[Business Operations] Five Tips for Masterful Meetings

“That was an awful meeting. What a waste of my time!”

How often have you had this thought? Far too many meetings are unfocused, unproductive, and completely unnecessary. Masterful meetings, however, are well-prepared, skillfully executed, and results-oriented. They typically have a timely start, a decisive close, and a clear follow-up plan for the decisions made.

How do you make your meetings masterful? Here are five quick tips.

1. Be Prepared: The 5 Ps. What is the most important part of meeting preparation? If you said, “Establish the agenda,” think again. The agenda just answers the question, “What we are going to do (process)?” More important than process is purpose and product. To prepare for a masterful meeting, answer the 5 Ps.

• Purpose: Why are we having this meeting?
• Product: What do we need to have when we are done?
• Participants: Who needs to be in the room to achieve the purpose and product?
• Probable Issues: What topics or concerns will we have to address?
• Process: What steps will help us achieve the purpose and create the product?

If you are not sure what your purpose and product are, or if you can achieve the purpose and product without a meeting, or if the purpose and product are not worth the time spent in meeting, don’t meet.

2. Early engagement: IEEI. At the beginning of a meeting, people want to know three things: “Why are we here? What are we going to do? Will my issues be addressed?” To have a masterful start, do the following:

• Inform participants about the overall purpose of the meeting and the products that will result.
• Excite them by providing a vision of success and the benefits to them.
• Empower them by identifying the authority they have been given, the important role they play in the process, or the reason they were selected for the meeting.
• Involve them in the first 15 minutes with a task-focused engagement question, such as what are the most important issues for us to address to achieve this purpose?

3.Manage Meeting Dysfunction. How do you deal with people arriving late, or working on their PDAs? What do you do about the story teller, or the whisperer, or the constant topic jumper? These are just five of 15 common dysfunctions that occur in meetings. How do you address them?

Conscious prevention: Use ground rules and discussions in advance to prevent dysfunction. For example, get agreement in advance on such ground rules as “One conversation, only meeting work in the meeting, start at the appointed time, redirect off-topic discussions.”

Early detection: Watch for dysfunction in the meeting. Don’t ignore it.

Clean resolution: Once detected, execute an appropriate resolution strategy. While the specific strategy depends on the dysfunction, when it occurs, the number of people involved, etc., there is a general formula.

• Approach privately or generally.
• Empathize with the symptom.
• Address the root cause.
• Get agreement on the solution.

4. Resolve Disagreements. True or false: People disagree for only three reasons. True. Masterful meeting leaders know the three reasons people disagree and have specific methods for reaching decisions.

Lack of information. The people disagreeing haven’t clearly heard/understood each other’s alternatives and reasons supporting them. These disagreements often are a result of an assumed understanding of what the other person is saying or meaning. (Strategy: Delineate alternatives.)

Different experiences or values. The parties have fully heard and understood one another’s alternatives. However, they’ve had different experiences or hold different values that result in them preferring an alternative. (Strategy: Identify strengths and weaknesses and create new alternatives that combine strengths.)

Outside factors. The disagreement is based on personality, past history, or other outside factors that have nothing to do with the alternatives. (Strategy: Take it to a higher source.)

5. Have a Masterful Close. Too many meetings end without a clear review of what was done or what is going to be done to implement the meeting decisions. A masterful close includes the following:

• Review items covered in the meeting.
• Confirm the decisions made.
• Address outstanding issues.
• Review future actions and ensure they have names and dates assigned.
• Thank participants; end the meeting.
• Document and distribute meeting notes.
• Follow-up to hold people accountable to assigned actions.

The author is the managing director of leadership strategies for The Facilitation Company and author of “The Secrets to Masterful Meetings and The Secrets of Facilitation.” To learn more visit www.masterfulmeetings.com.