How to Hold Successful Meetings

30 Action Tips for Managing Effective Meetings

Paul R. Timm

• Publisher: Career Press
• Year: 1997
• ISBN:
  9781632658524
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Meetings & Presentations
• Index: Business

Provides tips for holding successful meetings, including inviting the right people, running short meetings, preventing someone from taking over a meeting, and developing an agenda.

Chapter 1

The Need for Better Meeting Managers

The problem of ineffective meetings is widespread and increasing. Here are a few facts.

Fact: A survey conducted by a business-communications consulting firm revealed that more than 70 percent of executives consider many of the meetings they attend to be a waste of time. Despite this, 67 percent of the respondents report that they had to attend more meetings this year than the year before. (Success magazine.).

Fact: According to Frank Snell, author of How to Win the Meeting, executives spend more than 75 percent of their work time in meetings. That's a lot of time!

Fact: Studies suggest that as people rise to executive-level positions, the time spent in meetings increases. An advertising letter for Xerox Learning Systems reports that the senior executive “will devote nearly five hours of every working day to leading and attending meetings. This is a conservative evaluation.” Later in the same letter, it is noted that “executives now spend 100 percent more time [in] meetings than they did just 10 years ago.”

Fact: Meeting overkill is a significant contribution to job stress. Yet our thinking about the nature of work is shifting. Work is being seen as a source of more than just income. Nothing meaningful is accomplished if people aren't enjoying the process. In short, when work is fun, people produce more and better output.

A key term here is “fun.” Just what, exactly, is fun? For most people true fun is equated with productivity and satisfaction. It's fun and it feels good to accomplish something. It's fun to know that we have power to achieve team success. It's fun to grow as a person and develop new skills and abilities. It's fun to know that we are increasing in value every day through our experience and learning.

That may be a somewhat different definition of “fun” than you're used to, but think about it: Aren't these the kinds of things that really give you lasting good feelings? If your job is overburdened with nonproductive meetings, you are probably not having much fun. Indeed, the current thinking in management theory suggests that productivity, that is, the employee's perception that he or she is accomplishing something useful, actually produces job satisfaction rather than the other way around (that satisfaction causes people to be more productive).

Better meeting management is particularly fertile ground for having some fun on the job. And the good news is: You really can have control over the frequency and effectiveness of your meetings. Mastering new skills—such as the ones I'll show you in this program—can create a tremendous sense of satisfaction. And your job will be more fun!

But you don't have to take my word for it. You can try it for yourself. In fact, I challenge you to make a commitment today to try the skills and ideas in this program for 30 days and see if you don't have more fun on the job. What have you got to lose? Sign on the dotted line below and let's see what happens.

I, ______________________________ hereby commit to trying these meeting management Action Tips for 30 days to see if I will actually have more fun on my job. In doing so, I will sincerely try to apply each of the techniques presented in this program. If nothing gets better, I will go back to the old ways of doing things and forfeit all the potential fun I could be having.

Signed _______________________________ Date ________________________________

“Meetings, of course, do serve a purpose. Consider this: Our national economy is based on a 35- to 45-hour work week. Without meetings, this figure would dwindle to a few hours at the most. Our whole system, as we know it, would collapse.”

—Stephen Baker, I Hate Meetings

Okay, we have that whining out of our system. Cynicism aside, I have a better idea for dealing with the need to have meetings: Let's get better at the process so that meetings will become more productive and satisfying to participants. In so doing, we will boost the effectiveness of any organization.

Are meetings frustrating but necessary?

Meetings are often frustrating and sometimes not necessary. Many people get highly frustrated by the frequency and quality of their organization's meetings. At the same time, the value of employee participation in decisions, an idea that found support in early human relations studies of the 1940s and 50s, continues to be accepted as a truism.

Indeed, best-selling management books consistently reinforce the need for open, fluid, informal, and frequent participation by employees of all levels in organizational problem-solving. That seems to mean a full and perhaps increasing use of meetings, albeit perhaps less formal ones.

The evidence seems to conclude that: 1) meeting attendance is an often unpleasant, unproductive, or frustrating experience for participants and leaders; 2) the use of decision-making meetings is potentially useful, although perhaps overused in some organizations; 3) meeting use is generally increasing; and 4) many people lack skills necessary to be effective as leaders or participants in the “group process.”

This book is your action guide

In the rest of this book you will find:

1. A series of Action Tips—not just vague philosophies or general musings about the topic, but implementable tactics that will allow you to make all your meetings successful.
2. A number of pencil and paper activities and self-evaluations to get you thinking about meeting effectiveness.
3. Guidelines for evaluating and improving your meeting management skills.

Please write in the book freely, jotting down ideas that may be triggered—especially ideas you can apply immediately to improve the ways you use the awesome potential of the group process.

How do you feel about the meetings you attend?

Take a moment to complete the brief questionnaire on pages 12 and 13. This survey seeks your reactions to problem-solving meetings held in your work organization.

Beside each statement, please circle whether you strongly agree (SA), agree (A), neither agree nor disagree (N), disagree (D), or strongly disagree (SD).

Respond to each item in terms of your experience at work. Your experiences are likely to be different in social, recreational, or religious organizations, so please focus on job-related meetings.

The meetings I attend at work

How do your scores compare with other folks? Compare your responses against those summarized in Appendix 1.

As I suggest specific ways to make the most of your meetings, I'll focus on Action Tips that overcome the typical pitfalls—the problems that most often detract from meeting effectiveness. See if you recognize some serious problems in the following case of Moose Lips Corporation.

Moose Lips Corporation: a case in point

Here's a little story to set the stage for our discussion. See if you've ever experienced anything like this:

The president of Moose Lips Corporation meant well, but somehow things just didn't work out quite the way he thought they would. Matt Bayless had built Moose Lips from a one-man operation working out of his garage to the largest manufacturer of camping and recreational gear in the Pacific Northwest.

Despite rapid financial growth, Matt had the uneasy feeling that things wouldn't continue to be so good. He was disturbed by a marked rise in production costs and an apparent increase in competitor activity. Nothing specific, but he was just uncomfortable.

Then he hit on an idea.

After dusting off a management textbook he'd read in college, Matt decided to use “participative decision-making” to cope with the company's problems. “Sure, that's it,” he decided. “We'll have a big meeting and get some new ideas.”

His memo to all employees went out the next morning. Everyone was “invited” to participate in an all-day retreat at the Homestead Resort and Conference Center about 20 miles out of town. The agenda was set. The employees would all be getting together to “share their ideas” on how to retain market share, how to cut production costs, and “any other topics relevant to the success of their business.” The entire company would be shut down all day Friday while the 126 employees conferred.

A few days before the big meeting, word filtered back to Matt that a number of the Moose Lips employees had been grumbling about having to spend a whole day at the Homestead.

They already were feeling a lot of pressure to keep up with their work, and, in fact, they were coming up on the busiest time of the year for several departments. Besides, no one seemed to understand what was supposed to be accomplished at the proposed meeting.

Matt was u...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Chapter 1: The Need for Better Meeting Managers
• Chapter 2: When to Hold a Meeting (and When Not To!)
• Chapter 3: Overcoming Pitfalls in Meeting Preparation
• Chapter 4: Overcoming Pitfalls in Setup and Kickoff
• Chapter 5: Monitoring and Leading the Meeting
• Chapter 6: Concluding and Following Up Successfully
• Chapter 7: Tracking and Developing Meeting Skills
• Chapter 8: The Behavioral Side of Successful Meetings 1
• Appendix 1: Your Questionnaire Results
• Appendix 2: Sample Forms
• Epilogue: A Closing Thought
• About the Author
• Index