Effective Meetings

By David Hawkins & Mikel Vanry

On Meetings in general

By the time you have become a leader, you have spent a significant portion of your working life in meetings

Leaders can usually distinguish between useful meetings and ineffectual ones.  Most have strong ideas about how to prepare for and run a good meeting.  However, for reasons both obvious and obscure, when leaders meet, the quality and value of their meetings is often less than satisfying to many of the attendees.

The pace and volume of the work that leaders are faced with may explain part of this.  They know they should prepare for meetings but do not.  They know how to manage a meeting but are concerned about how that behavior may be interpreted by their colleagues.

In additionl, thos people who are used to leading meetings successfully don’t always make a conscious transition to being an equally effective follower when someone else is leading the meeting.

Meetings are how executives get a fair chunk of their work done

In meetings, many different kinds of projects and issues get taken care of, often at the same time.  Not all of what is being taken care of is necessarily obvious.

Effective meeting practices can only be successfully designed if we acknowledge the fact that at this level of organizational life each player can only succeed in “getting their work done” if they can navigate in matters of relationship.

• Many initiatives will depend on the willing and effective support of colleagues and staff in other functions of the organization
• Each will be dependent on the willing and effective implementation of their intent by their own staff
• Senior level initiatives are often characterized by significant involvement or dependence on external parties, such as regulators, politicians, suppliers, investors and customers; each requiring their own relationships

One useful way of thinking about what takes place in meetings is to see it as a collection of successful, bright and ambitious individuals, each trying to take care of two key variables at the same time: getting “work” accomplished and navigating the relationship landscape.

On ways to improve Meetings

From this perspective, it is possible to see the techniques for creating better meetings as a means for executives to take care, simultaneously, of both these objectives: getting the tangible “work” done and navigating in regard to relationships

In the following pages we explore techniques for creating better meetings:

• Reframing Meetings
• Meeting Design
• Meeting Roles
• Meeting Preparation
• Meeting Ground Rules

Many of these techniques work by separating elements that would otherwise be mixed together and are therefore more difficult to manage.

Reframing Meetings: From an event people show up for; to a shared commitment to produce a result and build relationships

Sometimes meetings show up like this:

• Someone sends out an invitation for a meeting, and the invitees routinely accept the invite out of duty
• An agenda may be sent out for the meeting, but it is quickly scanned and filed for use during the meeting
• People show up to meetings with varying degrees of preparation; some have done work in advance; others show up and “wing it”
• People have different views of what is important to discuss in the meeting
• There may be confusion about who called the meeting in the first place
• People behave in the meeting as they see fit, in response to the discussion that arises in the meeting, in order to take care of what is important to them
• Meetings rehash the same topics, with little or no resolution of issues
• Relationships amongst the attendees are diminished or damaged

We suggest that the biggest improvement to meetings can arise from starting to think of all meetings as:

“A shared commitment by all participants to achieve a result defined by the person who has requested the meeting, while building or maintaining sufficient relationships among the participants.”

The implications of this view are:

• One person needs to define the result they wish and request a meeting to produce that result. We call this person the “Customer” for the meeting, and their intended result becomes the purpose of the meeting
• The Customer needs to negotiate with the other people in the meeting their agreement to produce the intended result. We call these other people the “Performers” for the meeting
• The achievement of the agreed result and the maintenance or improvement of relationships are the ultimate test of the success of the meeting and the standard by which the behavior of each attendee is judged

Each meeting is a Workflow between Customer and Performers, where the concerns of all are addressed.

Meeting design: All aspects of a meeting need to be considered and deliberately chosen in order to improve the success of a meeting

What are the relevant design aspects of a meeting?

Purpose and Outcomes (WHY)

• Overall purpose and specific outcomes for the meeting

Roles and Attendees (WHO)

• Customers and what is important to them
• Performers, their roles, and what is important to them
• Facilitation role, techniques and tools

Facilities and Material (WHERE)

• Place, setting, room and furniture, including light, view, noise and temperature
• Reference material to be used in the meeting
• Presentation and remote video facilities

Standards for Effective Mood and Behavior (HOW)

• Guidelines or rules for behavior during the meeting
• Expectations for mood of participants
• Preparation by all attendees for the meeting
• Anticipation of issues and breakdowns and how to address them

Agenda - the steps or procedure that will be used to achieve the outcomes and purpose (WHEN)

Documentation of meeting discussion and results (WHAT)

The amount of attention given to each of these aspects needs to be determined based on the nature of the meeting, how many people will be attending, the familiarity of the attendees with effective meeting practices, and if external parties will be present.

• Larger meetings require increased attention to design in order to not waste many people’s time
• Meetings to address emotionally charged topics require careful design and preparation
• If attendees have good, effective meeting habits and attitudes, less design is required
• If attendees have poor meeting habits, more design is required
• If attendees have existing and sufficient relationships, less design and preparation is required
• If attendees have insufficient or new relationships, much more design and preparation is required
• Meetings including external parties require careful design and preparation

Vanry has prepared a generic meeting design document that can be used as a reference and template for effective meetings.

Meeting roles: Increasing clarity about roles is one of the easiest (and most neglected) ways of improving the quality of a meeting

What are meeting roles and why are they important?

• Meeting roles are the identities that some of the meeting attendees take on for the duration of that meeting
• These roles help meeting attendees achieve their goals by explicitly separating matters of protocol from, say, matters of priority, by clarifying and identifying who can formally be relied upon for which responses and behavior

The key roles to keep clear about in order to have a successful meeting are:

• Customer
• Performers
• Facilitator

Meeting Customer:

• The customer is the person whose needs and concerns call for the meeting and define the purpose of the meeting
• The key accountability of the Customer is to ensure that all Performers understand the meeting Purpose and are willing and able to participate in its creation

Meeting Performers

• Performers are the people who take action before, during and after the meeting
• The key accountability of the Performers is to achieve the agreed meeting Purpose

Meeting Facilitator

• The Facilitator concentrates on the design and implementation of the meeting process, not its content
• The key accountability of the Facilitator is to make the best use of the contributions of the Customer and Performers and to minimize waste in their interactions
• Other aspects of meeting process management, such as timekeeping and note taking, may be negotiated and taken on by other attendees

Meeting Preparation: Properly preparing for a meeting is another frequently neglected component to meeting success

The meeting Customer will benefit by ensuring that appropriate meeting attendees are committed to the purpose of the meeting and that they have what they need to be successful; after all, the Customer is the main beneficiary of the meeting

Most meetings are initiated by the Customer (or their delegate) by issuing a meeting invitation

• This invitation should be considered to truly be an invitation; a request to attend that can be accepted, declined, or negotiated
• Commitments are created though explicit or implicit negotiation and informed acceptance of the invitation by the attendee. Commitments are not established by the mere issuance of a meeting invitation
• In cases where effective meeting practices are not the cultural norm, care must be taken by the Customer to ensure attendees are truly committed to the purpose of the meeting. This may involve conversations with individual attendees in advance of the meeting

Any required preparation to be done in advance of the meeting by the attendees should also be requested, negotiated, and committed

• Commitments are established through negotiation and an informed acceptance by the attendee of the Customer’s request to prepare for the meeting; commitments are not established by merely documenting requested preparation in the agenda

An effective process of ensuring adequate preparation for a meeting is:

• The Customer and/or Facilitator creates a written design for the meeting, documenting the proposed Purpose, Outcomes, Roles, Preparation, Ground Rules and Agenda for the meeting
• The suitability of proposed meeting attendees, location, timing, duration, facilities and setting are reviewed by the Customer and/or Facilitator
• A timely invitation is sent out by the Customer to prospective attendees with the meeting design document
• Attendance and preparation is then negotiated between the Customer and attendees as appropriate given the degree of familiarity of the attendees with effective meeting practices

Establishing ground rules is likely to be the least understood component for successful meetings

Most of us have some personal rules that we’ve learned over the years that help us compensate for aspects of our temperament which may, left to themselves, interfere with our most successful functioning. Possible examples:

• Some people work on themselves to speak less and listen more
• Others, to speak more (or to speak at different moments, or….)
• Others work to remember to let the other attendees show their cards before they jump in…

There is often also a collection of “ad hoc” rules that group members follow.  These rules are generally not discussed, but simply understood. Possible examples:

• Never make a decision if we are in any doubt
• What doesn’t get done in this meeting can always be taken up in another meeting
• Above all else, make sure your point of view gets heard

Groups that are very high-functioning often work out an explicit set of rules-of-play (ground rules) and establish agreed-to practices for how to keep each other on track when they see the rules being broken

Examples of possible ground rules:

• Disagree with the idea, not the person
• In difficult moments, paraphrase the other person’s comments before you dive in and respond 
• Delay contributing thoughts that may be off-the-subject until after the agreed-upon process has been completed
• Develop and examine the rationales underlying different positions in order to find ways to reconcile them, as opposed to planting the flag for a particular position
• Be concerned for inclusion.  Who else needs to know about this?  Who else’s opinion/point of view may need to be represented here?
• Each of us will approach our meetings together in a mood of engagement, openness and hope

Suggestions for next steps

All meetings are an opportunity for attendees to strengthen their relationships with one another in addition to getting things done

In this spirit, we suggest the following steps:

• Take some time to review the various possibilities for improving meetings set out in this article
• Reflect on the particular frustrations (if any) you experience in meetings
• Pay attention to meetings you are currently leading, or participating in, based on this material - what do you see differently that you may not have before?
• Identify and make some small and specific changes to your leadership or participation in one or more meetings
• Utilize the Vanry generic meeting design template in preparing for one or more of your meetings
• Notice any improvements to the effectiveness of the meetings you attend in getting things done and building relationships
• And repeat all the above

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