Successful meeting planners answer five questions before the meeting:

Meeting Objectives: Each meeting needs to use the desired outcomes to shape the meeting process or even to determine if a meeting is the best way to achieve the desired results.
Meeting Agenda: Determine the major meeting segments and optimal meeting process to achieve the objectives
Decision Making Process: Establish the optimal decision-making process for each segment of the agenda
Roles & Responsibilities: Determine who should be invited to the meeting and what role they should play.
Sending the Invitation. Meeting participants need to know why they are being invited and what their role should be.

Setting Meeting Objectives

Beginning with the End in Mind

The first step in leading an effective meeting is determining the desired outcomes. The meeting chair needs to determine what is wanted from the invited participants.

SOLVE: I want the participants to combine forces and solve a problem with me.
ALIGN: I want the participants buy-in to a policy, procedure, value, or organizational mandate.
INFORM: I want to convey key information to participants.
PRACTICE: I want the participants to develop, practice, and receive feedback from each other during a team meeting.

Do We Have a Good Reason to Meet

The meeting chair needs to define: Why am I calling this meeting and what do I want from the people I invite? This should occur prior to the meeting!

The meeting chair also needs to determine if a face-to-face meeting is the best forum. The best forum for a simple information exchange is most likely e-mail or a memo.

The following are reasons to call a meeting:

To benefit from a diversity of knowledge, ideas and opinions
To gain clarity on an issue
To learn about others’ experiences and opinions
To come to a group decision
To share complex information or data
To inspire a group

Developing The Agenda

The meeting chair can also choose to include an agenda for the meeting along with the meeting invitation.

A process-oriented agenda includes:

The estimated time for each topic
The desired outcome/goal for each topic (input, decision, feedback, evaluation, information)
The type of process that will be used to reach each outcome (brainstorming, evaluation, open discussion, categorizing)

Defining Decision Making Responsibilities

One of the most common reasons teams get frustrated and meetings fail is the lack of an effective decision-making processes.

Too many times, people are asked for input without any response or action on what was offered. Many people fear they will be shot down or ignored.

Here is a way to help you think through a decision that has to be made.

(Note: The words “I” and “You” can be one or many people. For example this c ould be applied to a project manager and one or more people on her team. )

Usually, the person with the greater risk, those who are most accountable for the decision results (meeting chairs), have the most influence in the decision.

The most important principle here is that whichever decision making level you select, COMMUNICATE IT!

Decision Making Processes

There are four ways a final decision can be reached. The process used to make a decision needs to be defined before the group is engaged in the decision-making process.

Defining Roles & Responsibilities

The Meeting Chair:

The person who called the meeting usually determines the content and often determines any decision-making process. They are called the Meeting-Owner or Chair. This person can be a supervisor, team leader, project manager, or any employee with a specific need to be resolved.

The Facilitator:

To ensure that a problem-solving meeting’s climate remains positive and focused on the purpose, many chairs will bring in an objective, third party to watch over and “facilitate” the process. The Facilitator is usually not a stakeholder in the meeting, and therefore can remain neutral throughout. The facilitator’s role is to safeguard ideas and implement the plan. They own the meeting process.

The Scribe:

To preserve the ideas, assessments, decisions, and action items generated by the group a Scribe may take responsibility f or creating a “group memory” on flip charts. Like the facilitator, the scribe should be neutral. The scribe should try to capture people’s exact words in large, readable lettering. The charts can then be taped to the walls of the room to allow the group to review what they have done.

The Timekeeper:

To ensure that the group sticks to its time commitments, scribes often play the dual role of Timekeeper. In this role, they would be responsible for watching the clock and providing time warnings through each phase of the meeting.

Participants:

The rest of the participants in a meeting act as Resources. Their may include generating ideas, evaluating ideas, asking questions, listening to a presentation, making decisions.