Does this question ever cross your mind when you are sitting waiting for Sally the marketing manager or Susan the sales rep to arrive at a meeting? It crosses my mind, and it sure bothers me.
Time and again, meetings are delayed while the chairperson waits for late participants to arrive. As time goes by, the chair becomes impatient and then degrades one of the already-present attendees by having him act as a “hound dog” who trundles off to find the absentee team members and bring them to the meeting.
Delaying the start of a meeting by waiting for people is the first step in poor meeting execution and often leads to an ineffective meeting.
What does such a delay say to those that arrive on time?
The late person is so important that the balance of the attendees must wait for his arrival and aren’t nearly as important to the company.
The meeting isn’t so important that you have to be there on time. Other activities can take precedence. Next time, no one will worry about being a little late.
Who cares about the cost of keeping people waiting? (An interesting exercise is to calculate the hourly cost of the delay by multiplying the hourly salary cost of all the people waiting by the time the meeting is delayed. It may not seem like very much, but if you further multiply by the number of meetings that are allowed to start late, it becomes an appreciable sum.) What would be the reaction of the tardy employees if they had to pay the waiting cost of those that arrived on time?
Conducting a meeting successfully
Once you’ve dealt with the tardiness issue, there are a number of other actions you can perform to assist in creating a successful meeting.
Arrange the agenda in an order that will contribute to success.
Start with an issue or issues that are likely to get unanimous support. This will create a positive environment for the participants.
Set a time for the meeting to end. A pre-determined end time should always be adhered to. If this discipline is followed, individuals can arrange their schedules accordingly and will not have to disrupt a meeting by leaving early.
Set time limits for each issue to be discussed and ensure that the participants adhere to the limits. If a meeting starts falling behind its schedule, ensure that the participants realize the meeting will either run beyond its predetermined end or some issue(s) will not be dealt with.
Pre-set time limits for each issue will ensure that unimportant issues do not take up an inappropriate amount of time and thus deny important issues the time that is necessary to properly address them.
Arrange seating in such a way that dissidents do not sit together and detract from the meeting with negative whispered comments. If people have comments to make, demand that they be made in the open in order for everyone to hear.
Set rules about distractions. Cell phones and other electronic devices should be banned from meetings. Their presence and use distracts both their users and the other participants. If the issues being discussed at a meeting are important, then the attention of the participants should be retained at all times during the meeting.
Count the votes for an issue before a meeting. In many, if not most, businesses, formal votes are not taken. However, the support an issue garners could be seen as a vote. It is important that as many negative aspects as possible are eliminated before an issue comes to an open forum.
Stick to the issues
Tempers can flare in meetings, depending on the issues discussed and the forum in which the meeting is being conducted.
When attendees are angered, they tend to attack each other (usually only verbally). The damage that occurs as a result of such attacks frequently lasts beyond the life of the issue that led to the confrontation.
The person running a meeting should insist that differences of opinion be centred on the issues and not on the proponents of the different points of view.
If a meeting is becoming disorderly, the issue causing the problem should be tabled for further review and research. This should be done before positions become so entrenched that there are no means to reach agreement either at the meeting or in the future.
Develop action plan
Develop an action plan for each issue discussed at the meeting. Participants will then feel that something has been accomplished and that there has been some value to the meeting, even if it was half an hour delayed.