Every company and organization has meetings. It's where ideas are explored, decisions are made and goals are realized. It's a platform for employees to share knowledge, collaborate on projects and discuss strategies. But it's also where time is wasted and frustration arises if the meeting is not managed in a structured and engaging way. Good meeting management is what separates the effective and productive meetings from the meetings where nothing productive comes out of it.
In a busy working world, time is a precious resource and ineffective meetings can have a negative impact on productivity and performance. That's why it's important to understand how best to manage meetings to achieve desired outcomes and maximize the potential of your organization.
Read about stress at work here.
In this blog post, we will explore the key aspects of meeting management and give you practical advice and strategies to create effective and valuable meetings.
The role of the moderator
The role of a meeting facilitator is crucial to ensuring meetings are effective and productive. A competent facilitator is able to create a structured and engaging meeting where participants feel involved, heard and motivated to contribute constructively.
If you've called the meeting, you'll most often take on the role of chairperson. So, even if you don't necessarily normally deal with management, you will be responsible for managing the meeting. Therefore, it is important that you have the courage to step up as a meeting leader. This means, among other things, that you must be prepared to ensure good preparation, facilitation, time management and follow-up.
One of the most important things a meeting leader needs to do is keep track of time. We've all been in a meeting that gets delayed or runs over time, and it can be downright annoying. That's why it's a good idea to try to establish a meeting culture where meetings start on time. Not 5 or 10 minutes late because participants need to get their coffee.
It's usually more effective to start at the beginning rather than waiting for everyone. It sends a clear signal that the content of the meeting is taken seriously and gives a hint that it's not okay to be late. In addition to the annoyance of waiting for late participants, it's also an element that costs the company money. If there are 5-6 people in a meeting waiting for the last participants for 10 minutes, that's a total of an hour's work washed away with the sewage.
As well as making sure the meeting starts at the scheduled time, there's also an art to ensuring the meeting doesn't slip and run over time. While it's important to respect people's time, a delay will also signal that there are other aspects of meeting management that you're not quite on top of.
In addition to keeping track of time, it's also your responsibility to facilitate the meeting so that it runs according to plan and there is active participation, as well as help guide the discussion towards consensus and help formulate clear and concrete decisions. It's also important to ensure that the decisions are documented and communicated to the relevant parties after the meeting.
An effective meeting facilitator actually starts the work before the meeting itself. Thorough preparation maximizes the possibility of a good and productive meeting. This includes determining the purpose and goals of the meeting, creating an agenda and ensuring the necessary materials and resources are available. The meeting leader should also identify the key topics to be discussed and decide which participants to invite to ensure relevant perspectives.
After the meeting, the chair should ensure that the decisions made during the meeting are followed up on. This could include creating a follow-up plan, identifying responsible parties and setting deadlines for implementing the decisions.
4 tips for effective meeting management
If you're new to the art of effective meeting management, or if you just want to develop as a meeting leader, here are 4 concrete tips on how to take your meetings to new and more productive heights. These tips are designed to help you improve your meeting planning, facilitation and follow-up, so you can achieve better results and create more positive and productive meetings for your participants.
- Plan the meeting thoroughly and prepare participants
A well-structured agenda is the cornerstone of any effective meeting. Start by creating a list of topics to be discussed and set clear objectives for each topic. This allows participants to prepare in advance and have an understanding of what the meeting will cover. For each topic on the agenda, you should state the overall purpose. This could be to inform, discuss, decide or come up with new ideas. Defining the purpose helps participants understand what is expected of them under each topic. You may also want to assign a time frame to each agenda item. This helps keep the meeting on track and prevents it from dragging on. Always be realistic about how much time you need to allocate to each topic.
An agenda could look something like this:
- Inform_200D↩Inform: Status of project X, Responsible: MM (10 min)
- Inform: Review weekly KPIs, Ansvalig: JB (10 min)
- Discuss: Possible solutions for recruiting a new team leader, Responsible: JB (20 min)
- Demonstrate: New product procedure for booking meeting rooms, Responsible: MM (10 min)
- Decision: Set up a project group for the summer party, Chair: MN (15 min)
When selecting participants for the meeting, make sure they have the right skills and knowledge to contribute constructively to the planned discussions. Consider what skills and perspectives are needed to address the topics on the agenda. At the same time, remember that each participant in the meeting should have a role and contribute actively. Having too many participants can lead to ineffective meetings where some may not have anything meaningful to add. Not only does this make the meeting more inefficient, but it's also a waste of the person's time. Therefore, only invite people who can add value to the meeting and the decision-making process. When inviting participants, clearly communicate the purpose of the meeting and the expectations of their participation. If they need to prepare something in advance or bring specific information to the meeting, this should be clearly communicated.
- Facilitate an open and creative dialog
It's important to encourage everyone to actively participate in the meeting. Therefore, you should try to create an open and inclusive atmosphere where everyone feels welcome to contribute. As a moderator, you should also be aware if some participants are dominating the conversation and make sure others are given the opportunity to participate.
Read more here: 8 tips: How to create psychological safety in the workplace
Try asking open-ended questions to encourage discussion and deepen understanding. You can also summarize important points and decisions along the way to make sure everyone is on the same page. If you still feel like your meetings are lacking interaction and the dialog isn't flowing as well as you'd like, try running some brainstorming sessions, silent breaks, buddy sharing, etc. during the meeting. These are great creative processes where all participants are encouraged to share their thoughts without fear of criticism, which can lead to innovative solutions and new perspectives.
If there are more complex topics on the agenda, you could also consider dividing the participants into groups. This allows everyone to actively contribute and can promote collaboration and critical thinking. After group discussions, each group can share their ideas with the rest of the group.
Read more: Create a healthy learning culture through coaching and curiosity
- Keep the meeting on track
As a meeting leader, it's important that you keep the meeting on track. This applies both in relation to the agenda, where you need to ensure that discussions don't get out of hand and move on to other topics, and you need to ensure that too much time is not spent on individual topics, causing the schedule to slip. In other words, it may be necessary to cut corners to ensure the most efficient and productive meeting.
If new, interesting topics are brought up, make sure they are temporarily parked in an imaginary parking lot and brought up at a later date. It's also a good idea to structure your agenda so that you cover the most important topics first. Then, if it turns out that the schedule is slipping, hopefully you've covered the most important points.
- Make decisions and follow up on them
Since meetings are primarily held to make decisions, it's important that you agree on what needs to be done and who will do it. Therefore, make sure that the meeting notes who is responsible for carrying out the task, what exactly needs to be done and when it needs to be done. It can also be a good idea to create an action plan in smaller steps to make the process more manageable.
It's important to align expectations on these things, as otherwise good initiatives can get lost on the meeting table if no one is running with the tasks.
By integrating these tips into your meeting management, you'll be able to create more structured, engaging and productive meetings that contribute positively to your organization's goals and success.
.png)