The Many Ways to Ensure you have Effective Meetings
1. Your Best Meeting Ever
Ask participants to pair up and ask their partner this question, “Tell me about the most energising, powerfully invigorating meeting you’ve ever attended. What was it that made it such a powerful meeting for you?”
Each person takes notes of their partner’s key points, and then share these out to the main group. Prioritise the points, and then incorporate these into your meetings going forward
2. Post Your Ideas
Give each participant a post-it note and a marker. Have them write down the one thing that they think is the greatest barrier to good meetings. Have them put their post-it notes on a sheet in the front of the room. Once all are posted, summarize the barriers. Ask them to discuss strategies or behaviours that will work to overcome meeting barriers.
3. The "Go Round"
Ask everyone to share his or her best thinking about the topic for (say) two minutes while everyone else listens attentively without interrupting. They will get their turn later.
This format ensures that everyone gets an equal chance to speak and everyone gets heard too so there is no need to compete. The quiet people gain respect because their thinking is often clear and valuable as they work on it inside before they speak. The noisy people have to focus their thinking to get it into a fixed time so it is often sharper than usual.
4. Pairs and Share
When feelings are running high or everyone is confused, you need to increase the amount of attention in the room and give everyone space to think, talk, and be heard, very quickly. Stop and spend (say) five minutes listening to the person next to you about what she or he thinks and feels about what is happening and what should happen next. Then exchange roles.
After this, use a very quick "go round", as above to share conclusions. You will find the heat has gone out of the situation and you will know what to do.
5. Clarify Aims
The aims of each meeting need to be clear. Spend time at the beginning of a meeting, or item, seeking agreement to what you are trying to do. If you are a member rather than a chairperson then being ‘aware-ly naïve’ can be very powerful. "I think we are here to decide what we will do about developing our managers next year, is this what the rest of you think we are here to do?”
You can also seek agreement on success criteria. You ask, "If this meeting was a complete success, what would have to take away with us at the end?" This sharpens up the focus.