How to Run a Meeting
Your ability to lead a meeting is a critical part of your success in management. This skill is one of the marks of leadership that is most evident to people in your organization. As Peter Drucker wrote, “The key tools of the executive are the meeting, the presentation, and the report.” You must be excellent at all three.
Clarity Is Essential
Perhaps the most important word in success is the word clarity. Fully 95 percent of your success will be determined by your being absolutely clear about what it is you want to accomplish and how you are going to accomplish it.
Perhaps 95 percent of your problems will come from a lack of clarity as well. This is why it is so important for you to begin with a clear, written outline of the purpose of the meeting, even if it is only one sentence. When everyone sits down, you can open a meeting by saying, “We are holding this meeting today for this reason and to accomplish these goals and objectives.”
Plan the Opening
The first five to seven minutes of any meeting are the most important part of that meeting. The opening sets the foundation, establishes the parameters, organizes the terms of reference, and tells everyone in the room why they are there, for how long, and what they need to accomplish.
You may even consider writing out your introduction, word for word, and then reading it at the beginning of the meeting. This clarity will allow a person who doesn’t know you or the situation to get up to speed right at the start.
Be specific and punctual with regard to the timing. Everyone should know exactly when the meeting starts and stops. This information should be printed at the top of your agenda, but you will want to restate it in your introduction.
Start on Time
Begin right on time. Do not penalize the people who were there on time by waiting for others who are late. Assume that the latecomer is not coming at all and begin the meeting immediately. This piece of advice was invaluable to me when I was coming up as a manager.
If someone comes in late and discovers that they have missed important information, refuse to start over or to review it for them. By catering to the latecomers, you are actually punishing the people who are punctual. When the latecomer looks a bit incompetent, he will eventually get the message and be more punctual next time.
Many companies have a policy where if a meeting is called for 10:00 am, they lock the doors from the inside at 10:01. You only have to do that once to get people to be on time in the future.
Make a Statement
If the purpose of a meeting is to solve a problem, you say: “We are here to discuss this problem and to come to a decision, conclusion, or resolution on moving forward. Here are the facts of the problem. Here is the information that we have, the alternatives that we have considered, and our market intelligence. Now, what do we do from here?”
Encourage open discussion. It is important that you invite input from each person, not only the people who have a lot to contribute and are eager to talk, but also from those who are more self-contained and less likely to speak up. Especially, you want input from those people who may be a bit reluctant to try to compete with more aggressive or assertive people. Quiet people often have a lot to contribute, if encouraged and given the chance.
The way I get people to open up in a discussion is to use the “round-robin method.” As the group leader, you start off the meeting and go right around the table, inviting each person to speak, in turn. As the meeting leader, you speak and contribute last, not first. When it is your turn, you can comment on what the others have said, state your opinion, and if necessary, go around the room again.
This is very much like starting an engine. Once you have gone around the table once or twice, everyone will be speaking up and making a contribution.
Refuse to Dominate
The best meeting leaders do not dominate the meeting. They encourage others to talk. The natural tendency of meeting leaders, unfortunately, is to speak as much as 50 percent of the time, on average. The more they speak, the quieter and less involved the other people in the meeting become. Once the leader has dominated the conversation for any period of time, most people lose interest in the subject and look forward to getting back to work.
Instead, as the group leader you should be a facilitator. Avoid lecturing or hogging the discussion. If you fail to invite everyone to contribute, you will naturally tend to speak more and more just because you are the one in charge.
Stay on Track
Keep the discussion on track. A key job of the meeting leader is to keep bringing people back to the main issue. Stick to the items on the agenda and don’t allow discussion to stray or wander.
Press for closure. Once you start talking on a subject, discuss it thoroughly but press for closure on what has been decided and who is going to do what, and by when, before you move on to the next item on the agenda.
The inability to keep on track and to press for closure are two major time wasters—and the major complaints from people who attend meetings.
Summarize at the end of each discussion point and at the end of the meeting. Set out and restate your time and action schedules, your implementation plans, and your assignments. Then have everyone in the meeting agree on what has been decided, and who is going to do what.
Finally, distribute the minutes of the meeting within twenty-four hours. The more important the decisions that have been taken, the more important it is that you have them distributed in writing so that if anyone has questions, they can get back to you immediately. If there are no questions, then everyone accepts the record of the meeting as you sent it to them.