Types of Meetings

 

 

Meetings, Problem Solving and Decision Making

 Communication Instruments

Learning Objectives

 

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Three Types of Meetings

 

  1. Planning:

            Planning meetings are designed to help to prepare something for the future. This often includes the problems that people can see that might possibly develop. Planning meetings are held for reasons as diverse as getting ready for the annual office holiday party or the annual stockholders’ meeting, setting production quotas or sales goals, adopting a new bookkeeping system, creating next year’s budget, or converting an assembly line to handle a new product.   As a rule, planning meetings are filled with goals and expectations, projections and predictions, enthusiasm, a certain amount of worry and, sometimes, dread.   Depending upon their personalities, positions, talents, or egos, participants may claim ownership of ideas at planning meetings—and then quickly disown them if things start to go wrong.

  1. Reporting:

            Reporting meetings deal with what has been going on, what people have done, are doing now, and what they intend to be doing in the future, and where everyone stands; usually in relation to whatever the current plan—or problem—happens to be.   Here again, the actual “subject” of the meeting can range from looking at the results of the office party or the stockholders’ meeting, to finding out if the production quotas or sales goals have been met, or seeing how the new bookkeeping system is working, or detailing how the budget is being spent, or discussing how the work on converting the assembly line is doing.   One simple way to prepare for one is to follow the Five Ws of journalism; Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How. Once you have done that, you have your report. Interpreting it is a different matter, of course, but you can’t interpret something until you know exactly what it is you are interpreting.  One more point. If the report shows that things are not going as well as hoped for or predicted at the planning meeting, some people will start looking for ways to avoid any responsibility for whatever problems have developed, especially if the organizational culture is one in which anyone associated with a “bad idea” will carry that stigma with them for years.

  1. Reacting:

            Reaction meetings are usually called to deal with the unexpected; too often that means problems. Perhaps someone was injured at the office party, the stockholders voted against the CEO’s recommendations, the production quotas and sales goals are turning out to be both unrealistic and overly optimistic, the new bookkeeping system doesn’t work, the budget is being overspent, and converting the assembly line to handle the new product will take another 90 days.

            Here again, some participants’ reactions might be focused more on dodging responsibility that finding a solution.  If you are running the meeting, you have to make sure that it stays focused.   One way to handle “reaction meetings” is to treat them as if they are planning meetings. That is what you are doing—planning your reaction.  Psychologically, looking at it as a “planning session” gives the meeting attendants something positive to focus on, something they can do.  People who regularly deal with disasters—floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, fires, mudslides, major accidents or crimes, and such—know that people can be paralyzed into inaction. They simply freeze. The key is to take them beyond the reaction stage and into a planning stage. Once people have accepted the reality of the situation, you have to get them into action. The question then becomes:  “What are we going to do about it?”

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Time Wasters or Time Investments?

A meeting can be either a waste of time, or a good investment. 

            There have been numerous surveys over the years looking at the effectiveness of project/programme purpose meetings. Many of them show that project/programme purpose people spend between 20 to 40 percent of their time in meetings or meeting-related activities, and that the higher someone climbs the organizational ladder, the more that time increases. Add to that equation that most meetings are only 40 to 50 percent effective.

            The most depressing part of these findings, however, is that about 20 percent of all meetings are a total waste of time and organization payroll; not only was the meeting a failure, but the people attending it were unable to do their actual jobs because they were tied up at a meeting.

            One of the biggest contributors to all that wasted time is the meeting length. Even when something is actually accomplished, the meeting keeps on going. We’ve all seen movies or read books that would have been 100 percent better if they had only been about 25 percent shorter. The same often applies to meetings.

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6. Some Thoughts About Meetings

            “Meetings are a great trap. Soon you find yourself trying to get agreement and then the people who disagree come to think they have a right to be persuaded... However, they are indispensable when you don’t want to do anything.”

            -- John Kenneth Galbraith, U.S. economist.

            “Congress seems drugged and inert most of the time. ...Its idea of meeting a problem is to hold hearings or, in extreme cases, to appoint a commission.”

            -- Shirley Chisholm, former U.S. Member of Congress

            “I live for meetings with suits. …I walk in there with my orange velvet leggings and drop popcorn in my cleavage and then fish it out and eat it. I like that. I know I’m entertaining them and I know that they know. Obviously, the best meetings are with suits that are intelligent, because then things are operating on a whole other level.”

            -- Madonna [Madonna Louise Ciccione], singer

            “Soufflé is more important than you think. If men ate soufflé before meetings, life could be much different.”

            -- Jacques Baeyens, former French Consul General to the United States

“Deliver us from committees.”

-- Robert Frost, poet

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7. Meeting Myths

            Having spent many years as a consultant, trainer, and motivator, Steve Kaye, Ph.D., of Placentia, California, has developed a list of the seven common myths of meetings; myths that block success. We have adapted these myths for this lesson.

  1. Myth 1: Executives belong in meetings. Since top management is responsible for vision, strategy, plans, and communication, that’s what they should be spending their time on. Poorly run meetings—and that’s what so many of them are—just waste the time of the organization’s most valuable employees.
  2. Myth 2: Holding a large meeting is impressive. The larger the meeting, the more it costs in terms of the payroll—and in terms of the work that isn’t being done because the people who should be doing it are all in a meeting. Meetings should be as small as possible.  Meetings should include only those who need to be there.
  3. Myth 3: Structure inhibits spontaneity. Creativity needs room, but it also needs structure. Kaye compares a structured meeting to a highway. The longer, wider, better paved, and smoother the highway is, the farther you can go and the faster you can get there. If you are in a hurry—and time is always an element in a meeting—would you rather travel 100 miles on a well-marked highway? Or on a rock-strewn path that doesn’t even have any road signs?  There are many ways to increase and unleash people’s creativity at meetings – having an unstructured meeting is not one of them.
  1. Myth 4: People are too busy to prepare agendas. Being prepared for the meeting, knowing what it’s going to be about, saves everyone time and money. It can also help avoid confusion and frustration. This is similar to those situations in which someone decided they didn’t have time to do something “exactly right” the first time and then had to find time to do it again. An agenda allows people to think about the issues that will be discussed at the meeting beforehand and not waste valuable meeting time “getting up to speed.”
  2. Myth 5: Minutes are unnecessary. Since the minutes of a meeting are the official record of what happened there, not having minutes is tantamount to denying that a meeting even happened. It also says that nothing that was done there was important enough to note, let alone record.
  3. Myth 6: Meetings need to last a long time. The consensus among consultants, communication specialists, and executives is that most meetings should last less than an hour. As meetings drag on, minds wander, people get tired, attention lags. We lose our ability to focus on the topic, especially if the room is small and poorly ventilated. Long meetings also often have the counter-productive effect of leaving attendees restless, irritable, and discontented.
  4. Myth 7: The effectiveness of meetings is a low priority. Kaye points out that effective meetings are a critically essential activity in running a project/programme purpose. “They harness the combined wisdom of your staff to invent products, increase sales, improve productivity, plan strategies, and create success.”

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9. Meeting Manners Matter

Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others. If

you have that awareness, you have good manners, no matter what

fork you use.”

            -- Emily Post

 

In school, troublesome students are sometimes identified with the phrase:

“Does not play well with others.”

            In project/programme purpose, troublesome employees are sometimes labeled as:

“Does not do meetings well with others.”

            An equally damaging label is:

“Does not know how to run a meeting.”

We’ll be looking at the differences between leading and managing a meeting a little bit later, along with group dynamics. Right now, however, let’s look at some of the basic rules of good meeting manners for both those running and attending them:

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10. More Meeting Manners: Phones and Pagers

            Should you keep your cell phone on during a meeting? What about your pager?

                        The simple answer is no.  What you are telling people is that you are the most important person in the room, the only one who actually counts, and that nothing is more important than your need to be “connected.”

            While this seems like a question that no one should really need to ask, unfortunately, it raises an issue that is more and more a concern today.  Most of us have probably had the experience of being in a meeting when someone’s cell phone rang—and they answered the phone and started a conversation during the meeting.

            If you really are so important, or are expecting such a truly important message that you cannot afford to turn these implements of connectedness off—such as the birth of a grandchild—at least set them to vibrate. If you must answer your cell phone during the meeting, say: “Hold on,” and leave the room to have the conversation outside.

            In a 1999 article in the New York Post, Christopher Francescani reported that: “Victoria’s Secret model Laetitia Casta’s million-dollar face was doused with tear gas by an irate Parisian cab driver who was sick of listening to the bodacious beauty’s cell phone incessantly ringing.”

            There have also been cases where a person’s cell phone conversation at a restaurant has been so loud and annoying that people at nearby tables have taken to shouting obscenities at the person talking, and doing so loudly enough so the person being spoken to could hear it.  In fact, one San Francisco restaurant banned cell phones when it found that two people at opposite ends of the bar were talking to one another on their cell phones.

            For some people, the cell phone is a status symbol; their way of showing that they really are in charge and important. These people often have what they think are important titles.    Keep in mind that two more titles may be added: Arrogant and Rude.

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Meeting Minutes

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