How to make your meeting count

By Suzanne Kubota
Senior Internet Editor
FederalNewsRadio.com

How often do you leave a meeting thinking it was a complete waste of time? We’re going to help you prevent that when you host a meeting.

Kimberly Douglas an author and human resources expert of more than 25 years, told FederalNewsRadio about usable steps you can take to make every minute of your meetings count.

Douglas said before your meeting, make a checklist:

What’s the point? Make sure you’re very clear on why you’re meeting in the first place. “If you are the one calling the meeting, you make sure that it absolutely has to involve a face to face meeting.”

Where’s the agenda? “I think a lot of times people show up for meetings and just think that it’s the leader’s job to entertain them and to structure the agenda and be responsible for it all. If the leader takes the time to engage the rest of the group so that they feel some ownership for the success of the meeting, then it doesn’t have to be all on their shoulders.”

Conference room overcrowding. Make sure the people you’ve invited to the meeting know why they’re there.

The meeting will seemingly go on forever. Provide an agenda before the meeting and include a time limit for each topic.

The meeting becomes a free-for-all. Douglas says to select four to six rules based on your meeting objectives and the people you’ve selected to attend. Options would include “Everyone participates” or “Speak in headlines.”

Big talkers eat up all the time. Consider using assigned seating.

Conflict kills productivity. Conflict can be a good thing, but too much of a good thing can get out of hand. And “if worse comes to worst,” Douglas tells ReliablePlant, “use humor.”

No one knows who’s making the decisions. Spell out who will be making the final decision ahead of time.

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No decisions, commitments or next steps are captured. Make sure to record what went by writing WHO, WHAT, and BY WHEN of the directives discussed in the meeting.

While providing information in advance can make your meeting go more smoothly, being unpredictable can make it seem more lively. For example, said Douglas, mix up the meeting time.

“Sometimes it can be very effective to start it at an unusual time like 1:15 or 11:45 or 10:45, some unusual time like that. It encourages people to believe you really mean it to start on time and to end at a particular time.”

For more on the “10 pitfalls of pitiful meetings … and how to fix them”, see the Reliable Plant Magazine.

Kimberly Douglas runs Firefly Facilitation, a company that’s worked with federal contractors and even the Marine Corps to turn a team’s energy into mission-success.

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