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One particular area of managerial activity holds the greatest promise of productivity improvement – conduct of meetings. Time management techniques pay their way when they help managers do this activity more efficiently. Most of the techniques that are likely to impact on this area demand a degree of discipline. Basically, discipline is needed to change habitual behaviour.
There are good meetings and there are bad meetings. Bad meetings drone on forever, you never seem to get to the point and you leave wondering why you were even present.

Effective ones leave you energized and feeling that you’ve really accomplished something. So, what makes a meeting effective?
Effective meetings really boil down to four things: (1) they begin with an objective, (2) they encourage open discussion, (3) they take up a minimum amount of time and (4) they leave participants feeling that a sensible process has been followed.
If you structure your meeting planning, preparation, execution and follow up around these four basic criteria, the result will be an effective meeting.

1.Begin with a purpose

An effective meeting serves a useful purpose. This means that in it, you achieve a desired outcome. For a meeting to meet this outcome, or objective, you have to be clear about what it is. Too often, people call a meeting to discuss something without really considering what a good outcome would be. For example, do you want to generate ideas or status reports? Before you do any meeting planning, you need to focus your objective. With the end result clearly defined, you can then plan the contents of the meeting and determine who needs to be present.

2.Encourage open discussion

It’s very important that you get input from everybody; not only the people who have a lot to contribute and are eager, but also from those who are more shy and less likely to speak up. You want input from especially women and others who may be a little bit reluctant to try to compete with more aggressive or assertive people.
As a leader, you should take the role as a facilitator and avoid hogging the discussion. The way to avoid inadvertently dominating the meeting is to delegate meeting leadership whenever possible. They will learn a lot from planning the meeting and preparing the agenda and this will ultimately help you run more effective meetings.

3. Use time wisely

Time wasted in a meeting is time wasted for everybody attending. For example, if a critical person is 15 minutes late in an eight-person meeting, that person has cost the organisation two hours of lost activity.
Starting with your meeting objective, everything that happens in the meeting itself should further that objective. If it doesn’t, it’s superfluous and should not be included. To ensure you cover only what needs to be covered and you stick to relevant activities, you need to create an agenda. The agenda is what you will refer to in order to keep the meeting running on target and on time.
With an idea of what needs to be covered and for how long, you can then look at the information that should be prepared beforehand. What do the participants need to know in order to make the most of the meeting time? And, what role are they expected to perform in the meeting, so that they can do the right preparation?
Use your agenda as your time guide. When you notice that time is running out for a particular item, consider hurrying the discussion, pushing to a decision, deferring discussion until another time, or assigning it for discussion by a subcommittee.

4. Satisfying participants

Running a meeting is not a dictatorial role: you have to be participative right from the start. Perhaps there is something important that a team member has to add. Maybe you have allotted too much, or too little, time for a particular item. There may even be some points you’ve included that have been settled already and can be taken off the list for discussion.
Once in the meeting, to ensure maximum satisfaction for everyone, there are several things you should keep in mind: if certain people are dominating the conversation, make a point to ask others for their ideas. At the end of each agenda item, quickly summarize what was said and ask people to confirm that that’s a fair summary.
At the close of the meeting, quickly summarize the next steps and inform everyone that you will be sending out a meeting summary.

Keep a record

An important meeting management tip to learn is to summarize at the end of each discussion point and at the end of the meeting.  Set out and summarize your time and action schedules and your implementation plan and assignments.  Then have everybody in the meeting agree on what has been decided.
Finally, distribute minutes from the meeting within 24 hours. The more important the decisions that have been taken, the more important that you have them distributed in writing so that if they have questions they can get back to you. If there are no questions then they are accepting the record of the meeting as distributed. This is a final step that is very important part of conducting more effective meetings and improving your management skills.

Why do some meetings fail?

There are many reasons why meetings are not effective, some of which are listed below:
The meeting is unnecessary and revolves around discussion of trivial issues, thus wasting members’ valuable time. The meeting lacks a clarity of purpose, i.e., the aims and objectives are not clearly defined. Inappropriate style of leadership, i.e., the chairperson dominates and closes down or disregards other contributions. The chairperson exercises little control and allows one or two members to dominate the proceedings.

The meeting is too large thereby limiting the flow of discussion and preventing all members being able to contribute. Decisions that emerge are not truly representative. Problems are talked about rather than being talked through. Decisions are delayed or not acted upon. No clear-cut decisions are made.
Minutes are inaccurate or seen as being manipulated by the chairperson or secretary for his/her own purposes. The wrong people are present, thus preventing the meeting proceeding effectively, e.g., those present have to refer back to another person and are therefore unable to comment effectively.

Meetings can be a useful communication tool. Planning will help a meeting accomplish more in less time. Everyone will not always agree on the best way difficulties should be solved but friendly disagreements about solutions can be beneficial. The meeting will be a waste of time, however, unless concrete action plans are made to solve problems. Specific dates for goal accomplishments can be set and followed up later.
(Lionel Wijesiri, a corporate director with over 25 years’ senior managerial experience, can be contacted at [email protected])