Chapter 9: Meetings: Leadership and Productivity

Chapter 9: Meetings: Leadership and Productivity

This chapter will help leaders and other meeting planners avoid the seven deadly sins of meetings.

The Seven Deadly Sins of Meetings

1. People don’t take meetings seriously.

2. Meetings are too long.

3. People wander off the topic.

4. Nothing happens once the meeting ends.

5. People don’t tell the truth.

6. Meetings are always missing important information, so they postpone critical decisions.

7. Meetings never get better.

Meetings can be small or large, internal or external, frequent or infrequent. Meeting leaders or planners need to define a clear purpose and analyze the audience to determine whether a meeting is the best forum for what they want to accomplish. Meetings often have multiple objectives, but effective meetings, like good presentations and e-mails, usually have one main overall purpose. The purpose of an informational meeting could be as significant as introducing a new vision or as mundane as providing a progress report intended to expedite a project. In determining the agenda topics and the meeting tasks, leaders need to estimate the time it will take to cover each topic and accomplish each objective as realistically as possible. Selecting the right attendees is important to the success of a meeting. The attendees we invite should be the ones who can contribute to achieving our objectives.

Leaders will want to consider the best setting for the kind of meeting they plan to lead. The setting considerations should include locations, equipment, and layout of the room. The meeting will be more productivity if the attendees know and use common problem-solving tools: Deciding on the Decision-Making Approach, Clarifying Leader and Attendees Roles and Responsibilities, Establishing Meeting Ground Rules, and Using Common Problem-Solving Approach. Leaders will be able to stop or at least minimize most of the usual meetings problem by careful planning and by developing and enforcing ground rules. Skilled facilitators should be prepared to (1) handle some of the most common meeting problems, (2) manage meeting conflict, and (3) deal with issues arising from cultural differences.

Ensuring That Meetings Lead to Action: Assign specific tasks to specific people, Review all actions and responsibilities at the end of the meeting, Provide a meeting summary with assigned deliverable included, and Follow up on action items in a reasonable time.

Question

1. How to Improve Business Meeting Productivity and Effectiveness?

Companies have business meetings where several employees are gathered together in a room to discuss a plan or issue. Meetings need to be productive and effective since time is diverted from employees' schedules to accommodate the meeting. Being aware of the importance of business meeting productivity will help you consciously strive towards making your company meetings work for your team.

2. When it just doesn’t work our the way you planned—The failure of teams?

·        6 out of 10 work teams fail

·        It may take a year or more for new teams to reach pre-team performance levels

·        SDWT’s work least well during downsizing (when most needed)

·        58% of executives express frustration in developing and sustaining team motivation

·        >50% of teams fail due to unclear or changing objectives, lack of accountability or management support

·        Managers report limiting effort on 56% of their teams

3. Differences between teams and individuals

·        Social facilitation: people are more motivated to perform better with others, especially on motor tasks, when comfortable, well-trained, & good work habits

·        Learning: Teams learn faster than individuals when there is division of labor, contributions are additive, feedback is available & accepted

·        Risky Decisions: Greater risk taken with teams that are excessively cohesive, under great pressure to decide, norms against reflection, & diffusion of responsibility

·        Problem Solving: teams produce more and better quality solutions, based on interest in task, most skilled members, and error checking

·        Time Efficiency: Teams usually take more time to complete a task

Idea Production: Teams continue to produce after individuals run dry,    especially with training and cohesion.