Are your office meetings successful or ineffective? Without proper planning and execution, they can end up wasting everyone’s time. Jack Fries offers solutions to nine common problems that can arise in office meetings.
- Tendency to Go Off in Different Directions. Spending too much time on one item and having to rush through the rest of the agenda will make the other items seem unimportant. It’s essential to keep control of the agenda.
- Imbalance of Communication. Don’t let one person control the conversation in the meeting; make sure that it’s a dialogue, not a monologue. Ask open-ended questions to solicit involvement from all participants.
- Unclear Roles or Responsibility. If someone other than the agency owner is presenting a topic, make sure that everyone understands that management has authorized the presentation.
- Lack of Clear Structure and Leadership. Without a written agenda giving specific time limits for all items to be addressed, meetings tend to ramble. Give the agenda to the attendees at least one day prior to the meetings.
- Purpose Not Clearly Defined. Whoever’s conducting the meeting should inform the attendees of what it’s intended to accomplish.
- Avoidance of the Task. Don’t use a meeting to generalize a specific problem. For example, if specific individuals are abusing the privilege of personal phone calls, instead of telling the entire group, meet with the specific abusers and solve the problem with them.
- Dysfunctional Member Behavior. Many agencies have what Roger Sitkins calls “an onboard terrorist,” the person who always disagrees or repeatedly states that any changes “won’t work here.” It can also be the person who sits with their arms folded with an expression as if they just bit into a lemon. You need to deal with this individual on a one-to-one basis and, if needed, provide a career adjustment for them.
- Physical Environment. Although some impromptu meetings can take place in the open office area, successful meetings should be held in a more formal setting, such as a conference room, or the boss’ office. If attendees are supposed to be taking notes, provide a desk or table to accommodate them.
- Failure to Record Meeting Summaries. Someone should be assigned the task of “recording secretary.” Summarize all important meetings, or any meeting where a course of action is changed or mandated, and then give (or, better yet, e-mail) a copy to each attendee. Also, be sure to send a summary to anyone who should have been at the meeting and was absent.