Five Steps to Running Effective Meetings
Dawn Salerno, Deputy Director for Public Engagement and Operations, Mystic Museum of Art; NEMA Board of Directors
No one wants to leave a staff meeting feeling frustrated, demeaned, or ignored. The best meetings follow established guidelines, resulting in a better sense of teamwork, accomplishment, and overall workplace happiness. While there is no shortage of articles on this topic if you conduct an on-line search of the phrase, “how to run effective meetings,” these recommendations are a curated distillation of such suggestions, with a focus on museums.
Step One: Set Purpose and Expectations
Why are you having this meeting? Is it a regular staff meeting for sharing work-place news? Is it project specific? Do attendees need to brainstorm or problem-solve? Should attendees come prepared to report information or provide advice and ideas? Assuming your focus requires an in-person meeting, everyone at the table should be aware of the topics up for discussion and the format for the meeting. If this is not a standing meeting with a standing agenda, set the agenda and circulate it with enough advance notice so that attendees can prepare for the topic. Keep the agenda on a shared drive, so people can consult it as needed. Consider whether you might need to invite others to contribute to the agenda, and if so, circulate it as a working document with an invitation to suggest agenda items by a given deadline. At the meeting, if you have a written agenda, pass it out and reiterate briefly the purpose of the meeting and what you hope to accomplish by its end.
Step Two: Respect People’s Time
Start and end your meeting at the established time. Honor the times within the agenda, but be prepared to stretch timelines as necessary. It takes a certain level of mastery to know when to break the rules. Sometimes, a topic that runs over its allotted time does so because of the interest level from the group. You want to encourage that type of discussion but consider saying to your group, “I see a lot of interest in this topic – would anyone mind if we spent a few more minutes on it, and shortened our lunch period a bit?” Conversation that goes off topic, is not pertinent to a majority at the table, or is too specific when the purpose of the meeting is ideation, can be guided to a close.
Consider the hour you convene meetings as well. A recent Harvard Business Review article on meetings focused on the role of “makers versus managers.” It noted that people who brainstorm as part of their work (read, exhibit designers, graphic designers) need long periods of uninterrupted time in their days while managers tend to maximize their workdays by breaking them up into smaller blocks for meetings, answering emails, and working on shorter projects. If your workplace has such a mix of job responsibilities, consider holding group meetings either early or later in the day, leaving those “makers” with the remaining part of their days uninterrupted. Most meetings can be accomplished in under an hour, and we know from scientific studies that attention span and retention of information is better when the duration of the meeting is under one hour. Shorter meetings demand attentiveness. Consider shortening your meetings by asking people to write and read reports of information that can be shared in that format ahead of time. Then the in-person meeting can be devoted to discussing issues that require a dynamic format.
Step Three: Establish and Communicate Ground Rules
Different types of meetings demand different types of ground rules – sometimes even different methods for establishing ground rules. A retreat or brainstorming session, for example, may work better if the ground rules are established by the participants. Large staff meetings, on the other hand, may run more efficiently with a few rules set by the director of the museum. Rules can include anything from logistics (timing, location, no phones!) to desired behaviors (everyone speaks at least once, test assumptions and inferences, offer solutions not criticism, et al.) In general, your ground rules should establish a respectful environment where people feel free to share their ideas and allow others to share theirs. Define what parts of the discussion should be kept confidential. Encourage careful listening by asking for points to be clarified – “can we back up and define the term accessibility for everyone?” - and by summarizing what points have been made so far – “what I heard you say was that the fundraiser netted less profit, but was better attended.” Meeting leaders, managers and directors should be careful not to dominate discussion. Consider posting the ground rules on the wall or computer screen for each meeting. Some may even want to treat the guidelines with a sense of humor, having people donate to a “tip jar” if they break a rule. Fun can also be a guideline since teams are typically more effective when they spend time together outside of work: an ice breaker, hands-on activity, or a five-minute stretch at the start of a meeting can set a more relaxing tone and prime creativity.
Step Four: Follow Your Own Guidelines!
Now that you have established an agenda, set a timeline and communicated guidelines for the discussion, you are responsible for staying on track. The meeting leader is typically the person who sent around the agenda and/or calls the meeting, but if not, the group should be made aware of the person in charge of the meeting. This person has the challenging job of reining in people who get off topic, off time, or worse, act disrespectfully. To maintain a respectful environment, the person running the meeting has to remain respectful in turn, even when others may not be. If someone is off topic, for example, ask them to explain how they think their point relates to the topic at hand. Identifying a comment as off-topic could undermine your meeting by stifling the conversation and intimidating others. In general, it’s helpful to put any behavioral corrections in positive terms, such as, “how else could we say that?” And correct disrespectful language: “Rather than call Max naïve on this issue, let’s try to understand your position in relation to his.” As meeting leader, you will be discretely watching the clock and keeping each portion of the meeting on time. Gently remind people if they’re running over time by saying something like, “This is a great report but I’m conscious that we have other reports on the agenda. Do you think you can conclude in the next minute?” Sometimes, if individuals are giving more formal presentations, they’ll appreciate a five-minute warning that they need to conclude. Flash cards can be an effective reminder of the timeline.
Step Five: Closure
Many signs can indicate that a meeting should be closed. The established duration for the meeting might have been reached; your agenda might be exhausted; or discussion may have dwindled into off-topic issues or banter. As meeting leader, you need to recognize these signs and be preemptive in a closure of the meeting before any of these points are reached. Include in your closure, a thank you to the attendees, a summary of the meeting outcomes, and an articulation of next steps and who’s responsible for those steps. Your verbal summary can be augmented with visual aids if notes were taken on large easel pads or a screen. A summary might be comprised of the ideas that rose to the top from a brainstorm, the conclusions drawn from discussion, or as in the case of a regular all-staff meeting, a simple rallying charge to go forth and do great work! Attendees may also feel a better sense of closure by reading a documentation of the meeting so consider circulating minutes with action items noted within the week after your meeting.
You may have a sense of how successful a meeting was, but ask others that attended what they thought. Guidelines can be revised as needed. The more inclusive the process, the better your team’s contributions will be.