How to conduct an effective meeting

How many times have you left a meeting frustrated because you haven’t reached the outcome you desired from it? The key question here is ‘whose fault is it?’ Well, there’s both bad news and good news here – the bad news is that actually it’s your fault, but the good news is that because it’s unequivocally your fault, you can do something about it and in reality it’s quite easy to fix once you understand the elements that cause a meeting to become ineffective!

The first point is a well worn saying around something called the 7 P’s – Proper Planning (and) Preparation Prevent Pi** Poor Performance! There is at least a day’s worth of material around this subject so let’s just leave it there by saying that we ignore it at our peril and will probably get what we deserve.

The next thing we need to get our heads around is ‘The C Word’. Accept the fact that ‘CONTROL’ is present in any meeting and it is not a nice fluffy thing that sits in the middle. Instead it sits firmly with one party or the other and he or she who controls the meeting usually controls the outcome. The easiest way to do this is to utilise an agenda, not a formal starchy written one (or you may end up spending hours creating minutes!), but rather a suggested but pre-planned informal agenda which sounds inclusive but subtly cover the topics you need to cover in the order that gives you maximum advantage. It’s a really useful skill that comes easily with a bit of practice.

If you’ve set the agenda correctly the next stage will be to let them talk about themselves and their business – why? simply because we all know what we like talking about most don’t we? That’s right, ourselves and our businesses, so don’t steal the air space and (how can I put it politely), become intoxicated with the verbocity of our own enthusiasm!

It’s a very simple process to encourage people to talk. All you have to do is be genuinely interested in them and their business and ask good open questions. To be an effective open questioner it helps to remember a bit of poetry – ‘Kipling’ said, “I keep seven soldiers, serving men, they taught me all I knew. Their names are What and Why and When, Which, How, Where and Who!”

So preparation, control and questioning are 3 skills that anyone can take onboard to improve the output of any meeting. If I could offer one attitudinal point on top of those skills it would be simply this; stop thinking ‘what do I want?’ and start thinking ‘how can I get to yes?’

If you embrace and practice these principles I guarantee your meetings will become more effective and less frustrating for all involved.

Learn more about how to achieve a positive outcome at our specially designed Dynamic Communication Workshop >

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