Meeting Agenda That Works

by Steven W. Vannoy and Craig Ross

How many of us love to attend meetings - raise your handsƒ. Not too many hands going up. Well then, how many of us dread going to meetings because they are too long, accomplish too little, and tend to be "blame" sessions? Oh, many more hands are up!

One question We're asked over and over again is how to run effective meetings that are empowering and team-building. We're not surprised that we get this question a lot because in a recent survey in USA Today, American workers were asked what percentage of business meetings do more harm that good. Are you sitting down? Over 90% of meetings are considered to do more harm than good.

But when we mention this during our culture and leadership trainings, participants are not surprised. They say that most meetings do more harm than good for two main reasons:

1. Leaders or participants may have thought they had clarity after a meeting, but the parties walked away with much different understandings, and hence, wasted time and resources.
2. The meeting was disempowering and actually hurt the relationship, rapport, and trust between team members.

There is a way to conduct meetings that are both productive and will allow everyone to come away with a unified, well-understood direction and motivated goals.

So, for all of us, the following is a flexible agenda to use in any weekly/bi-weekly or monthly planning/review meeting.

First, both parties should keep accurate notes and refer to the same notes at the next meeting. Key agreements and action steps should be highlighted at the close of the meeting.

The main goal of this Agenda is to set all parties up for success by co-creating clear, achievable, stretch objectives. With a clear path and direction, there is no need to micro-manage between meetings. The goal is to have each person totally in charge of running their department/area and making the appropriate decisions.

Foundation For Success: It is vital that each party commits to coming to the meeting on time, on-a-roll, non-defensive, and deeply connected to their passion to serve team members and clients. Oh, one more thing, you have to truly be open to seeing your partners' brilliance and magnificence!!!

Step 1: Use an appropriate Meeting Opener. In most cases, this opener should build up one or more of The Big 5 of the New Leader's Job within the context of this team. For example, you may want to build up the team's self-esteem and energy, or culture, create healthy two-way information flow, and therefore pick an opener like:

Would each person please share something you've learned lately at work that you're excited about and that might help the other party? (The opener step should not take longer than 2-5 minutes.)

This is the ultimate upstream wellness tool. When your team has high self-esteem and energy, a sense of teamwork, trust and respect for one another, when information is shared and not withheld, you have all of the ingredients necessary for a productive, enjoyable meeting and great future results.

Step 2: Focus the team. Each meeting will require appropriate adjustments to the questions below - and it is not necessary to use all of the questions. Questions create a structure that will lead the meeting in a definite direction and keep it on track.

Message Tool: The following questions send the message that you are supportive of their efforts:

• What are some of your main successes, accomplishments or progress since our last meeting?
• What are some of the key factors that have led to this success?
• What are your key objectives for the next two/four weeks?
• What is the reason these objectives are so important to you and our mission?
• What are your key action steps and timetables to achieve your objectives?
• Where do you need my support or clarity to achieve these objectives?
• Here's some other items that are very important to me and here's the reason why.

Teach Tool. These questions allows your team to express their creative thinking, ideas and feelings:

• What are your thoughts about that?
• How would you like to see this turn out?
• How do you feel we should approach this?
• What are your ideas on how to best move forward?
• What is the reason you feel this is important to our team/work/customers/mission, etc.? How can we best measure the results?

Of course, the above Message and Teach Tools work much, much better when the Model Tool has been fully used by both parties in the previous weeks and months. Also, in conjunction with the Message and Teach Tools, both parties will be deeply listening for understanding.

And finally, both parties will then close the loop by looking for places to cheer each other on and use the Focus Tool, noticing and mentioning when team members are following through with assignments between meetings. This takes consciously looking for places where the other party is honoring the co-created plan.

What happens when team members are resistant to the changes that are often required in the business world today - change of processes, reporting structure, upgraded equipment, production quotas, customer requirements and job specifications?

In the next article, we will be sharing how to work through these changes in a way that builds greater efficiencies and greater teamwork and buy-in, along with ideas on how to close a meeting in such a way that the next meeting will be welcomed and equally productive. (See "Capturing Decisions and Closing a Meeting Successfully")

(c) 2003 Pathways to Leadership, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.