Chapter 6 Outline
The way you open the meeting will have an enormous impact on the meeting’s effectiveness. The opening provides you with an opportunity to set the tone and begin to steer the participants down a productive path. During the opening, you need to accomplish two sets of functions. The first set is called “task functions”—how you go about accomplishing your work. The second is called “process functions”—how you get people to participate. Effective openings target both of these functions, orienting participants to the work at hand and encouraging them to get involved with the meeting.
MEETING IMPLEMENTATION CHECKLIST | ||
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6. Opening the Meeting | ||
During the Meeting | ||
7. Verbal Facilitation | 8. Listening Facilitation | 9. Graphic Facilitation |
10. Closing the Meeting | ||
In terms of task functions, you should target three specific issues in your meeting opening.
At the beginning of the meeting, always emphasize why you are meeting, based on your statement of purpose described on pages 6–8. By doing so, you will:
Keep the group focused: Without a clear statement of purpose, the group is unlikely to stay focused and likely to waste valuable time. To motivate the participants, remember to frame the meeting purpose in terms of their benefits or interests.
Be able to see your progress: Additionally, a clear statement of purpose or outcomes will make it possible for you to measure your progress as a team. Without desired outcomes, how can you tell whether you are progressing?
Here are some examples of clear statements of purpose, tied to participants’ benefits:
“In this meeting, we hope to gather specific feedback about our latest ad campaign using a focus-group style.”
“In this meeting, we are hoping to lay a foundation for designing new products that complement our existing line. Therefore, please think broadly and hold your critiques until our next meeting.”
“In this meeting, we are hoping to narrow our supplier choice to two candidates. Afterwards, we will arrange individual interviews with each of you so that we may discuss your specific needs.”
Make sure everyone understands and agrees on the meeting agenda and decision-making technique. This review will ensure that everyone understands the topics and reveal if there are any major disagreements about topics and procedures. You will find it much more effective to clarify these issues up front, rather than in the midst of a heated debate. It may also be useful to briefly mention the boundaries or constraints on the discussion. Discussing each of these points will quickly reveal if your agenda is set or if you need to make quick changes before proceeding.
Late arrivals are common in today’s business environment. Professionals are increasingly faced with multiple demands on their time and delays caused by increased access through cell phones and pagers. When a participant walks into a meeting late, how will you react?
Consider the culture. How are meetings generally run in the firm? Do meetings tend to start promptly or routinely start five to ten minutes late? It may be difficult to change cultural norms.
Think about the signal you are sending. Deciding to start exactly on time can signal to participants that today’s meeting is important or that you have enough respect for everyone’s time to not waste ten minutes waiting for latecomers. On the other hand, waiting for everyone to arrive can signal that you value everyone’s input and do not want to operate without all interested parties present. As a meeting facilitator, you must decide which you will value more: efficiency or inclusiveness.
Minimize late arrivals. You may want to call a participant the morning of your meeting and politely confirm the time and place, especially if the person has a history of being late. You might also try the technique of having food and drink available before the meeting, or even cut off the refreshment supply when the meeting starts so participants have to arrive on time if they want to partake.
Handle late arrivals effectively. While techniques for minimizing late arrivals can be helpful, they are not always 100 percent effective. What will you do when someone arrives late? Your options include: (1) Saying nothing. (2) Warmly welcoming the person and inviting him or her to pull up a chair. (3) Politely singling out the person with a subtle comment such as, “Ah! Here is Amit. Now we are complete.” (4) More forcefully singling out the person by pausing the meeting and saying something such as, “Carol, thank you for coming. I hope you will talk with one of your colleagues and gather the information we have already discussed.” Remember that singling a person out is a form of social punishment. If you want to set a positive, warm, and welcoming tone, it is not in your best interest to single out late arrivals. (5) Talking to the person after the meeting to encourage her or him to arrive promptly at future meetings. Talking to the person individually can be a very positive way to deal with the problem, especially if you are trying to encourage greater participation among the group.
As we explained on pages 10–11, effective meeting management means more than just trying to get the task accomplished. It also means paying attention to the process by which you get that task done. Doing so will yield the following benefits:
Increase efficiency: Research shows that discussing process functions (such as timing, ground rules, and decision making) will actually increase efficiency in your meetings. Poor meeting processes can have serious social consequences for the group that will inhibit otherwise effective work on the task. For this reason, you should resist jumping right into the task without first establishing process ground rules.
Increase collaboration: Helping people understand ground rules and procedures before starting work on the task will help people contribute and prevent the inevitable embarrassment that comes from being corrected or breaking the rules. You will find it much easier to promote collaboration and accomplish your task-related goals if you take the time to first build a rewarding social environment.
In other words, the best way to waste time in your meetings is to completely ignore the process or social dimensions of your work and dive head first into the task. Here are several suggestions for managing process functions during the opening of your meeting.
The tone of your meeting can be just as important as ideas or issues on your agenda. Meetings starting on a somber or critical tone can be inefficient. Such a negative tone raises barriers to collaboration and creativity—barriers that you must overcome if you wish to accomplish your goals. For example, calling an “emergency meeting” to “discuss last-minute and necessary changes to the software” may raise the defenses of those who have worked most closely (and probably overtime!) on the software. Instead, simply call an urgent meeting and then frame the necessary changes as “last-minute changes that will make a good customer even happier.” Setting an appropriate social tone will help you avoid meetings that lack meaning for participants or are relatively unproductive. Happy participants make for more productive meetings.
Meetings do not run smoothly by magic or by accident. On pages 22–23, we discussed the different roles you need to orchestrate a smooth and productive meeting. Take a moment at the beginning to remind everyone who is responsible for filling each role. Who will direct the discussion? Who will be the scribe? Who will distribute the minutes and by what date?
Meetings will run more smoothly if everyone explicitly reaches agreement on the ground rules at the outset. If you wait until someone has erred before clarifying the rules, you risk humiliating that person in front of peers. If the rules are clarified at the start, however, a subtle reminder may be all that is necessary to keep the meeting moving. Ground rules may be either simple or elaborate. It does not matter. What does matter is that everyone understands and explicitly agrees to the rules. Once you have agreement, a brief and simple reminder at the outset will usually suffice. Here are some examples of ground rules.
We will start and stop on time.
We will not interrupt. Only one person will speak at a time.
We will show respect for one another and not engage in personal attacks.
We will treat all information as confidential.
We will not criticize ideas, either verbally or nonverbally, during brainstorming sessions.
Get people interested and enthused by involving them early. The earlier you get people involved, the more likely they are to participate throughout the meeting. Early involvement can be particularly important when establishing a new work group, if you have newcomers, or if your work group has a tendency to be quiet or reserved. You might consider using one of the icebreakers explained in the next section to encourage involvement. If people have been preassigned tasks, get their reports as early as possible to avoid having them think about the reports rather than being engaged in the task at hand. Another effective tool for encouraging involvement is to redirect a question to another group member. This technique clearly shows that you want to share responsibility and “stage time” with other people in the room.
Use icebreakers with new groups or in challenging situations. You can increase everyone’s initial comfort level by encouraging them to become acquainted and share a little information about themselves. Icebreakers are especially useful if (1) the participants don’t know one another, (2) you expect emotions to rise and debate to become heated, or (3) you want to initiate a new or unusual procedure that requires especially high levels of participant interaction (such as the alternative approach to brainstorming, discussed on pages 78–79).
Icebreakers are designed to overcome the basic human tendency to remain quiet or reserved in unfamiliar situations or groups. Participants may feel less willing to ask questions if they don’t understand where others are “coming from.” Participants may also feel less likely to share their ideas if they don’t know their own roles in or relationships within the group. Icebreaking activities help overcome these barriers to effective group interaction. Sample techniques include:
Introducing yourself: One way to introduce yourself without wasting time is to tell your “elevator story.” That is, if you were with someone on an elevator traveling up to the fourth floor together, what would you say to introduce yourself in that amount of time? Introducing yourself is especially important if you are the person visiting another group.
Asking participants to introduce themselves: If the participants don’t know one another, consider asking them to take one minute each to state their names, plus the information about themselves pertinent to the meeting topics (e.g., occupation, project role, or area of responsibility).
Telling a relevant but short story: Is a unique opportunity or product about to be presented to the group? Has the client had a heart-to-heart conversation with you and requested changes? Did you stumble upon a creative solution while three-putting on the 16th green last weekend? Taking a minute or two to share your story can be a powerful way to capture everyone’s attention and get them interested and involved in the topic. Before telling your story, however, make certain your story is relevant and that it points the audience down a productive path.
Using an exercise: Specific icebreaker exercises can get participants out of routine patterns and prepare them for something new. You can probably find several books describing icebreaker exercises at your local bookstore; some may have participants work individually, while others may put people in pairs or in groups. Select an exercise that seems appropriate for the purpose of your meeting and seems likely to interest participants.
Asking participants to move around, to enhance creativity. Sometimes, you can improve meeting productivity by inviting participants to physically move while engaged in creative processes such as brainstorming or problem solving. Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein state that “Body thinking in all its manifestations is often a fundamental part of creative expressions.” Some experts recommend bringing toys—such as squeeze balls, Slinky toys, Rubik’s Cubes, and other interesting gadgets—to team-building and creative meetings. By giving participants permission to “play” while working, you can take full advantage of a well-known connection between human movement and thinking.
OPENING THE MEETING |
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Adapted from M. Begeman |
Setting the stage for control or collaboration
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Increasing participation at a large meeting
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Dealing with confrontation
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