20

How to Conduct Effective Meetings

20.1 Introduction

‘Meetings are things where minutes are kept and hours are lost’—so goes an old saying. When you join a job, you will discover that the amount of time you spend on attending meetings is quite significant and that it only keeps increasing as you grow in your career, potentially leading to different time management problems. As if this is not enough, you also have challenges thrown by globally distributed teams and the reality of virtual meetings via video conferences or audio-only conference calls. Because you were primarily a solo hunter at college (meeting your friends more for social purposes than to transact any business), you will find meetings to be a significant transition to deal with.

In this chapter, we will see how to effectively participate in meetings and how to organize effective meetings, be they face-to-face or virtual. Of course, as a fresh recruit, it will be some time before you are called upon to organize meetings. But it is still a good idea to learn about how successful meetings are planned and executed and be ready when it is your turn to conduct one.

20.2 Types of Meetings

In your work life, you will come across different types of meetings. While the list is endless, we will give you a few major ones here:

Status review meetings: Typically, when you work on a project, it calls for periodic progress reviews to ensure that everything is on track and to decide any mid-course corrections. Progress-review meetings for most projects happen at a predetermined time on a specific day each week. In the case of short-duration projects, however, these review meetings could be more frequent, say twice a week. Generally, all the members of a project team participate in related progress-review meetings and action plans are worked out, agreed upon and followed through. For short duration projects, the status review meetings could be more frequent, say twice a week.

Brainstorming meetings: These are meetings where you participate in detailed discussions on problems faced by your team. It is during brainstorming meetings that your contribution to your project is noted, and this can influence your growth and recognition in your organization.

Peer-review meetings: These meetings are to review a work product produced by one of your colleagues or peers. For example, your colleague might have written a computer program and you and a few others are helping him to make the program better by identifying any possible defects. You should consider such meetings as a great way to showcase your technical knowledge, learn new things and build sustainable bridges with your peers.

One-on-one meetings: These are meetings that you and your boss have with no one else present. The frequency and duration of these meetings vary from one manager to another and from time to time. One-on-one meetings give both you and your manager the opportunity to speak candidly about the problems that you face at work and discuss issues that are somewhat delicate to discuss in group meetings. You can also use one-on-one meetings to seek your manager’s advice on matters that are somewhat personal to you but are affecting your work life.

Appraisal meetings: These are the performance-appraisal meetings that you have with your manager. These meetings happen typically once or twice a year.

In addition, there could be meetings where you are largely a spectator, such as an all-employee meeting. We will not discuss each of these meetings in detail in this chapter. However, we will present some tips that apply across the board to make the meetings effective and productive.

20.3 Participants’ Perspectives

During the early part of your career, you are generally expected to be a ‘participant’ in meetings (of course, when we say ‘participation’, we mean ‘active participation’).

Here are a few ground rules for such situations:

Do show up on time: Punctuality is not an option; it is an absolute must. We believe that time management is going to be singularly important. Make sure that you are in the right meeting location at the right time, preferably a couple of minutes before the scheduled time so that you can settle down. If you are attending a virtual meeting with people dialing in from across the globe, make sure that you have taken into account time differences, including nuances such as daylight-savings time’.

Do your homework before you go to a meeting: Well, homework has not left you since you left college! You might be asked to come and present about issues closely related to your area of work. For example, if you are in customer support, you may be asked to present the status of your top-three critical customers. Or, if you are in sales, you may be asked to show the months in which each of the prospects is likely to become a customer. These are not questions you can answer without thorough preparation. Go through all the required data and assemble whatever you need in soft copy or hard copy format. If these need to be circulated to others before the meeting, do so at least a day before the meeting. If you have to do a presentation in the meeting, make sure you have got the right materials ready. Also, if hard copies have to be given out, make sufficient number of copies. One bit of advice: have a heart for the environment and minimize the number of hard copies and also minimize the total number of pages by appropriate means.

Do not be silent when your agenda item or action item comes up: Make sure you get your point of view across when your turn comes. If any data is required of you, make sure you present the result of your preparations. If questions that pertain to your area of work are asked, make sure that you answer them and, if you cannot, give them a time frame by which you will get back with the answer. Needless to say, do keep up that commitment.

Do practice active listening during every meeting: All through a meeting, you have to be all ears for the other participants. Practising the techniques of active listening discussed in Chapter 13 would help you to participate more effectively in meetings.

Do follow through on the action items assigned to you: During each meeting, certain action plans may be prepared and you need to follow those to get the action items done. These lead to the homework required for the next meeting. Diligent follow-through on such action items is considered an essential hallmark of true professionalism. As said in an old English movie, ‘Justice must not only be done but seen to be done’. Make sure that not only do you complete the action items but also document the completion in an email circulated to all stakeholders.

Do not feel tempted to hog all the air time: A meeting is not where you talk nonstop without giving others any opportunity to talk. Talk only about the points you are responsible for and/or qualified to talk.

20.4 The PROOF Approach to Meetings

As you progress in your career, you will be called upon not only to participate in meetings but also to organize and conduct meetings. And you are likely to reach this state sooner than you think. Our approach, called the PROOF method, presents an effective way for meeting management. PROOF is an acronym that stands for

Preparing for a meeting

Reaching out to the stakeholders

Organizing a meeting

Orchestrating a meeting

Following through after a meeting

The first three steps pertain to what needs to be done before a meeting, the fourth step is about what needs to be done during a meeting, and the last step is about what needs to be done after a meeting. We will see each of these steps in detail in the following sections.

Preparing for a meeting: Just as any communication needs preparation, so does a meeting. Preparing for a meeting requires getting some clarity on the following questions:

What is the purpose of the meeting? Is it to review the status of a project? Is it to keep your superiors posted? Is it to brainstorm new ideas? Is it to convince a customer about a new product? (See the discussion on types of meetings earlier in this chapter.)

Who should be the participants? You can use a few general thumb rules when deciding who the participants should be. These rules are:

• Call only those who can add value to the meeting and can contribute to it—and who participate in the activities discussed in that meeting.
• Try to keep the number of people to the bare minimum that you need. A meeting with more than 15 people is usually not very productive.

What is expected of each of the participants? To gain maximum benefit out of a meeting, prepare a list of agenda items before approaching the meeting participants. When formulating this list, make sure that you:

• Do not attempt to cover too many things in a single meeting, and at the same time, do not miss out anything significant.
• Choose the most appropriate person for each agenda item. In case that person is unavailable, make sure that you have an appropriate backup.
• Allocate reasonable time for presentations and follow-up discussions.
• Factor in buffer time to accommodate unforeseen events, such as attendees taking longer than anticipated to reach consensus on a topic or infrastructure glitches like a laptop not working properly with a projector.

What is the total time required versus the time available? Based on the agenda items, estimate the total time required for the meeting and see if you have that much time at your disposal (given the constraints of the other participants). Accordingly, cut and chop the items and allocate time for each item based on priority and urgency.

What are the logistics required for the meeting? After having worked out the details of the content of the meeting, it is time to work out the logistics. A checklist for some of the logistical items for a meeting is given in Box 20.1.

When all the initial planning has been done, it is time to go to the next stage of preparation—the reaching out stage.

Reaching out: Having identified the objectives to be achieved in a meeting and ratified it with the participants involved, the next step is to reach out to them to ensure that they are available for the meeting, understand their role and contribution to the meeting and come prepared to maximize their contribution.

Make them know their roles: Discuss with the participants their role and value addition in the meeting candidly. Doing this before the meeting minimizes the risk of a participant not showing up for the meeting (or showing up unprepared).

Clearly state what data and other material they need to bring to the meeting: The participants may need to bring certain supporting data, models or prototypes to the meeting. They may also have to set up some demos. Ensure that they bring to the meeting whatever is needed.

Get their buy-in: Make sure you get their buy-in that they will come to the meeting prepared for the agenda items you would like them to take on.

Send them the agenda by email to confirm their participation and role: This will ensure that they not only know their role but also get to know the big picture.

Organizing the meeting: Once the meeting has been planned and the participants have been identified, the next step is to organize the meeting. This requires that you:

Identify the right place and time: Make sure that the place is suited for the meeting and that the room is easily accessible to the various participants. Another factor to consider is the time of the meeting. If the participants are distributed in different parts of the city, then the earlier part of the day would be ideal to beat the traffic. If the participants are from other countries and in different time zones, then a mutually acceptable time should be chosen.

Get the right infrastructure ready: Make sure that all paraphernalia, such as flip charts, laptops, projection equipment, white boards and markers, are available and working. And do not forget to check that the markers do really write!

Remind the participants just in time, if needed: It is a good idea to send the final agenda to all the participants the day before the meeting by email or a text message. This can act as a reminder to attend the meeting.

Orchestrating the meeting: Orchestrating the meeting refers to an orderly way of going through the actual meeting. Here are some tips for this, especially, if you are the person who is managing the meeting:

Arrive early: Make sure you arrive early and ensure that all the infrastructure is in order. If the other participants require any additional infrastructure, encourage and persuade them to set it up before the meeting starts to minimize any distraction.

Prepare the seating arrangement: If you need to have specific seating arrangements, make sure they are in place. This may apply to brainstorming meetings, when you want people from different backgrounds to sit together at a table to focus on different issues. You might also want to draw the (known) back benchers forward to make them participate. If the meeting is a formal one, such as between you and your supplier, you may have to follow certain protocols on who sits where.

Allow time for small talk: Whether you like it or not, some time at the beginning of the meeting would invariably be lost in small talk. So if you are the organizer of the meeting, factor in some time for small talk. If your meeting occurs first thing in the morning, arrive early enough to engage the early birds in small talk. Remember that coffee and refreshments facilitate small talk (see Chapter 19). Make sure that all participants introduce themselves to each other and mingle. And, at the appointed time, get into the conference room and switch from small talk to real talk.

Always start on time, respecting people who come on time: A major mistake is to wait for all others to come. This is being unfair to the people who have been professional enough to come on time to the meeting.

Make sure the scribe is ready: Right at the beginning of the meeting, designate a person as the scribe. This person will have to take detailed notes throughout the meeting.

Review the agenda at the beginning: Start the meeting with a review of the agenda items (preferably by projecting a soft copy instead of using multiple printouts).

State any protocol: Right after restating the agenda items and just before jumping into the items, it is a good idea to state any protocols you would like to follow during the meeting. These could include protocols for time management and how to signal and respect time-outs, how to take turns, when to interrupt a speaker, the roles to be played and so on.

Go sequentially, as per the agenda: Assuming that you have put some thought into prioritizing the agenda items, going sequentially as per the circulated agenda will bring in order and predictability to the meeting. For each agenda item, try to stick to the allocated time. But also maintain a balance between flexibility and adherence to time limits. Some amount of digression will necessarily happen and should be accommodated.

Handle conflicts diplomatically, yet firmly: As a facilitator of a meeting, when you allow discussions, conflicts are bound to spring up. It is your job to handle the conflicts effectively. Although a very detailed treatment of conflict management is beyond the scope of this book (see Chapter 17, Emotional Intelligence, for a brief treatment of conflict resolution in general), here are a few quick tips on managing conflicts in a meeting:

• Allocate sufficient time for discussion so that it does not look like you are bulldozing or sidestepping objections.
• Help the participants to articulate the nature of the conflict, making the conflict issue-based rather than something personal.
• Acknowledge that you have understood what the different viewpoints are. Note that by this you are not accepting any one viewpoint and are not taking sides.
• Impress that the goal is to arrive at a solution and not to finger point. To this end, paraphrase the problem and the various options available with the intent of arriving at a solution.
• Build consensus. Do not let one person or one group aggressively argue their case and unilaterally impose their solution on everyone else.
• If you find that it is not possible to arrive at a consensus regarding an agenda item during the meeting, defer this item (and any dependent agenda items) to a separate meeting focused on solving unresolved issues. Ask the warring parties to bring extra supporting data to convince the skeptics.
• Eventually, make sure that there is a shared ownership and interest in getting all problem(s) resolved. Emphasize that it should not simply be ‘your problem’. It should be ‘our problem’. And, similarly, the consensus solution should be ‘our solution’.

Allocate time for closing the meeting: Every meeting should have a formal close wherein you recap what was discussed, what was agreed upon and what the action items are. When certain items take too long to discuss, when there is a lot of digression and tangential discussion or when time is short, most often the time for closure gets the axe. Be conscious of this! Remember that the dictum of effective communication, ‘tell them what you are going to tell them; tell them; tell them what you told them’, applies to meetings as well.

Cleaning up after the meeting: As a mark of courtesy to the people who will use the room next, make sure you leave the venue in a clean state. Wipe the white boards clean, remove any flip charts (these will also protect any confidentiality issues) and consign any remnants of food to the garbage can.

Following through after the meeting: Every meeting needs to be followed through for it to be effective. Some of the steps in following through are:

Send the minutes: The minutes of a meeting (popularly known as MoM) is a written summary of what transpired, what was discussed and what was agreed upon during the meeting, highlighting any action items which may have been generated (more about this later). The MoM should be based on the notes prepared by the scribe. The MoM should be distributed to all the meeting participants within a couple of days of the meeting, when the memory of the meeting is still fresh in the participants’ minds. This will enable identifying any misunderstanding or omissions at the earliest. Should any participants identify any such anomalies in the MoM, they should be corrected after due discussion and a corrected MoM should be sent to all the participants. It is a good idea to also send a copy of the MoM to other stakeholders and interested parties who, for one reason or another, could not make it to the meeting.

Distinguishing between decisions and discussions: Every meeting is likely to have discussions of various options as well as decisions on the chosen option (with the responsibilities duly allocated). It is important that the MoM clearly demarcates discussions and decisions. The emphasis should be on the decisions because they represent how to move forward.

Structuring the action items: The meeting should generate a bunch of action items. These action items should unambiguously identify three Ws—What, Who, and When: What is the action item? Who is responsible and accountable for the action item? By when will the action item be completed and reported?

Box 20.2 depicts a sample MoM format:

Box 20.2
Template for minutes of a meeting

Project ID:

Minuted by:

Date and time of meeting:

Venue:

I. Attendee Details

II. Agenda Items

• Pending agenda items from previous meeting(s)
• A1 Review and update of action items from previous meeting(s)
• New agenda items
• B1…

III. Decisions Taken

IV. Action Items

The next couple of points pertain to other actions beyond the MOM.

Following through for action items: Once the MoM goes out, the coordinator of the meeting should follow through on the execution of the action items with their respective owners. In the case of periodic status-review meetings, discussions on action items from previous meetings should form the first agenda item of a given meeting.

Communicating decisions to other people who are not participants: Any decisions taken during meetings—especially the major ones—need to be communicated to the rest of the organization, as necessary. Remember that all decisions taken during a meeting are consensual, even if there may have been dissension and conflicts during the meeting. Everyone in the meeting should buy into this decision and speak with one voice. When communicating with people outside the group, you should defend your group decision and argue for it even if you had reservations about it earlier.

20.5 In Summary

Meetings are the most common hubs used by organizations to communicate and conduct business. Often dismissed as a waste of time and inefficient, meetings do serve a whole range of purposes, from organizational administration to customer interfacing and strategic planning. Now, meetings can be virtual, span several locations and in expensive, with the result that you can have more of them and not less! As you start your career, it is important that you be meeting-savvy, displaying energy, enthusiasm and intelligence while participating in them, whether as a coordinator or a mere participant. Let us summarize what we have said in this chapter about being an effective meeting participant/organizer.

• Be punctual to all your meetings. Allow sufficient time buffer to travel up to your meeting venue.
• Do not schedule back-to-back meetings because meetings can sometimes run over their scheduled time limits and you may be late for your second meeting.
• Do all the groundwork. Go fully prepared for your meetings. Have all supporting data readily accessible. If you didn’t bring some data, make a note of it and provide it later via email or in the next meeting. Do not forget!
• Answer if any questions are asked of you. If you do not know the answers to some questions, do some homework and get them in time for the next meeting or in an email.
• Participate in discussions and add value where you can.
• Take down notes as you see f it.
• Stick to your assigned/planned timeslots if you are going to present.
• Complete your assigned action items promptly and close them formally by reporting on the completed items. Make sure these items are taken off the agenda/MoM.
• If you are the organizer of a meeting:
  • Make sure that you send the agenda to all participants ahead of the meeting.
  • Ensure availability of proper infrastructure.
  • If needed, send a reminder email or text message to the participants about the meeting.
  • After the meeting, send the meeting minutes to all the participants and other relevant people within a day of the meeting.
  • Invite only those who need to take part in the meeting. Do not invite people unnecessarily. A meeting is not a spectator sport.
• Do not feel compelled to voice your opinion on every little thing. On the other hand, sitting passively like a rock is not useful either. Strike a balance.
• As much as possible, do not cause digression or tangential discussions.
• Make sure you follow meeting etiquette and display utmost courtesy to the other participants, even if you happen to disagree with them.