passion for working with people by empowering them to achieve their dreams and set realistic and attainable goals. Lynne has high energy as well as a positive and empathetic approach. Lynne is a firm believer that one of the purposes in life is to have fun and she incorporates that into her coaching and consulting.

Meeting Management