Many years ago when I was just learning how to facilitate meetings; a workshop leader told me that when all else fails, trust the group. That advice has served me well for over 20 years. Since I know it works, I’ve decided to share it with you.

When you are sitting in the meeting leader’s chair, there will be times when all eyes are on you, wanting you to make a decision or help the group move through a particularly challenging situation. If you’ve got an idea that will help, go for it. That’s the role the group is expecting you to play, so play it well.

But what if you don’t have the answer on how to proceed or don’t feel comfortable making the decision? Does this mean you are an ineffective leader? I sure hope not or that would have been what people would have thought about me on many occasions

This is a tough spot to be in, but what I’ve learned to do is follow my teacher’s advice. I say to the group, “I’m not sure how to proceed. Any ideas?” Now rookie meeting leaders would balk at doing this because of the fear that they are giving up control of the meeting. They prefer to fake it and hope for the best.

Faking it isn’t usually an effective strategy. If you are pulling your solution out of thin air, chances are it’s a pretty weak solution. Also, groups sense you are making it up and start to lose confidence in your ability to lead them.

I’ve found the best way to maintain control is to give it up, especially when you have no business making the decision. Groups almost always treat this responsibility with the utmost respect, and they usually come up with something better than what I would have suggested.

So the next time you’re stuck, admit it, ask for the group’s help, and trust that they will figure out the best way to pull themselves out of whatever position they find themselves in.

When you have decided to fill an auditorium or hotel ballroom with lots of people for the better part of a day (or maybe two), you need to have your act together.

Whether you’re calling it a conference, convention, annual meeting, symposium or forum; the secrets of success are a clear purpose, an efficient plan, helpful tools/techniques, and a skilled person running things from the podium.  You want participants walking away with a sense that the meeting was a good use of their time.  They’ll be more likely to think this if they learned something useful, had a chance to participate, and felt like the meeting moved along at a quick pace.

We’ll help you refine your goals for the meeting so that they are clear, achievable, and meaningful.  Once we’ve got those established, we can work together to develop an agenda that will best help the group accomplish the stated goals.  We’ll provide recommendations for room setup, audience response tools, and other activities that will keep things moving.  We put a lot of time and energy into the plan so that the meeting flows effortlessly.

The best plans in the world only work if you have an experienced person implementing them.  When we lead these meetings we go by a variety of names:  Chair, facilitator, emcee, master of ceremonies.  Regardless of what we are called, our focus is the same.  Meet the goals.

We do this by keeping the group focused on one specific task/question at a time.  We use the tools we have to move quickly through each piece of work.  We invite participation whenever possible, making sure attendees know that they are playing an important role in the meeting.  We listen respectfully, helping people say what needs to be said.  We keep things lively and fun by demonstrating high levels of energy and a good sense of humor.

The next time you are charged with bringing together a large group for an annual meeting or convention, let us partner with you to make the meeting a memorable success.

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Group members are constantly saying “yes” when their body language screams “no.” If you are leading the meeting, you can do some things that will help participants come clean with their real opinions. If you are not leading the meeting and notice this body language, jump in and help out.

• Ask each person for an opinion. It may be that people are holding back because that is the easiest thing to do.  You can prevent this from happening by asking each person for an opinion.  If the group is not too large, simply go around the table and ask each person if he/she supports the idea and why or why not.
• Force a contrary opinion. If you are using the previous suggestion and many of the first people you call on voice support for the idea, it makes it more difficult for the following speakers to share their opposition.  They might be afraid of looking like naysayers.  In this case, you could invite the group to think about reasons why they should reject the idea.  At least you will now have both arguments on the table for discussion.
• Ask for an owner. Tossing out ideas is relatively easy.  It is much more difficult to make something happen.  When the group agrees to do something, my next question would be about who will take ownership for making it happen.  If nobody steps up, there might be less support for the idea than previously thought.  You can let it drop.

Honesty in group discussions is critical to success. It’s also difficult to achieve. Strive for it.

What have you tried in your meetings to make them more real?

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Imagine a meeting where people say what’s on their minds, understand each other, and nobody feels roughed up by having been part of the discussion. If the meetings in your organization are lacking some or all of these, then this workshop is for you.

In this 90-minute session, participants will learn 15 specific behaviors that will help them more effectively voice their opinions and ask their questions. The higher levels of candor and respect will help your team more easily identify problems, more quickly develop solutions, and more civilly reach agreements.

The value in a meeting is hearing from everyone. If that’s not occurring, then consider giving Meeting Talk a try.

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Meetings have the bad wrap of not leading to any meaningful action. So what can you do to make sure your meetings don’t earn a similar reputation? An effective strategy is to make sure that all your meetings have an action-oriented purpose.

Take the typical weekly staff meeting. Many would argue these often don’t seem to have any purpose. Others would say their purpose is to “Make sure everyone is updated on all the important things going on within the department or organization.”

While this purpose might have value, it isn’t very action-oriented. It implies that the meeting will be filled with reporting information to each other. It doesn’t say anything about how that information will be used.

The next time you are going to have one of these “update” type of staff meetings, consider making the following your purpose. “The goal of this meeting is to re-prioritize departmental activities for the coming week.” This purpose implies that people will be doing something different based on the outcome of the meeting.

How about a project meeting that is set up to “Discuss the upcoming trade-show in New York”? Again, if you want action, consider creating a meeting purpose statement that leads to action. Try this one, “Develop a detailed work-plan that we can use as we prepare for the New York trade-show.”

The best way to ensure action is to be specific about the type of action that you want. Once you know what it is, put it down in the meeting purpose and make sure everyone attending knows what it is.

Imagine your group is charged with selecting a hotel for the company’s annual meeting. After some research the group has found three hotels that are available and can handle an event of this size.

Each hotel provided a proposal with answers to all the major questions you might have. Your group must now select one.

Before everyone in the group starts weighing in with an opinion about which hotel would be best, the group should first deal with a more fundamental question, “What’s most important to us in selecting a hotel?”

Answering this question provides the group with decision criteria. The goal in generating criteria is to help each team member evaluate the problem from the same perspective.

In this example, there are many perspectives which might be considered: Cost, convenience of location, image, friendliness of staff, amenities, etc.

The group needs to decide which 2-3 criteria are most important and use them in making the decision. Another way might involve using all the criteria but giving them different weights. Setting up a decision grid, the group could do a little math to get a numerical result that would provide the guidance it needs.

In any decision, there are usually many potential criteria. Just do not try to make a decision without first considering what they are.

Many people know the techniques that help make a meeting effective and yet there are so many bad meetings. What gives?

I think courage is part of the answer. There are at least two instances in meetings that require courage. The first is when we are leading a meeting and want to try a new tool or process. Courage helps us overcome the fear that what we try won’t work, and we’ll look dumb. Find the courage with this simple thought. You have nothing to lose. The meeting isn’t working as is. It can only get better, and you may as well be the one who tries to do something about it.

The second situation is when you know what to do, but are not the leader. By making a suggestion you risk someone getting mad at you, especially the leader. Overcoming this fear is easy when you remember two things. First, everyone in the meeting is responsible for the meeting’s outcome; not just the leader. Second, if the meeting is going badly, most people will be delighted to have a suggestion that helps them out of a desperate situation.

If you’re ready to improve meetings, begin by finding your courage. Once you’ve got that, the rest is just about practice.

People are afraid to throw out ideas because they think someone will criticize them. This severely inhibits creativity. The way around this is to focus on generating new ideas without any evaluation. This is easier said than done. Here’s how to keep the criticism at bay.

• Speed. Don’t give people time to think. Idea generation is a spontaneous activity. Evaluation requires thinking. If you want to create a list of ideas, give yourselves a time limit and then use the limit to increase the sense of urgency. Setting the pace with music or with a timer can also keep the ideas popping without time for evaluation.
• Quantity. Give yourselves a goal for the number of ideas you want. Keep pushing the group toward the number, and they will quickly forget about the quality of the ideas.
• Build on ideas of others. Allow people to add their ideas only if they can build on the current idea with a statement that begins with “Yes, and…” This forces listening, and what they hear stimulates new ideas.

What can we do if our meetings almost always begin late because the participants don’t show up on time?

This challenge is common and extremely wasteful.  Think of all the meetings you go to that last at least an hour.  Starting 10 minutes late for a one-hour meeting is flushing 16.7% of the meeting time right down the drain.  Imagine that amount of time wasted across the organization over the course of a year.  Yikes!  This adds up to a major opportunity.

• Voice your concern.  When everyone eventually does show up, begin the meeting by saying something like, “I’d like to spend a few moments talking about a concern I have.  We regularly start our meetings late.  This bothers me because it seems so wasteful.  How do others feel about this? You may hear silence for a few moments, but once someone else chimes in, trust me your concerns will be overwhelmingly supported.
• Start the meeting on time even if everyone’s not present.  If the leader is late, somebody else (i.e. YOU) should take the lead and start the meeting.  You may figure out that there are things you can productively work on that do not require the missing people to be present.  If you start, and they eventually do show up; make it their problem to get themselves back up to speed.  This approach shows them they are not indispensable.
• Implement the “Five minute rule.” If after five minutes anyone who is essential to the meeting is not present, get up and leave.  This is especially effective if the person who is late is the one who called the meeting.  Make it the late-comer’s problem to reconvene the meeting.  This can be a little dangerous if the boss called the meeting and is late.  One way to lessen the risk is to decide as a group (one possible result of following action idea #1) whether you want to have a five minute rule.  That way, if the group uses the rule, it won’t come as a surprise.

Meetings don’t have to be meaningless. If you are leading the meeting, it is your responsibility to help the group create a strong sense of purpose.

You accomplish this by imagining what you will create during the meeting. It might be a new idea, a better understanding about a difficult problem, a tough decision, or a renewed sense of energy in the group.

Once you figured out the “What,” you are ready to take the next step. You must now address the “Why” question.

Suppose you imagine the purpose of the meeting is to create an efficient project plan. Why do you want to do this? If you don’t know, the meeting will likely falter. You need to determine why this meeting goal is important. Perhaps it is because…

• The team is on an extremely tight deadline.
• Resources are running thin, and the team cannot afford to waste any of its energy.

It doesn’t matter what the answer is, as long as it makes sense to you and the rest of the meeting participants.

So what happens when someone else is leading the meeting, and he or she has not developed a meaningful purpose? Simple, voice your concern and encourage the group to work together to create a clear and compelling reason for the meeting.

When it comes to creating purpose for your meetings, sooner is better than later, and later is always better than never. If you follow these strategies, you’ll never waste your time in a meeting again.