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Business Principles
Conducting Effective Business Meetings
good, but my whole job description involves going to meetings." I was inHow would you describe meetings you have
trigued, so I asked her to tell me more.
attended in the past? I was facilitating a workShe was a personal assistant to a manshop on how to facilitate more successful meet- ager of a Fortune 500 company, and she
ings, and to start things off, I asked the group
was hired by her boss to attend the meetthat very question. The answers that they pro- ings that he could not attend himself bevided were very similar to answers that I have
cause there were not enough hours in the
received from hundreds of workshop particiday. After class, she and I sat down and
pants over the last ten years.
identified 32-hours of wasted meeting
time that she was participating in every
The first two responses were… "Meetings are week. These were meetings that neither
looooooooooong," and "Meetings are BOW- she nor her boss was actually needed
ring (this workshop was actually held in my
for, but that one of them attended every
hometown of Fort Worth, Texas - thus the
week. Over the next year, this one perTexas twang.)"
son increased productivity of her team by
over 200%. Granted, this is an extreme
Those two responses almost always come up
case, but there are probably hours in
when I ask the question. Others that also come each of our weeks that are wasted by
up a lot are: Wastes of time, non-productive,
ineffective meetings.
confrontational, inefficient, repetitive, and a
number of other negative descriptions. Every
The tips below are strategies that I have
once in a while, I get a response like positive,
collected over the years from class meminformative, or necessary, but usually the other bers who swear by their effectiveness. I
participants gang-up against the person very
hope they work for you as well.
quickly.
Have an Agenda: Outline ahead of time
what points will be covered in the meetMost people believe that business meetings
ing. Write it out, and distribute it to particiare necessary evils, and in many cases, they
pants ahead of time. This will help avoid
are. But one of the most important things we
the "chasing of rabbits," and help particican remember about business meetings is to
pants be more prepared for the meeting.
NOT have one unless it is absolutely necessary. When your employees and coworkers are
in staff meetings, they are not producing. Noth- Follow the Agenda: This sounds very
elementary, but you'd be surprised by the
ing is ever produced until after the meeting is
over. One of my first pieces of advice to people number of people who take the time to
who want to make meetings more effective is to create an agenda, and then totally disregard the agenda during the meeting.
have fewer of them.
About five years ago, I made this statement in Limit the Agenda: Ask yourself, "What
are the three most important things we
a class, and a young lady in the front row
need to cover in the meeting?" Limit the
raised her hand and said, "That sounds really
By Doug Staneart
The Five C's of Management
According to a survey TSN, "Less than onethird of all supervisors and managers are perceived to be strong leaders." As a result, increasingly larger percentages of our workforce are disengaged.
So what does it take for a manager to be
"perceived as a strong leader?"
Character: People will not follow someone for
long if they can't trust them. Not long ago a
well known CEO was "ousted" after a probe
into a personal relationship with a female executive at the same firm. "The board concluded that the facts reflected poorly on his
judgment and would impair his ability to lead
the company…his actions were inconsistent
with our code of conduct." Leaders have to be
trustworthy to produce sustainable results.
Caring : "People don't care how much you
know until they know how much you care."
When Lou Holtz was coach at Notre Dame,
the second question he used to ask every
player before being selected to play after "Can
I trust you?" was "Do you CARE about me,
your teammates, and Notre Dame?" If a
agenda to these three points. The rest of the things
you wanted to cover, by definition, weren't really that
important anyway, so why waste everyone's time?
Set a Time Limit: I would suggest setting the time
limit for the meeting to be no longer than 30-minutes.
In future meetings, shorten the time by five minutes
until the time limit is 15-minutes or less. The leader of
the meeting will become much more efficient, and the
participants will become much more focused as well.
When the time limit is up, end the meeting. You may
not get to cover every single thing that you wanted to
the first couple of times you try this, but within a short
time, you will find that the major information points are
being discussed and decisions are being made very
efficiently.
Encourage Participation from Everyone, but don't
Force Them: Instead of going around the table and
asking for opinions or input, just ask a question and let
people volunteer their answers. There will be times
during any meeting that each person will "phase
out" (especially if it is a looooong and BOW-ring meeting.) If we call on every person, it wastes time, and
puts people on the spot. Other ways of encouraging
participation is to just ask a question, and after someone answers, say something like, "Good, let's hear
from someone else." If there are people in your meeting who rarely speak, instead of calling on them directly, you might say something like, "I value the opinion of each of you, does anyone else have something
to add." Then, just look at the person you want to hear
from. If he or she has something to say, he or she will
say it if encouraged in this way. If he or she doesn't,
then you haven't embarrassed the person.
Meetings can be a very powerful way to communicate
and solve problems if you use these simple tips.
Doug Staneart, [email protected], is C