John Cleese of ‘Fawlty Towers’ fame put it well, when he succinctly named one of his earliest training films ‘Meetings Bloody Meetings’!Too often meetings take on a life of their own, being time consuming, badly planned and occasionally fractious, thus prompting the question: ‘What the hell am I doing here?’.

Whether ‘in person’ or online, we all have to attend meetings. In an ideal world, these meetings should help to:

• Make decisions and introduce new policies/practices.
• Inform and involve people, whilst sharing problems and agreeing solutions.
• Enable discussion, get opinions and feedback and change knowledge, skills and attitudes.
• Persuade, inspire and motivate attendees.
• Resolve conflicts and improve team spirit.

The bottom line is that the success of an organisation can only be assured if meetings are held, go well and appropriately progress all relevant matters. However, badly run meetings do damage in many ways, including wasting time and money, diverting attention from more important tasks, slowing progress, lowering morale and increasing divisiveness, providing a platform for the talkative and disruptive, breeding office politics and creating chaos! Hence, it is very important that your meetings proceed properly and are productive in line with their stated purpose.

THE CHAIR/FACILITATOR’S ROLE

According to the late Taoiseach Garret Fitzgerald, one’s ‘style of chairmanship depends on the meeting and the issues’. This is correct. However, a meeting’s chair or facilitator can play a crucial role in ensuring an effective meeting by applying the following best practices:

• Come prepared (i.e. having read all documentation and taken all other action(s) necessary to help run the meeting, incl. providing refreshments and making minute taking arrangements).

• Be on time and start on time (unless agreed otherwise with the attendees who may prefer to wait for latecomers), whilst arriving fully relaxed/refreshed and alert to the proceedings.

• Start on the right note and introducing people (if appropriate), before leading into the agreed agenda.

• Control the discussion by listening actively, keeping it to the point and encouraging contributions where appropriate, whilst ensuring that everyone has their say. This may extend to confirming and sticking to the ground rules (N.B. regular meetings work better if everyone knows and agrees with the ground rules). Ground rules may include one speaker at a time,  listening to others, no ‘sidebar’ conversations or interruptions or personal attacks, putting a limit on speaking times (e.g. 40 seconds), treating every contribution in an appropriate or appreciative manner and phone bans.

• Ask questions to clarify and avoid misinterpretations, thus helping to ensure that suitable conclusions are reached.

• Watch the (agreed) time allocations per agenda item and (where required) remind others to do the same.

• Respond maturely and appropriately to upsets, outbursts and emotional reactions. When dealing with strongly held and opposing views, the advice of businessman Michael Smurfit is that you: ‘put it on the agenda for the next meeting and say ‘let’s all go away and think about this’ ’.

• Summarise clearly and succinctly on a regular basis and provide the final word.  Matters should be brought to a conclusion, such as confirming the action(s) agreed, allocating responsibility and setting the date for follow up. Liaison with the minute taker (i.e. the secretary) is an important component of this task.

In summary, a good chairperson or facilitator will elicit views in a way that prompts open and considered contributions – and do so with patience, goodwill, good humour and respect for all those present and for the objectives of the meeting. Of course, prompting the discussion is as important as controlling it.  That is, the chair/facilitator is responsible for ensuring that a meeting is well balanced and accommodates the various points of view, but at the same time progresses matters within the agreed timescale.

THE ‘AGENDA’

Every meeting needs a written agenda, that is circulated in advance.  A clear agenda helps to shape and control the meeting, give advance warning to attendees, specify the reason(s) for the meeting and should reflect reality by answering the following questions:

• Will all of the agenda be covered in the available time?

• Is there sufficient lead time to notify the attendees and to allow them to prepare properly?

• Will one major – perhaps contentious - item put the rest of the meeting in jeopardy?

• Are items matched to attendees (i.e. are the right people going to be there)?

• Is the style of meeting right (e.g. training/persuasion may take longer than information giving)?

So, to help satisfactorily address these questions, an agenda should:

• Facilitate preparation by specifying the (agenda) items and who is responsible for taking the lead in the discussion on each item, whilst picking up and linking points from previous meetings to ensure continuity.

• Give people an opportunity (as the agenda is being prepared) to contribute to it, subject to the established ground rules in respect of deadlines/timescales. Related thereto, the inclusion or otherwise of an ‘any other business’ (A.O.B.) agenda item should be agreed (along with the ground rules) at the outset of the group’s establishment.

• Make provisional time allocations per agenda item, to be agreed/approved at the outset of the meeting.

• Specify where and when the meeting will be held and (if it is likely to be of a long duration) the timing of breaks/refreshments.

• Order the agenda items for discussion. This should be logical, perhaps reflecting the difficulty the items pose and the time they will take and the participants’ convenience (e.g. to accommodate an early leaver). Framing the right running order also entails considerations such as whether an item is best dealt with early on to get it out of the way when people are fresh or its potential to take (too much) time. If it’s a contentious agenda item, parties may prefer to dispose of all other agenda items initially.

It may be too late when the meeting is under way to find that something about the way it has been set up prevents it from running effectively. So, check the agenda’s appearance and balance, and ensure that not too much is being attempted in the allotted time.  If time and patience runs out, justice will not be done to items at the bottom of the agenda. Hence, one should ensure that the agenda has time allocations per item and that both the agenda and the time allocations are agreed and reflect both the objectives of the meeting and the group.

THE ‘MINUTES’

Minutes are important records of meetings and they serve to keep all parties (incl. absentees) ‘in the loop’. Hence, writing up and keeping minutes is deemed ‘best practice’. They should document - in summary form - what happened in a meeting and provide a reminder going forward of decisions that were made or actions to be taken. That is, in three discrete columns they should specify the WHAT (i.e. the action agreed), the WHO (i.e. the person responsible for the action) and the WHEN (i.e. the timescale associated with the action). Of course, one shouldn’t have to write down everything everyone said in the minutes. Minutes should be concise and summarise the key points (i.e. agenda item(s), action(s) agreed, individual(s) responsible and due date(s)). Whilst a meeting’s minutes are normally shared with the appropriate parties, it may prove judicious to distribute them after the meeting’s chair has had an opportunity to review them.

Some useful ‘best practice’ minute taking methods include:

• Using the meeting agenda as the structure for the minutes.
• Preparing typed minutes that are appropriately stored.
• Specifying the date, time and venue for the meeting.
• Listing the attendees, as well as those who were invited but could not attend and those who submitted apologies.
• Recording any amendments or corrections that were made to previous meeting minutes.
• Listing documents handed out at the meeting and attaching copies thereof to the minutes.
• Describing - in summary form - all of the decisions that were made at the meeting and who is responsible for the follow-up. That is, identify and track action items that were discussed, including any due dates (i.e. the three columns: What, Who and When).
• Listing the items that were deferred for future meetings.
• If one has difficulty keeping up whilst taking minutes, get approval for the use of an audio recorder or (better still) get approval from the chair to interject (as required) to seek clarification, thus ensuring an accurate account of proceedings.
• Writing up the minutes as soon as possible after the meeting and not discarding one’s original notes until such time as the minutes are approved.

In summary, effective meetings require a good atmosphere with agreed ground rules, effective facilitation and minute taking, proper preparation and a preparedness to listen to others, have healthy disagreement and appropriate compromises, with follow up on the agreed actions. So, by using these ‘best practice’ tips in respect of how to chair/facilitate a meeting, prepare an agenda and write up the minutes, the base is solid for progressing matters at your next meeting. But if you’re still unsure as to whether the meetings are meeting expectations, don’t be afraid to assess their effectiveness via one or more of the numerous readily available online tools, courtesy of Mr./Ms. Google!

Legal Island Training Resources for Your Staff

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