Coaching Solution: Reframe certain meetings when planning them, as “events”
What you Observe
Team members dread meetings and complain that they are a waste of time. Most reports are monologues read off powerpoint slides. Unhelpful behaviours can derail the meeting. No clear actions are recorded. People feel publicly criticised. Despite the amount of time spent in meetings, they don’t contribute to the team’s understanding of how to work across functional boundaries to achieve team, regional and/or organizational strategic objectives. Sometimes they can even leave team members feeling demoralised and under appreciated.
How can you Explore
Consider the purpose of the meeting: is it to share and disseminate information, is it to consult and engage, is it to report and improve, is to collaborate and motivate? What are the outcomes you want to achieve? Each purpose will require its own cadence. Some meetings don’t just need a chairperson or a lead, sometimes they require ‘facilitation’.
What if you designed meetings like a parent plans a child’s birthday party?
- Activities that truly engage and even entertain participants – a WOW factor
- Attendees are more energized when they leave the meeting than when they arrived
- Team members feel fulfilled that they have participated in something meaningful
Time to Reflect
- What is the best meeting you have ever attended? What made it so?
- What is the purpose of the meeting? What is essential that everyone take away from it? What do you want people to do differently when they leave the meeting?
- How can you make part of your leadership “brand” that your meetings make a difference in how the team does its work and achieves its goals?
Time to Act
Some ideas to consider depending on the context of the meeting:
- Design the meeting around activities, not topics. Avoid activities that involve one person speaking to the group for more than 5 minutes at a time. Involve everyone in the room in every activity whenever possible.
- Use meeting invitations as an opportunity to communicate what the benefits of participating in the meeting will be to attendees. Articulate a clear purpose and process for each meeting. Share the agenda in advance enabling reflective members to consider what they want to bring to the meeting.
- Keep the agenda focused. Don’t try to accomplish too much in any one meeting. Better to end the meeting with clear next steps forward on one particular problem than attempting too much and leaving without a consensus and clear expectations.
- Get people on their feet doing things. Break into small groups around flipcharts to engage team members in idea creation and problem solving.
- If the purpose of the meeting is to share information, design a creative way for people to engage with the content. Avoid monologues and presentations in favour of discussions and games.
- People don’t sustain their enthusiasm for “being on a team.” What keeps energy high is reaching milestones. Celebrate achievements and then commit to new goals.
- Measure the success of a meeting not by how much information is covered, but by how much information is received, processed and applied.
- Consider your environment and room choice – does it align with the tone you want to set?
- Make a conscious choice to improve the quality of the meetings you conduct. Solicit feedback on the effectiveness of your meetings and work to address concerns.
