Are you scheduling meetings ?
Read on..
Scheduling Effective Meetings is one of the crucial aspects of leader’s job. We all have faced a situation at workplace sometime in our life that the frequency of meetings have crossed the limit. Meetings called for as simple as ‘Status update’ or even to just celebrate the colleague’s birthday, the other time its called just to pass on the message of the senior management. It all start with a discussion and end with debate.
Few will initiate the idea and other few will shoot them down ! Why this happened ? It is almost the story everywhere. One meeting with unfinished agenda lead to another meeting and the cycle continues
A Research about scheduling Effective Meetings
The inability to schedule effective meetings leads to another meeting and it is frustrating for team. According to a recent Harvard Business Review Survey,( https://hbr.org/2017/07/stop-the-meeting-madness ) of 182 Senior Managers in the range of industries, following findings were noted.
- 65% said meetings keep them from completing their work
- 71% said meetings are unproductive and inefficient.
- 64% said meetings come at an expense of deep thinking
- 62% said meetings miss the opportunity to bring the team close together
These meetings are heavily costing to the organisations and who is responsible for the loss? Obviously the manager who is conducting meetings. May be you?!
As a project manager or a business leader, you are the first person responsible for your team’s productivity and unnecessary meetings. These meetings are as distracting as they can be at times, though at times some meetings are necessary when circumstances call for them.
Here’s a guide to scheduling Effective Meetings & Conducting Effective Meetings for maximum productivity.
6 Tips to Scheduling Effective Meetings:
Prepare a clear agenda of the meeting and stick to it throughout – Zero deviation.
Send out the meeting material well in advance — People should not falter on pre-preparation
Start meeting sharp on time and finish it exact on time — Remember this one meeting is not the last of your life.
Measure the outcome of meeting and tag it with your hourly salary/income — Each hour is a cost, hence the meeting outcome must be measurable
Do not delegate the scheduling-agenda preparing to one of your pet junior — Meeting is your baby.
Each team member must be given optimum weightage and time to contribute —- Drop performance biases and or gender biases.
You will wonder that out of these six you have been almost doing three ! Still, end up stretching it to the next meeting. Here is why it happens:
- Agenda was well crafted, but last moment addition of few important points lead to extended discussion
- Meeting was though started on time, however one of the team members had a brilliant idea and can not suppress it so naturally the presentation and deliberation snatched away the time and meeting got stretched.
- Usually my meetings start on time and go pretty well, somehow, we can not complete the decided agenda as the team is always excited about many other points and I compelled to address those points, hence I ended up stretching the meetings.
- My boss has taught me to keep people ready for any eleventh hour agenda and that’s how the businesses are running, so if these meetings are called without specific agenda or at last hour it is perfectly alright.
Scheduling effective meetings -- "STOP DOING THINGS"
- Never conduct meeting out of despair or just for the sake of tick mark activity.
- Never bring any personal bias during the meeting, as it is risky to get derailed.
- No manager can be successful if he/she uses foul language during meeting.
- Meeting is not a wrestling competition to prove who is more powerful, it is ok to let go the debate.
- Never threat or create a fearful environment during meeting
Remember, you are being respected as a leader only when you are effective in meetings, shouting slogans merely will not make you successful in the long run. A good manager will be respected when people see him as contributing and collaborating.
Is your meeting adding Value in your team ?
Many managers face this problem when conducting meetings. The answer to this, Read the agenda twice before entering the meeting room. Do rehearse twice and see how are you going to add value in this meeting. Is there anything that you want to convey to your team, that is much value adding? then please keep a note ready, as in the rush you may forget it.
Tips for scheduling effective meetings
Speak with data and conviction
- Be information rich manager, people respect those managers who are updated with industry news and current affairs.
- Be logical in proposing any point, don’t just drag things because you like it.
- Always use optimistic and positive language during data analysis.
- Speak growth language and not the threat language.
Scheduling Effective Meetings and Conducting effective meetings is a matter of practice. All successful managers and leaders have had their share of failed meetings, but then they learn, improved and grown.
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