Lose the snooze | Meetings that pop will bring you from a company zero to a conference room hero
Boring or agitating, too long or too short, chronically unproductive meetings can drag down morale inside the meeting room and throughout a company.
Norm Pineau, the senior project-engineering manager at National Semiconductor in South Portland, estimates he spends between 10% and 15% of his workday in meetings. Some of those meetings are good, some not so good. National Semi's monthly office review meetings, which last between four and five hours, Pineau could do without "because you're rehashing the same stuff that you talked about the whole previous month, in your morning meetings or business meetings or whatever."
As companies continue to consolidate staff and assign more tasks to fewer employees, the kind of collaboration and communication great meetings promote is more important than ever. Good meetings can unify a company socially and professionally, and generate creative ideas that individuals might never come up with alone.
Last year, research professors from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, the University of Sheffield in England and Bowling Green State University in Ohio published a rare study on meeting efficacy. They found that the average worker actually looks forward to meetings — even long ones — if they feel they are engaging and effective.
So how do you make meetings work for you? Here are four classic symptoms of a sickly meeting, and how to treat them.
Why ask why: Does this meeting need to happen?
Before planning the agenda, Nancy Ansheles, a business trainer and meeting facilitator in Portland, tells her clients to make sure the meeting is the most effective way to achieve the goals at hand. Ansheles, who founded her management-consulting firm Catalyst & Co. in 1995, has trained hundreds of for-profit and nonprofit businesses and state agencies in Maine and around the country in effective management and meeting organization. "Most people start with an agenda, but I usually go a step before that to make sure the meeting is really necessary," says Ansheles.
For example, if you're simply presenting data or information, Ansheles says that might be best done through email or a memo. If a meeting is necessary, make sure you only involve the people who should be there. Often, some employees are only needed for part of the meeting.
To analyze whether the issue requires a meeting, clarify your goals, says Susanna Liller, founder of Liller Consulting in Woolwich. Liller cautions that meetings shouldn't happen just because they are a regularly scheduled event.
"So many people absolutely hate staff meetings," says Liller. "And so to spare people it would be really good to say what the purpose is so people know and not to have a meeting just to have a meeting."
Clarity is key: Set an agenda, and make sure everyone knows about it
"The first thing that tends to go wrong is people don't know the purpose of the meeting," says Pam Plumb, co-author with consultant Dee Kelsey of the book Great Meetings! Great Results (Hanson Park Press, 2004), and co-creator, with Kelsey, of the University of Southern Maine's Center for Continuing Education Certificate Program in Meeting Facilitation. Plumb, a former Portland mayor and founder of Pamela Plumb and Associates, says the most common reason meetings are ineffective is that the goals are too broad.
"[Meeting planners] say, 'Let's all get together to go and talk about X,' instead of saying the purpose of this meeting is to examine X and come up with some solutions," Plumb explains. "That allows the group to stay very focused on their tasks and to not leave the room without generating the outcome they had needed."
Plumb says all meetings, even regular staff meetings, should include written agendas circulated before the meeting convenes. Participants in the meeting also should be given advanced copies of any background information pertinent to the topic. This prevents a productive meeting from blowing a tire when participants realize they don't have the information to complete the task.
Speak easy: Select a facilitator who engages everyone in a positive way
Plumb became interested in professional facilitation while on the Portland City Council from 1979 to 1990. During a particularly contentious series of hearings on a rezoning plan for the city's waterfront, Plumb realized the working waterfront representative was not being effectively engaged in a conversation that needed her input. Plumb trains facilitators to make sure everyone has a chance to participate.
"It helps enormously to have someone whose job it is to be charge of the process," she says.
Deb Burwell, of Burwell Consulting in Belfast, encourages facilitators to go a step beyond the meeting's agenda and engage participants in a getting-to-know-you exercise at the beginning of a meeting. Burwell works with the Saltwater Institute, a Kennebunk management-consulting firm based on values-centered leadership. Her Saltwater-inspired exercises include talking about someone who has recently impacted you in a positive way or describing a special tree.
"It gives people a chance to sort of arrive at that meeting as opposed to 'We are all doing five things before and we come sliding into the meeting with a number of loose ends,'" says Burwell.
Not all meeting consultants believe exercises like these are necessary, but most agree the facilitator must guide the group to clearly establish ground rules, make sure everyone is heard from and feedback is specific, record meeting notes, and create a "parking lot" for unrelated ideas to be revisited later.
The facilitator also must make sure conflict doesn't undermine the process. When conflict does arise, the facilitator must intervene by reframing the way a criticism has been phrased, from, for example, "That idea is stupid" to "So, you think this idea is ineffective? Can you explain why?"
To reverse the snooze-factor, address glazed eyes directly by asking if the group is tired, if a break is needed or if people are confused by the topic.
"Put it right on the table," says Plumb. "Find out what the source is and deal with that."
Wrap it up: A strong finish is crucial
Nothing's worse than losing great brainstorming momentum after a meeting. Ansheles says punctuating a meeting with a final recap is critical. "Ten to 15% of the time should be spent on summarizing — who's going to follow up with who and when," she explains. Ansheles also recommends summaries to analyze the meeting's process. "It's a good time to evaluate how the meeting went."
To keep the creative juices flowing, Liller suggests assigning follow-up tasks, along with deadlines for those tasks to be completed and clear direction for managers to check on their progress. "It's not because you can't trust people," says Liller. "It's because people are so busy that if there isn't a method for checking things they usually just won't happen."
Knowing when to end is also important. A good agenda, an interactive process and coffee breaks can stretch a good meeting for hours, but Liller says most weekly staff meetings shouldn't last longer than an hour.
"You lose people's attention, they can only sit for so long," she says. "They're worried, they're starting to think about the next thing they have to do after 45 minutes in a meeting."
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