Management Information |
Bye-Bye Boring Meetings! Make Yours Remarkable!
It's the middle of the night. You've woken up with a brilliant idea on how to improve the way your business product is delivered to your customers. You scribble it down and can't wait to share it with your co-workers during your morning meeting. The appointed hour arrives and you get your idea onto the agenda. Unfortunately the meeting proceeds without focus and at the speed of really good ketchup-slow. The person directing the meeting has gone over the same things you've already discussed ad nauseum, and your co-workers are mired down in dissecting ideas before anything tangible can be accomplished. By the time your agenda item is up for discussion, everyone is tired and frustrated. The nitpicking has drained all the energy out of a potentially terrific idea. What is happening in this meeting? While it might be easy to blame it on your co-workers, the boss, or your team leader - the real culprit is process, or lack of it. A good meeting must be orchestrated like any other; it's a creative group effort. If you start with an unfocused agenda, add group members who are unclear of their roles, and mix in a lack of clear guidelines about participation, you have a recipe for a snoozefest...or worse. Traditionally, companies have asked their leaders to have all the answers, take control, and make tough decisions. The result has been a directive leadership style where one "boss" is in charge, and employees are often reluctant to openly express their opinions. This system places tremendous pressure on management, and the organization loses out on many valuable ideas. Meetings tend to get bogged down in minutia with few tangible actions taking place beyond the initial discussion. Thankfully, this command leadership model is in decline, becoming a thing of the past. Increasingly, organizations are turning to all members for their energy, commitment, and brainpower. Input from all employees requires a shift in leadership from controlling to facilitative. This change may take time in your organization because many of us have been conditioned to put the person in the front of the room in control. Skillful facilitation can significantly improve your meetings. And, your brilliant product idea will actually have a chance! Effective facilitation will not only rev up your company's meetings, with patience it will lead to a more collaborative way of making decisions. Team members learn their ideas are valuable, they gain new interpersonal and leadership skills, and they begin to become more engaged in team projects. Employees become less reliant on management for answers and begin to draw on their own resources. They begin to bring solutions to meetings instead of coming with questions. Managers can learn to use a facilitative style, team members can be trained to facilitate, or the organization can hire an outside facilitator to help meetings become more effective and participatory. Ideally, each team member will ultimately become leaders and skilled facilitators. Here are 10 tips for facilitative leadership you can incorporate into your meetings. Used consistently, these guidelines will turn your meetings into events that everyone highlights on their calendar. 1. Stay on Track: Create an effective agenda to keep the action moving. When discussion strays, the facilitator has the responsibility to keep things on track by referring to the agenda and reigning in off-topic discussions. 2. Develop a Parking Lot: Side comments have their place. The facilitator can record side issues on a "parking lot" flip chart. At the end of the meeting, determine when the team would like to address the parking lot issues. 3. Create Rules: Decide on ground rules for your meetings and hold team members to them. For example, a rule such as "No team member may interrupt another" or "Comment periods are limited to 10 minutes" can be ways to ensure your meetings don't get dominated or bogged down. 4. Give Everyone a Voice: Draw out shy members by taking turns until each group member has given his or her input. Ask individuals for their opinion if they are not talking. When dominating members speak up, the facilitator keeps their comments controlled so others have a chance, too. 5. Break the Ice: Try creativity games and teambuilding exercises to liven up your meetings and discover new insights. Particularly if you have cross-functional teams, this can give people from different departments and management levels a chance to know each other. 6. Create Action Items: As agenda topics are discussed, the facilitator should take notes that include tangible action items, a person who is responsible for following through on the action, and a deadline. Action items can be e-mailed to everyone after the meeting as a reminder. 7. Build Consensus: Facilitative leadership is about building agreement and cementing teams. Work to create outcomes that reflect the ideas of all team members. Treat all participants as equals and work hard to create an open and trusting atmosphere. 8. Be Firm and Impartial: A good facilitator is not passive. It's important to use assertiveness to keep people on track and on time. When a team member is facilitating the meeting, he or she is NOT a participant. If the facilitator must make a comment about the discussion at hand because they are a key player, he or she must make it very clear they are momentarily taking off the facilitator "hat." 9. Work to Understand: High stress levels at the workplace can create cynicism among team members. A facilitator should pay careful attention to group dynamics, listen attentively, maintain eye contact, and manage conflict. 10. Cultivate optimism: The facilitative leader does not allow disinterest, shyness, pessimism, or other negative behaviors to throw off the course of the meeting. Instead, the facilitator helps the group to succeed and work hard to stay positive, even when team energy is at a low point. Wendy Maynard, your friendly marketing maven, is the owner of Kinesis. Kinesis specializes in marketing, graphic and website design, and business writing. Visit http://www.kinesisinc.com for more articles and free marketing wisdom. Want to harness the power of kinetic marketing? Sign up for Kinesis Quickies, a free bi-monthly marketing e-newsletter: http://www.news.kinesisinc.com
MORE RESOURCES: Unable to open RSS Feed $XMLfilename with error HTTP ERROR: 404, exiting |
RELATED ARTICLES
3 Simple Things the Best Managers Do - And You Can Too! If it's so simple, why don't managers all over the globe get this right, every time? Well, because it's so simple, it seems too easy, so busy managers squeeze a lot more in, time after time. And that makes things much more complex - just the way a manager should be. Eight Skills of Highly Successful Consultants With deference to Dr. Covey and his very popular Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (all habits that will make us better consultants!), here are eight skills that all of us as consultants can work on to improve. Innovation Management - Reducing Hierarchy Creativity can be defined as problem identification and idea generation whilst innovation can be defined as idea selection, development and commercialisation.There are other useful definitions in this field, for example, creativity can be defined as consisting of a number of ideas, a number of diverse ideas and a number of novel ideas. Executives and Emotional Self Awareness A major problem impairing an executive's performance is his Emotional Blind Spots. Emotions, whether we like them or not, have a significant impact on one's decisions. Improving Patient Sensitivity in Doctors and Hospital Staff COMPANY/ORGANIZATIONA South Florida hospital. The CEO of the hospital saw the need to provide exceptional customer service to differentiate itself from the competition and avoid being acquired. Employers - Protect Yourself from Custody Battles that Hold Your Company Hostage Child custody? How'd that get to be an employer's concern?When an employee faces child custody litigation, it will effect their ability to do their job. And it often causes legal consequences for their employers as well. Recruitment - What Youre Really, Really Looking For Imagine that you're a sports coach and you need a new playeron the team. Would you walk up to someone in the street andsay - "I want you to come and play for my team. Follow Up: It Makes A Difference A while back the headlight switch on our minivan quit working, so early one Saturday morning we took it to the neighborhood repair shop that has been mailing postcards to us the past three years. They said it would take 90 minutes to check things out. How to Build Your Business and Still Take Time Off We all know people who are like human dynamos. They seem to make an art form of building their business and still enjoy quality time with friends and family. Getting Software Developed for Your Business At some point, your business is going to need to have some software development. Maybe your business is small, but existing software doesn't fit your needs. Creating Advisory Boards There is no substitute for soliciting the opinions of the executive team, the people who will be most affected by change or its absence. However, often the answers to complicated questions don't lie within those most affected. Are You Prepared for a Disaster? Yesterday I look at my calendar and saw that my newsletter was on my calendar for today. I wondered what I would write about. Performance Appraisal Scenarios: Improve Your Communication IMPROVING COMMUNICATION DURING THE PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL: If the employee has trouble getting started on the self-appraisal you might say: "Why don't you start by talking about the XYZ project?" (Pick a topic that the employee will feel comfortable with, a success rather than a failure.) "It seems to me that the PDQ project was harder than we expected. Creativity and Innovation Management - Competition versus Collaboration There is much confusion as to whether competition or collaboration is most beneficial to creativity and innovation. Though there are negatives to collaboration and it is not easy separating the effects of time pressure and group activity, in general collaboration beats competition. Got A Meeting Planned? Ask This Question Meetings - they are a fact of our business lives. And while the number of meetings and the amount of time you spend in them may vary based on your job title, it is hard to argue that they are a significant part of business life today. Why All Managers Are Alike Because, like you I suspect, they have key target audiences whose behaviors help or hinder them in achieving their organizational objectives.But even in their own best interests, too few involve themselves in their public relations effort to the degree they should. Effective Meetings - Quick Survey Here's an easy quiz to check the health of your meetings.1) Who leads your meetings? a) No one, b) Everyone, c) A facilitator2) What happens to the ideas in your meetings? a) If we had to think of ideas, it would be work, b) We make fun of them, c) A scribe writes them on a chart pad3) Are results obtained in your meetings? a) We eat all the donuts, b) And we drink all of the coffee, c) Yes!4) Do your meetings have an agenda? a) Is that some kind of cabinet?, b) I saw one once in an article, c) Yes!5) Who attends your meetings? a) We have bleachers to hold the spectators, b) The entire staff plus any homeless people in the neighborhood, c) Only those who can contribute6) How long are your meetings? a) I'll let you know when this one ends, b) All day, c) An hour or less7) During a meeting do you: a) Break a foam cup into bits, b) Prepare for the next meeting, c) Focus on the topic8) How soon after the meeting do you issue minutes? a) If you think I want to publicize how much time we wasted, you're nuts, b) Within a few months or so, c) As soon as possible, if not faster9) While someone is speaking, do you: a) Wonder about the strength of plastic foams, b) Plan a way to change the subject, c) Listen empathetically10) What structured activities do you use in your meetings? a) We sit on chairs, b) Everyone leaves at the same time, c) Process tools designed to gather information, make decisions, and manage participation. Innovation Management: The Quality and Quantity of the Idea Pool Creativity can be defined as problem identification and idea generation whilst innovation can be defined as idea selection, development and commercialisation.There are distinct processes that enhance problem identification and idea generation and, similarly, distinct processes that enhance idea selection, development and commercialisation. Keep Your Good Workers by Building Good Leaders A recent report from the American Hospital Association's Commission on the Workforce asked healthcare workers key questions about the performance of their front line managers. The study concluded that an employee's decision to stay with or leave an organization is primarily based on his or her relationship with an immediate supervisor. Know the Source of Business One of the first questions we ask a prospect or new client is, "How did you get the business you have so far?" Some can answer exactly. Others aren't as certain. |
home | site map | contact us |