How to Lead an Effective Meeting


By Steve Kaye


Leaders determine the success of every event. Here's how to lead a meeting.

1) Open the meeting by reviewing the goals, outcomes, and activities. This helps everyone work with you to accomplish what you want.

2) Start the meeting by describing the culture you expect during the meeting. For example, you might say, "I value all of your ideas. I want you to think creatively because we need powerful solutions to this issue."

3) Compliment the participants during the meeting. Brief praise such as, "Thanks," "Good idea," or "Excellent," will motive the participants to work with you.

4) Maintain a safe, positive working environment. Harsh, predatory cultures inhibit creative thinking. Insist on respect.

5) During the meeting, remind the participants how much time has been budgeted for each activity.

6) Present each issue in the form of a specific question. This focuses thinking on specific solutions. For example, ask, "What could cause Unit #2 to produce 5% more defects?" This is far more effective than saying, "Let's talk about Unit #2."

7) Maintain a state of benevolent urgency. You want to push just hard enough to make the participants aware of offering high value comments. And you want to allow enough time for adequate consideration of an issue before making a decision.

8) After completing a major part of the meeting, summarize what the group accomplished. This celebrates the achievement, reminds everyone what they finished, and formally ends the activity.

9) Introduce each part of the meeting by stating the goal for that issue and describing the process you plan to use. This helps everyone focus on the same task.

10) Model the behavior that you expect from the participants because this determines how they will act during the meeting.

Note: Of course, there's more. Read about Effective Meetings at: http://www.squidoo.com/OneGreatMeeting/

- - -

Steve Kaye helps leaders hold effective meetings. He is an IAF Certified Professional Facilitator, author, and speaker. His meeting facilitation and leadership workshops create success for everyone. Call 714-528-1300 for details. Visit http://www.stevekaye.com for a free report.


More Resources

Unable to open RSS Feed $XMLfilename with error HTTP ERROR: 404, exiting

More Management Information:

Related Articles

How to Make a Difference Every Day
Every day, everyone can make the world a better place. It's simple; it's quick and it is free.
Paretos Law- Your Formula For Success
A 'dirt-world' retail business I used to manage had a large turnover, a very high profit, and less than 100 lines. Early in 2001, I was contracted to manage another business.
Hiring Great People And How to Be One Yourself: Five Secrets
Bad news.Your senior vice-president, your marketing director or your accounting department head has decided to retire, move to Okinawa or start his own business--and you're left staring, horrified, at a polite letter of resignation.
Performance Evaluation: How To Create Change
STEPS TOWARDS GIVING A GOOD APPRAISAL INTERVIEW: Give specific feedback. Statements such as, "You're doing a good job" and "You'd better shape up" are almost without value unless accompanied by specific feedback on what the employee is to continue doing or to stop doing.
Guidelines For Conducting A Good Meeting
Okay, so you've figured out what kind of meeting is needed, you've planned well and you have all the right materials. How about the meeting itself? How can you be sure the meeting you've so carefully planned and prepared actually comes off as expected?The checklist below can help you through the process.
The High Cost of Employee Turnover Among Project Managers
Imagine for a moment this scenario from a frustrated Senior Manager of a large pharmaceutical organization: "Our organization has experienced a large turnover among project managers in the past year. This creates problems providing ongoing quality and service to our stakeholders.
Top Ten Things About Creating a Business Vision
To visualise where you are going, is deeper and more sensory than anything you have ever done before. And these are the skills of those who are able to create a vision you can really live and breathe.
Problem-Solving Success Tip: Measure the Right Things.
Measure the right things. It's not enough just to measure-you have to measure the right things.
Don't Forget Where You Came from - Why the Past is Important in Implementing Business Change
Much of the literature and advice on implementing business change focuses on knowing where you are going and making sure that you understand and communicate a consistent vision of the future. Indeed, I have looked at the importance of this in an earlier article in this series.
Taking Care of Middle Manager Bounce Off
How many times have the management consultants been 'in' and after leaving, have left little or no trace of their passing?Despite massive investment there is no discernable performance improvement, the retention figures still look as if we are running a call centre and our safety record is second to everyone.Why is it that what seemed a logical and progressive implementation model failed to have any lasting impact on our business?Could it have anything to do with 'Middle Manager Bounce Off'?'Middle Manager Bounce Off' is a little understood phenomenon that appears most frequently in the wake of a management initiative or a consultant driven implementation.
Outsourced Learning: Are You Ready for Learning BPO?
As the business world enters a period of hyper-competitiveness, every business process will be subjected to examination and possible restructuring. We have already seen outsourcing and offshoring used to an extent what nobody would have dreamed of a few years ago.
How To Manage A Difficult Employee
Having to manage a difficult employee is never fun and can be the most challenging part of your responsibilities as a business owner/executive. While never easy, this article will address a step-by-step way to consistently and confidently handle the most challenging employee situations.
How to Reduce Temporary Employee Turnover
The use of temporary services to stock a farm of employees is beneficial in a number of ways for an employer, and detrimental in others; but the one that will always be heard is that good labor is hard to find when using these services.This is a very real and expensive reality for some, and the blame always falls on the employee.
The Punitive Approach to Marginal Performers
MANAGING A MARGINAL PERFORMER: Often a marginal performer, even after therapeutic counseling, may not understand that his or her work is seen as substandard. The manager will have to ask the employee directly how the performance could be improved.
Building Trust in Your Business Relationships - 10 Steps
There are some simple things you can do with your people to ensure that they start to trust you. As a letter from Mike Emmott of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development in the UK says, in April 2005's UK Management Today says:-"Our surveys show that only one in four employees trust senior management to look after their interests"Is that not appalling? How on earth can businesses develop, survive and above all hang onto their best people if they are seen to be untrustworthy?It's horrible.
Managing Change in the Workplace
Change is exhilarating. Change is terrifying.
Regaining Control - Nine Steps for New Managers
My client had faced the same challenge, which was frustrating as well as intimidating for him as well - yet he was determined to break the mould.With my background in a similar business, I have faced this several times.
Crisis Management Essentials - How to Communicate Effectively During a Crisis, Emergency or Disaster
A crisis, emergency or disaster can happen at anytime and anywhere.Just ask the residents of Darwin in Australia's Northern Territory.
Is Your Business Healthy?
Most business owners I work with want to grow their businesses. I guess this probably applies to most businesses in general.
Bar Charts Brought to Life: Index of Interactive Information for HTML and PDF
Bar Charts and the Information ChallengeWhether one is an unknown entrepreneur or Donald Trump, an elementary school teacher or a university president, a 6th grader researching other countries or a government leader visiting them, each person in any capacity has at least one thing in common: information.Let me explain why I use bar charts as an example.