Managers and their staff spend more time in meetings than they did five years ago and, despite the use of ‘webinars’ and conference calls, they will probably continue to spend as much if not more time in meetings five years from now!
New technology is great and more and more affordable even to the smallest businesses, BUT its use runs contrary to the benefits of a group of human beings sharing the same space to discuss and decide together on outcomes and strategies.
As a leader you must ensure that meetings make the very BEST use of this human factor and if you are to be an effective leader, you must be able to run effective meetings. Learn how to run effective meetings on our Effective Meetings training course
Why have meetings?
In addition to the management role, meetings play an important psychological role in bringing cohesion to an organisation. Without meetings where you can meet others in the organisation, we would have less attachment to the organisation, a lesser sense of belonging.
Every group creates its own pool of shared knowledge, experience, judgement and folklore. This pool not only helps all members to do their jobs more intelligently, it also greatly increases the speed and efficiency of all communication between them.
A meeting helps every individual understand both the collective aim of the team and the way in which their own and everyone else’s work can contribute to the team’s success.
A meeting creates in all present a commitment to the decision it makes and the objective it pursues. Once something has been decided, even if you originally argued against it, your membership of the team means you feel obliged to accept the decision.
A meeting is a status arena. It is no good to pretend that people are not or should not be concerned with their status relative to the other members of a group; it is another part of human nature. When a group is new, has a new leader, or is composed of people who are in competition with each other, some team members will take the floor as a way of getting themselves noticed; this has been called arena behaviour and is likely to figure quite largely!
In a fast-moving business world, a meeting is very often the only occasion where the team or group actually exists and works as a group, and the only time when the supervisor, manager, or executive is actually perceived as the leader of the team, rather than as the official to whom individuals report.
How are meetings used in your organisation?
Skills for leading meetings
Your job, when leading a meeting, is to ensure the smooth running of the meeting, to enable everyone to participate and to reach the desired conclusion.
10 skills for leading meetings
- Ability to create a friendly, professional and motivational atmosphere
- Being prepared for the meeting
- Clarity of communication and encouraging others to be clear
- Structuring the meeting: explain the purpose of the meeting at the beginning, say how long it will last, what form it will take and so on
- Managing individual contributions :do not allow anyone to dominate and encourage participation from quieter members
- Guiding the discussion in a disciplined way to meet the objectives of the meeting
- Keeping people to the point
- Remaining impartial: do not participate too much in the discussion of topics
- Summarising the main points of each topic before moving on and making a final summary confirming the conclusions reached
- Acknowledging at the end of the meeting what has been achieved and thanking your team for their active participation
How do you score on these ten points?
Improving your leadership in meetings
Self analysis
At the end of every meeting you lead, get into the habit of taking time to reflect on your performance:
- Did you achieve what you wanted?
- What could’ve been handled better?
- What would you do differently next time?
Getting feedback from others
If you have a trusted ally in the group, ask them to give you feedback on your leadership. How we come across to others is not always the way we think we come across, so some impartial feedback is extremely useful. You can even ask the whole team to give you some constructive criticism to help you; if you can meet the team’s needs in this area, they are going to be willing active participants who are motivated and committed (so it’s worth taking the risk f asking them their opinion!)
Preparation
Before you hold your next meeting, ask yourself the following three questions:
- What is the objective of this meeting?
- Can this objective be achieved in another, more time/cost effective way?
- Who really needs to attend?
When you are clear on these three points, you can go ahead and organise a meeting which will be relevant, useful and motivating to those who attend!
