While there are three primary types of business meetings: information-sharing, instructional or directional task-related meetings, and facilitated or developed task-related meetings, an effective leader must closely manage the meeting boundaries to prevent scope creep and get done on time.
Information-Sharing Meetings
Control Meeting Boundaries
Information-sharing meetings primarily capture one-way communication with the information presented by the speaker to the group. Furthermore, this type of meeting includes symposiums, instructional groups, staff meetings, and other presentations that attempt to communicate essential information to a group. Interaction from participants with the meeting leader normally gets limited to questions and comments.
Task-Related Meetings
Task-related meetings use the knowledge and experience of group members to accomplish a work task, such as problem-solving, decision-making, fact-finding, planning, etc. These meetings are highly interactive and involve two-way communication between all participants. Task-related meetings also tend to fall apart more quickly with poor meeting management. The two differences include:
- Directed—the leader runs the meeting and controls the agenda. These are the most common types of meetings.
- Facilitated—an impartial facilitator runs the meeting and controls the agenda and technique. These are the least common but are growing in use, as they are the most effective for decision-making and building consensus.
The Model Meeting
To effectively manage a meeting, a meeting leader must pay attention to the dynamics of the group. Having a model to work from helps the leader understand the group’s behavior to keep meeting dynamics in balance. This enables the leader to sort problems from non-problems and respond appropriately.
Why a Model?
Looking back on the list of the 14 most frequently mentioned problems in meetings (see “Some of the Challenges and Costs Associated with Hosting Meetings”), we can attribute all of them to one primary cause; a lack of structure. If this sounds like an oversimplification, it is, but only partially. You may be asking yourself, “If structure has been the only problem with meetings, why are meetings in corporate America a waste of money?” It seems like unstructured meetings are the effect of meeting dementia. Take a closer look at the components of the model meeting.
Meeting Boundaries
Meeting boundaries provide the limits or scope, which separate the meeting and its components from the external environment. Clear and unbroken boundaries are essential to good meeting management. It is the meeting leader’s responsibility to keep the boundaries from being violated (broken) resulting in a breakdown in structure. Therefore, consider both types of meeting boundaries:
- Time boundaries
- Physical boundaries
Time Boundaries
Time boundaries govern the start time and stop time of the overall meeting, as well as the length of the meeting. Meetings starting late seem to be an accepted norm. All meetings should start at their scheduled time and not exceed the stop time.
Barring a major catastrophe, every meeting must start precisely on time. Meetings that start late are in trouble right from the start. The delay starts to send a message to the participant that degrades the perceived importance of the meeting. The meeting is taken less seriously and sets the stage for additional boundary violations.
If the meeting begins late because the leader is not ready, he or she loses credibility which is hard to recover. Meetings that start late because the leader is waiting for latecomers are just as bad. This communicates positive reinforcement to the latecomers, while negatively reinforcing those that came on time.
Running overtime must be avoided at all costs. In cases where the discussion is crucial, continue only after obtaining consensus from the group. Otherwise, summarize and reschedule another meeting to conclude the discussion.
How many meetings extend beyond their useful length? The meeting duration should never exceed 45 to 50 minutes unless it is a facilitated workshop. By setting up your meetings for 45 or 50-minute increments, you provide a courtesy to the participants, affording them time to refresh between meetings.
Meetings more than one hour long take too much energy and have the opportunity to drag. Workshops, properly facilitated, can last for a number of days, but the rationale for the extended duration generates a deliverable. Standard meetings taking longer than one hour should be broken into multiple sessions of fifty minutes.
Physical Boundaries
Physical boundaries separate the meeting space from the rest of the outside world. The physical environment impacts the psychological environment. Most noteworthy, studies show that a formal atmosphere inhibits the mood of both groups and individuals. The best meeting results occur when people feel comfortable. When informality balances with focus on the work task. Psychologists refer to this as a state of “relaxed concentration”. The meeting leader’s responsibility ensures that proper physical boundaries are established and maintained.
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- How to Design Culture: 16 Patterns to Build Adaptive Learning Organizations (emergentbydesign.com)
- A Meeting Participants’ Credo (mgrush.com/blog)
Terrence Metz, MBA, CSM, CSPF, PSP01, HTTO1, is the Managing Director of MG RUSH Facilitation Leadership, Training, and Meeting Design, an acknowledged leader in structured facilitation training, and author of “Meetings That Get Results – A Facilitator’s Guide to Building Better Meetings.” His FAST Facilitation Best Practices blog features nearly 300 articles on facilitation skills and tools aimed at helping others lead meetings that produce clear and actionable results. His clients include Agilists, Scrum teams, program and project managers, senior officers, and the business analyst community among numerous private and public companies and global corporations. As an undergraduate of Northwestern University (Evanston, IL) and an MBA graduate from NWU’s Kellogg School of Management, his professional experience has focused on process improvement and product development. He continually aspires to make it easier for others to succeed.
