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HOLDING A
SUCCESSFUL MEETING
A recent poll
conducted by Harvard University Researchers suggested that
employees feel that over 50% of the meeting time they were
involved with was a waste of time. In an effort to improve our
organizations, it is necessary that we continually review all
the processes that occur within our organization. Yet, it seems
that one of the last bastions that we don't look at is meetings
and how we use meeting time. Most of the time, if we were to
step back and take a hard look at it, we would realize that we
are not utilizing meeting times effectively. How do we make
better use of these meeting times?
First of all, we
must make the meeting short. Any time a meeting goes
longer than 15 minutes, people begin to drift and you lose them.
It is hard for people to stay focused on the subject at hand if
they are worried about completing the tasks associated with
their job performance. Therefore, you want to make sure that you
have meetings that are no longer than 15 minutes. You want to
put an agenda together so that everyone in the meeting has an
idea as to the purpose of the meeting so that they can
appropriately prepare to discuss the agenda.
You need to
have a facilitator;
that is, someone in the meeting who is going to lead the
discussion, keep the members on track, follow the agenda and not
allow the meeting to creep in scope or in length. The
facilitator's job is nothing more than keeping the parties
actively engaged. A facilitator does not dominate the meeting;
yet, conducts the meeting.
You want to
have a recorder;
that is, one person assigned the responsibility of taking notes
so that all the other participants in the meeting can
participate freely without having to worry about taking notes
and addressing particular issues, both verbally and in writing.
If it is
determined that action is to be taken, then you have to identify
who is responsible for taking the action and by what
dates the action is to be completed. Sometimes the action is
more than providing feedback to the group on a particular issue.
No surprises
is another tenet of the successful meeting. This is why having
the agenda established in advance is so important. It gives all
the participants the opportunity of participating from the
position of understanding, rather than trying to defend their
ignorance as to a particular topic. They have time to gather
information regarding the topic and are prepared to discuss it.
The
facilitator-learning model as described in this Thomas
Tips has proven successful in academic and industrial
environments. The key to success is shared governance. A person
can be a facilitator one time and a recorder the next time.
These roles should be shared among the members participating in
the meetings so that everyone has an opportunity to experience
the role.
- Paul
Thomas
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