Your Productivity: Meeting Management

by Jennifer Guy

Oh, the Horrors of corporate meetings! They’re too long, they’re often pointless, and they’re dominated by tyrannical windbags or by suck-ups.  “Corporate America has a meeting disorder,” says Jennifer Guy, a management consultant specializing in making human capital more effective in their day-to-day work.   

With the team environment spreading through companies like kudzu, people are attending more meetings than ever, devoting as many as two days a week to various gatherings, and you only have to look around you to see the extent of this in your company.

Meetings are career-critical, Ms. Guy contends, because they are a prime tool for developing staff through giving and getting feedback, identifying barriers to performance and deciding how to remove those barriers. “If you can’t orchestrate a meeting,” she says, “you’re of little use to the corporation.”  

To mark yourself as a leader, consider these points:

Be prepared

No matter how pressed for time you are, don’t try to wing it.  This is a public appearance.  If you’re sloppy on the facts, inattentive or out-of-the-loop, it will be noticed. 

Meeting leaders should prepare and distribute an agenda to participants ahead of time, so they can think about the issues.  Otherwise, a meeting gets bogged down in trivia or issues that aren’t relevant.  Each item should have a specific result to be produced and a time when each conversation will start and end. “Discussion,” Guy says, “is not a result.  Why are you discussing the matter?  Is it a decision that needs to be made?  Do you need input? Consider these things when determining the intended result of an agenda item.”

Meetings are designed to generate and tune ideas, solve problems and define what actions the participants will take, not to disseminate information. That should be done electronically. 

A well-designed agenda can reduce the length of a meeting significantly because it promotes focus and leads to fewer tangential conversations.

Make the Participants Comfortable

Some gurus suggest locking out latecomers putting a timer on the table for each topic or removing chairs from the room so people will want to keep things short. That might work in a VERY dysfunctional organization, but the idea is to make people comfortable, so they want to participate. Such gimmicks, while they address legitimate concerns, often serve to distract and irritate. “You want to be welcoming.  Use friendly hand gestures to subconsciously draw people into conversations and make eye contact to show interest in what people are saying.

Having said that. Be rigorous in your meeting management.  Start the meeting on time and end on time (NEVER end a meeting late!).  Most companies have not realized yet that people are scheduling meetings back to back, forcing people get to meetings late, or to leave early. Create a reputation for making your meetings compelling and productive and people will get there on time.  The most effective method of making people comfortable is to have them be sure they are in the right place and not wasting their time.  This is especially true of regular meetings such as recurring project meetings. 

Judge Not

Meetings falter if attendees fear reprisals for honesty, or if ideas are routinely rejected. 

If someone suggests an idea that has been tried before and didn’t work, don’t reject it out of hand.  Let them know that it has been tried before but ask them for more detail.  Just because it didn’t work before doesn’t mean that in today’s environment/company/ department/organizational culture it won’t work.  Put the ownership of the idea back on the person, rather than shutting them down. 

By the same token, you sometimes just need to put ideas on hold. Parking lots are very useful for these things, but make sure you have an agenda item to review the parking lot towards the end of the meeting. 

Sometimes, you can create the proper atmosphere for open discussion through the use of powerful symbols.  I recall a dinner meeting where the liberal consumption of cognac prompted surprising candor between middle and senior managers.  Thereafter, it was understood that a meeting conducted under “Armagnac Rules” meant you could speak freely, without fear of reprisal.

If someone is overly negative, some suggest playful ways of stopping them, but assuming they have a legitimate concern is a much more powerful way to operate.  For example, “Len, I know you just want to save us time, and possibly another failure with your comments, but tell me, is there anything in particular you think we did wrong the last time that we might fix this time?”   This gives Len the challenge of offering practical suggestions. 

Get Everyone Involved

It’s the leader’s responsibility to silence the voluble and encourage the silent. To spread things around, seek discussion (“That’s a great question, let’s open it up to the group.”)  or “relay” it (Sam, you’re the expert on this, why don’t you comment?”). Also, ask people to write their thoughts down, then read them. It gets reticent people to share their ideas. 

Take Risks

Speaking out in meetings can be risky in some companies.  Opinions that are contrary to the meeting manager’s or an executive might be ignored or tabled quickly.  It doesn’t take long to find out that saying the wrong thing in a meeting can be a career killer. 

But it is important to note that if people aren’t willing to talk openly and quickly get to the root cause of issues, meetings are doomed.  Hours can be wasted in meetings about important matters leader didn’t want to raise issues that might kill the deal. 

As the meeting leader, challenge people to poke holes in any given idea.  If it is a good idea, it will get better with discussion and if it is a bad idea, it will fall apart (as it should) with discussion.  Watch scope creep, though – if it is an exciting idea, it can grow way beyond its usefulness. 

Meetings as an Expense

When you figure in the number of hours executives and managers spend in meetings, if you don’t make them effective you are throwing valuable company resources away.  Take the time to train meeting managers in good, sound meeting practices.   

What can we do to help you with your meeting management?  Call 609-921-3139, and speak to Jennifer Guy.

"As the meeting leader, challenge people to poke holes in any given idea.  If it is a good idea, it will get better with discussion and if it is a bad idea, it will fall apart (as it should) with discussion."