Meetings and working together with others

Most of this note is about running meetings. Many of the tips about coming to class prepared and taking notes will help you attend meetings. Many meetings turn out to be a waste of time - they are not effective and they are not efficient. You and four others meet for an hour, four hours of effort. Four hours you cannot get back. Do you get four hours’ worth of output? There are many types of meetings. Try not to mix up the types:

1. Status and/or decision meeting: one of the most common – get an update and decide what to do next

2. Problem Solving: members need to deal with a problem and come up with solutions and ideas to move forward

3. Get together and work on something together meeting: self-explanatory, but always needs to have value

4. Team/group formation: the first ‘get to know you’, ‘how to organize’ meeting or two will be special and need to focus on creating connections, setting goals and objectives, establishing roles

Understand how to make decisions in the meeting - reaching the decision point and making the decision - someone has the final say, or you vote, simple majority or everyone - getting everyone to agree is hard and is often not necessary. Once a fair and reasonable decision is made, everyone should accept it and move on.

Take effective notes. Not everything needs to be captured. You’re looking for barriers and decisions (meeting type #1), constraints/criteria, resolution, next steps (meeting type #2).

Summarize the meeting afterwards - key points, decisions made, tasks assigned, next meeting, next steps needed.

Components of a meeting

A meeting should have a specific agenda and purpose.



Have an agenda. Part of the agenda might be to make an agenda on the fly, but still have an agenda.

Follow the agenda, but be flexible if needed.

Have an opportunity for ‘other business’ - try to move any spur of the moment items to this category – deal with the agenda first, then the other ‘new’ stuff.

Allocate estimated time for each agenda item and appoint a timekeeper to keep group intentional.

Have the right people there - matching the agenda and purpose.

Identify any ‘pre-meeting’ work attendees need to do.

Do not combine meeting styles - during a status and/or decision meeting, do not try to solve any serious problem during the meeting. Decide in haste, repent at leisure.

Running the meeting.

If something comes up that is not appropriate for the meeting (e.g., problem solving in a status meeting), task it and have it dealt with off-line - not in the meeting.

Give the meeting a specific start/finish time and keep to them. Start on time, end on time.

Allow socializing before the meeting - when the start time arrives, get down to business.

Have one person in charge of the meeting to run the agenda and keep on focus.



As meeting chair, make sure one person does not dominate the time, agenda, bully, etc.

A meeting should give value - add up the effort and $ represented in the room - does the talent justify the return?

Before you have a meeting

Always question - Does the meeting have to happen? Are the right people there?

What would REALLY happen if the meeting was not held?

If the meeting is a decision type meeting, can one person decide? Do they have the authority? Does it need a group?

If it is a decision meeting, can the people in the room make the decision?

If it is a problem solving meeting, are the right problem solvers there?

If it is a get something done type of meeting, are the ‘involved’ ones there?

Additional things to consider when conducting meetings:

Make sure the right number of people are there.

If the meeting is ‘do something’ type of meeting - make sure that everyone can do something and that they are not just there to watch, suck oxygen, socialize - they should be bringing value or they should not be there.

One person working, three people watching is NOT four hours of effort.

Time regular meetings so that ‘work’ can happen between.

Ensure that any pre-reading or homework is distributed with enough lead time.

Try to come to the meeting prepared - for whatever the agenda is - if it is a problem solving meeting, try to solve the problem yourself (say ½ hour to 1 hour effort) before the meeting - think it through, have some idea about the issues and what might make sense to try (or not).

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