How to set up and facilitate a successful meeting

"When leaders know how to lead great meetings, there's less time wasted and less frustration. We have more energy to do the work that matters, realize our full potential, and do great things." - Justin Rosenstein

Meetings are a great vehicle to work towards the achievement of goals and over my career I have learnt many do’s and don’ts when it comes to setting up and facilitating successful and not so successful meetings!

The reason many of us avoid meetings and conversations is because we often don’t know how to get a good outcome and stop it becoming a waste of time with no productive outcome. Time is precious.

Another reason can be the person/people involved. If you have difficulty communicating with a certain colleague, avoiding having the meeting or conversation with that person, doesn’t help anything and can actually make the relationship worse, especially in a work environment where you have to work with that person.

We have many leaders and business owners ask our advice of how to set up meetings that achieves a win-win situation where everybody feels they’ve had a win from a meeting/conversation and also strengthens the relationship with the person/people involved.

Here’s some top tips to set up and facilitate a meeting to create progress and achieve outcomes that can support any meeting or conversation.

Pre-meeting Tips

1. Do not avoid having the conversation.

Avoiding it often just makes the situation worse and people involved feel more frustrated. Problems do not get solved through silence, they get solved through action.

2. Schedule a time to meet.

If possible, face to face is best practice. Scheduling a meeting says to the person or people involved that you care and value discussing the topic with them.

3. Set an agenda for the meeting.

Find out what the topic/s are for the meeting so you can prepare adequately for the meeting if need be. This is not always possible but if you can find out what the meeting is about, it will help you feel more prepared and confident. If you can't, that's fine, the other tips here will enable you to facilitate a successful meeting even without an agenda established before the meeting.

Meeting Tips

1. Set the goal/outcome for the meeting.

Start with thanking and acknowledging the parties involved for attending the meeting and clarify the goal/outcome for the meeting for all parties. This is important to help everyone be clear on the purpose for the meeting and what an effective outcome would look like. Even if this has been established prior to the meeting, it is important to start the meeting revisiting the goal E.g. ‘For what purpose are we meeting? What would a good outcome look like for you?’

2. Set an agreement frame.

This is often missed in meetings but it is one of the most effective strategies to be used to set up a successful meeting. An agreement frame is where you establish some ground rules for the meeting and get all parties to agree. The agreement frame creates the opportunity for all parties to act professionally. The Law of Consistency, one of Cialdini’s Laws of Influence, indicates that when we say we will do nothing we are more likely to act in alignment with that statement. We suggest including:

a. Agreement to stay focussed on the goal.

Get permission from all parties that if the conversation strays from the main topic or get sidetracked from the goals of the meeting then the conversation will be redirected to the outcome of the meeting. E.g. ‘the outcome of the meeting is X, to achieve this outcome to the best of our ability and utilise time effectively can we agree to maintain focus on X and redirect the conversation if need be back to this outcome?’

b. Agreement that all parties focus on what they can control vs what they can’t.

That each party focuses on the present and solutions. There is a model called Above The Line/Below The Line, that is a great model to highlight the difference between focussing on what you can control vs what you can’t. If this model has been taught prior to the meeting then this is a great reference for the meeting alternatively just leave the reference out. E.g. ‘Can we agree to focus (on being above the line and focussing) on what we can control and if the conversation becomes focused on things we can’t control that we bring the conversation back to focussing on what is within our control?’

3. Record meeting minutes and action items.

The recording of action items in a structure of ‘task by person by deadline’ is an easy to use structure to create action following the discussion and set up future conversations to be productive. When we put timeframes on tasks we create accountability and a professional way of operating. Complete the meeting with establishing the next step if there is one. E.g. date for follow up meeting. If it is a one-to-one meeting, it is great to check in at the end of the meeting/conversation that the outcomes were achieved to reinforce the effectiveness of the meeting or any follow up is needed.

“The best meetings get real work done. When your people learn that your meetings actually accomplish something, they will stop making excuses to be elsewhere.” — Larry Constantine

I trust these tips will support you to feel more confident to schedule and facilitate successful meetings.

For support leading team members or engaging with clients, reach out to Leaders Network at hello@leadersnetworkgroup.com.au