Tips to Maximize Meeting Effectiveness  

Part II: Lead a Productive Meeting, Regardless of Who is Attending

In yesterday’s blog post, Tips to Maximize Meeting Effectiveness Part I, we discussed eight key factors that determine the effectiveness of any meeting. We admitted, however, that even if you carefully followed all the recommended essential steps, you still might experience challenges, unless you can figure out how to run an effective meeting without participants!

Meeting participants come in all varieties…from positive, focused, and willing to contribute their efforts towards productive outcomes, to participants who are against everything and looking for any opportunity to vociferously express their expert opinion! Unfortunately, we don’t always get to pick who will attend our meetings. The following tips will help you rise to the challenge and lead a productive meeting, regardless of who attends!

These four tips will help you deal with those participants who, for whatever the reason, seem to have come to the meeting with a different agenda than yours.

  • The Expert: The expert doesn’t need an excuse to proclaim his or her opinion, often obliviously bulldozing over others in his/her effort to persuade the group. The tragedy of allowing an expert to hold court is that other participants shut down. One way to regain control is to shift the focus to another person. For example, “Joe, we appreciate your thoughts. Melinda, what thoughts do you have on this subject?”

  • The Complainer: These are folks whose prevailing mood is negative. “You think this is bad, just wait for tomorrow. It’ll be worse.” They’re the ones who don’t waste any time telling you why it won’t work, not now or any time in the future! Thank them for sharing their expertise and then focus them on other options. “We’re glad you let us know about that experience, Paul. Now that we know what won’t work, we can focus our efforts on coming up with solutions that will work.” Again, as with the expert, it may be helpful to switch focus by asking another participant for their insight related to the challenge.

  • The Distractor: The expert and the complainer are vocal. You know what they’re thinking…even when you really don’t want to know! The distractor is more subtle and often you can’t quite hear what it is they’re saying. It could be they’re whispering to someone while you’re speaking, or making comments about what you’re saying, but nothing that you can hear.

    If participants are holding side conversations, try not speaking yourself. Usually your silence alerts whisperers that you are waiting for them to join the group. If they start talking again, stop speaking again. You may have to repeat this process a couple of times before you get everyone’s attention. If that doesn’t work, keep talking, but move slowly towards the distractor. Finally, if nothing else works, call on them directly. “Tony. It looks like you and Mike are deep in conversation. Don’t keep us in the dark. Can you add something to this discussion? We’d like to hear your thoughts.”

  • The Non-Participant: While the first three behaviors are challenging for a leader, non-participants can be equally frustrating. These are folks that say nothing at the meeting, but begin to sabotage the team’s efforts as soon as they leave the meeting. For example, you may hear later, “You won’t believe what management just decided. It’ll never work.” If you feel that you may have a negative non-participant, call on them directly. “Connie, I’m sensing you have some thoughts on this topic. Would you be willing to share them with the group?” Or, “Michael, I don’t want to end the meeting before I’ve checked for your support. Is this something that you can live with?”

Now that you know how to successfully plan for a meeting and how to handle challenging participants, check back on Monday for the final and, possibly, the most important installment of this blog: How to Successfully Make Collective Decisions in Meetings. After all, isn’t that what meetings are for?


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Filed Under: Articles, Leadership, Peter's Blog on October 9th, 2009

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