Successful Meetings

Five principles for making meetings shorter and more productive

Establish clear objectives

• What are we meeting for?
• What do we want to achieve?
• How does it affect my work / the workplace?
• How can I get involved?
• What will happen next?

Improve pre-meeting preparation

• Be familiar with the topic
• Have information on hand (resource materials, handouts, overheads)
• Plan meeting times and places and promote with staff (Bulletin Board, email, announce at previous staff meeting)
• Decide who will speak about what
• Inform and confirm date and time of meeting with participants

Establish expectations for discussions and get agreement

• Individual responsibility for participation and learning
• Everyone has a right to share their ideas and to be listened to
• There will be no put downs
• Criticisms will be constructive
• Personal agendas to be discussed outside the meeting
• There is a commitment to attend meetings

Promote accountability

• Get agreement on decisions made
• Ensure minutes accurately reflect discussions and decisions
• Get agreement that decisions requiring action will be followed up

Build consensus and manage ideas

• The key is participation and communication
• Everyone is responsible for how much input they want
• Ensure ideas and decisions are agreed to and understood
• Follow up immediately any decisions made

Thinking things through

• Pursue continuous improvement through brainstorming or inter-departmental think tanks.  This involves as many people as possible in the planning and decision-making process.
• Regular brainstorming groups are an ideal medium for generating ideas and promoting lateral thinking in an informal environment where ideas can flow freely.
• Once the ideas are generated you need to sort out which can genuinely help the department / service / organisation.

11-point checklist to pre-test the likely effectiveness of a new concept:

1. Will it increase productivity or improve quality?
2. Is it a more efficient use of people and resources?
3. Does it improve operations or maintenance procedures?
4. Is it an improvement on present equipment or systems?
5. Does it improve safety?
6. Does it reduce waste?
7. Does it eliminate unnecessary work?
8. Does it reduce costs?
9. Does it improve current working conditions?
10. Will it contribute to better customer satisfaction?
11. Will it make a difference?

Dealing with difficult discussions and meetings

• The key is information and communication. Keep your colleagues informed of what is happening through bulletins pinned to the staff bulletin board, brief regular announcements at staff meetings, discussing concerns informally at morning and afternoon tea. Provide accurate information and facts. Answer that you don't know when you don’t have information and make an effort to find out and get back to the person.
• You are a facilitator for discussion and consultation. Stay neutral. Listen to what people have to say and take care in not feeding into criticism or negativity. Remain as an observer and this will help in not feeling defensive or personally attacked. Make a written note of any issues raised for future exploration. Bring in an outside facilitator to help mediate a potential conflict.
• Focus on the things we can have influence on. Don’t waste time on questions such as:
  “If you had the resources, what would you do differently?”
• Anticipate any questions, issues, fears, resistances. Your first hand experience and knowledge of the workplace and individuals can help in facilitating the discussion, empathising with others and creating a safe environment for others to contribute their ideas.

Helpful responses in difficult meetings

• Instead of responding immediately when one person is openly negative, critical, resistant, try to avoid being ‘set up’ by opening the question up for the group to respond. Always acknowledge the person and say things such as:
  “That's an interesting point of view, does any one have a different perspective?”
  “That's a good question, would anyone else like to respond?”
• To avoid feeling or sounding defensive when there is an ‘us and them’ comment, say something similar to:
  “I can't speak for the University /Vice-Chancellor’s Committee. I can share my ideas based on the meetings I've gone to / the reading I've done / my experience which is... Has someone had a similar experience?”
• When things get ‘hot’ or are starting to get out of control, stay calm, take a deep breath, take control of the discussion by either:
• standing up and calling for everyone to refocus on the task / issue and remind them of what you are discussing. Say something like:
  “Let's stop for a moment and remind ourselves what we’re discussing / this meeting is about... The issue is this...”
• gesturing people to stop talking for a moment (eg: holding your hand up), summarise the discussion and call for another point of view/ take a break/ get agreement that the issue should be discussed outside the meeting or needs more information, etc. Try:
  “Let's stop for a moment. Several people have brought up a number of issues in the last 10 minutes. First I heard A. talk about (...), then B. raised their concern about (...) and then C. began talking about (...). The issue we began talking about was (...). Given our limited time we can do a number of things. We can continue discussing the original issue and discuss the others at the next meeting. We may find that some of the questions / issues will get covered this way. Or we can decide to end the meeting now and think about what’s been said and decide what is a priority for discussion at the next meeting. (pause) Given the time is short my suggestion is...”
• Remember to thank everyone for their participation and ideas at each meeting.
• Follow up personally any member of staff who felt uncomfortable or dissatisfied with the process after the meeting. It may be a misunderstanding in what was said that needs clarification.