Good Meetings
Good Leaders (1st in a series of 2)
Plan A’s popular 2014 series on Good Board Meetings had content our clients found useful for non-board meetings as well. Here are best practices you can use to make any meeting one worth attending:
Empower a chair. If there’s no chair pre-assigned, appoint one at the start and empower them to start and end the meeting on time, call on presenters and commenters, summarize debate, and end discussion when it’s clear all major points have been made.
Manage debate. Most points are best made once. The chair should acknowledge all points of view and cut off debate when it leads to repetition. It’s OK to “table” a topic for the future when it needs further research, off-line consideration, or requires more time than the agenda allots.
Call on participants. Value all in attendance by encouraging everyone to speak…at least once. Two techniques: go round-robin to elicit ideas or opinions at least once. Or the chair can call on quieter voices periodically; sometimes the most useful contributions come from those reticent to speak.
Good Agendas (2nd in a series of 2)
Plan A’s popular 2014 series on Good Board Meetings had content our clients found useful for non-board meetings as well. Here are best practices you can use to make any meeting one worth attending:
Time the agenda. Well-crafted agendas with timing assigned to each item signal to participants that topical presentations and ensuing discussion have inevitable limits; and posted times empower the meeting chair to ‘move it along’ so that each agenda item gets its due.
Limit slide content. The less you put on a PowerPoint slide, the more powerful it can be. Use graphics and icons instead of sentences. Use five words instead of 20.
List next steps. The chair should keep a running list of agreed-upon actions and follow-ups, and restate them in closing with an assignment (“by whom”) and a deadline (“by when”).