How do you facilitate an efficient meeting? First of all, as a meeting facilitator, you need to determine your criteria for meeting efficiency. What would you like to achieve?
When it comes to project management, most of the time, you call a meeting in order to better understand the topic and to build a plan (or at least to plan the next steps).
Indeed, whether your meeting is a brainstorming session or a steering committee, whether it is a reoccurring session with a standard agenda or an urgent meeting to address an issue, the key objectives are to exchange information and to agree on the next steps (decisions, action items).
Leaving aside various theories that describe meeting attendee types based on their expectations, I would like to share my thoughts on the facilitation aspect.
At first glance, all you need to do in order to facilitate the meeting is to make people talk. Just open it up by throwing in a burning topic and let the experts talk. In many cases, that would work. But is it always the case?
You want your meeting to be constructive rather than destructive. Can people have conflicting opinions? – Certainly, they can, but it is your role to apply conflict resolution techniques in order to drive the meeting to a constructive outcome. Finding a compromise is good, but remember that the best technique is confronting. If there are 2 opposite opinions, let both sides be heard.
People must understand each other. Say you invite a project sponsor, a business analyst and a technical subject matter expert to your meeting. You must stay in control of the language to make sure that it is not too technical for the sponsor and not too financial for the technical SME.
Remember that each participant typically focuses on their area of expertise. They might, but don’t have to know the topic outside of their “box”. You may want to guide them by asking additional questions.
Essentially, in order to make your meeting efficient, you should make the right people share information that is crucial to achieving your meeting’s goals.
How can you do that?
Tip number one – Understand the topic. Of course, there are different levels of understanding the topic. Most of the time, as a project manager, you cannot compete with subject matter experts, however if you get a chance to talk to them upfront and to understand their perspectives, your chances to guide the discussion in the right direction will grow significantly.
Tip number two – Plan and visualize the meeting upfront. Think about how you can link the topics together and in what sequence in order to maximize the meeting efficiency.
Tip number three – Prepare questions. Typically, meetings are about answering questions. Know your questions. This will help you resolve situations when meeting participants are shy or non-enthusiastic about speaking up. You will ask them questions.
Tip number four – Book a meeting with the right people at the table and make sure that they will attend.
Tip number five – Setup ground rules (either formally, by announcing them, or silently, by letting people know when they “hijack” the meeting or deviate from the agenda).
Tip number six – Start talking first. By doing so, you can make sure that the conversation begins at the right point and you also choose who will speak next.
Tip number seven – Orchestrate the meeting. Be a “conductor” that leads the orchestra of meeting attendees through the symphony of the meeting. Watch for dependencies, risks, unfinished conversations and unspoken views, dominating stakeholders, wrong assumptions, missing opinions and absent participants.
Tip number eight – Be supportive. Sometimes people have valuable knowledge, but they have challenges with public speaking. Acknowledge their expertise. Make them feel comfortable.
Tip number nine –Take notes of the meeting, action items and decisions. Do not be shy to ask for clarification if you misunderstood someone’s point.
Tip number ten – Follow-up on action items. Your meeting can only lead to success if the decisions are followed and the action items are completed.
And one more thing: enjoy your meetings. Be enthusiastic and inspire others!