Tuesday, September 16, 2008

How to have happier, more productive meetings?

I responded to this question on LinkedIn: I am looking for a way to make weekly staff meetings (10 participants) really cool and still cover standard stuff. Any ideas?

I was chuffed that my answer below was chosen as the "Best Answer" by the questioner. You may find the ideas worth trying in your meetings. If you do, I would love to know how you get on.

My Answer

Here is one way to do it. You can use some of the ideas to jazz up any meeting.

You could try creating the agenda together once every few meetings. Often meetings are dull because the items are defined by the boss alone - so no one feels very enthusiastic about them, except the boss! Of course, the boss is still the boss so you can make sure the items that are important to you are in the agenda.

Start the meeting by going round the group and asking everyone to say something positive, while everyone else just listens. You can ask them to say something that is going well, or something directly related to the topic. For example, if you are discussing customer service, it might help to ask them to say why this is important to them. This activity helps people to connect to each other and be positive.

Create an agenda from the group's key interests and concerns. You can ask everyone what the most important issues are that he or she would like the group to work on today. List the issues on a flip chart without editing or comment. Then ask each person to tick off the (say) three issues from the list that she or he would like to work on. The issues with the most ticks are the agenda for the meeting.

Ask the participants to share their best thinking on a topic or issue for (say) two minutes, while everyone else just listens attentively. This makes the noisy people focus their energy and gives the quiet ones time to think. They also don't have to fight for attention. Have a turn yourself but go last if you are the most senior person at the meeting. When everyone has been heard, the rest of the meeting often goes very well.

Use sub-groups. If you form small groups from the people with most interest in a topic, you will get more and better work done than if you stay together. Groups of three to five are the most effective for producing and testing ideas.

If you need to get everyone thinking about something quickly, ask people to take a few minutes each way talk and listen to each other in pairs. This is particularly effective when you are a bit stuck on something controversial. The thoughts from their paired discussions are usually constructive. Pair work is useful you want a thoughtful response to an announcement of a change. You can ask each pair to come up with a question or a comment. You will get more and more thoughtful responses.

At the end of the meeting, or half way through if it is a long one, go round the group and ask people for their thoughts about the meeting. You can ask people what they learned, what was good about it and how the next one could be better. This will not only improve the meetings, it will also share the responsibility for them working well.

There is more on this, and related topics in my ebook "Developing People", if you would like a free copy, please contact me.

Nancy Kline's book "Time to Think" is a great resource.

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