Meeting Facilitation: Tips from Women Leaders
Three decades ago, author Jilly Cooper observed that “Meetings are like cocktail parties. You don’t want to go, but you’re cross not to be asked.” Today, at conference tables lined with laptops and glitzed with multimedia, those sentiments still prevail. The list of ills associated with meetings is long and legendary:
•Rote weekly meetings characterized by apathy and aggravation,
•Poorly planned meetings with no clear purpose,
•Meetings without agendas,
•Meetings that depart from their agendas, meander wildly, and never course correct,
•Meetings that are billed as one thing and turn out to be something quite different, destroying expectations
•Gripe sessions where everyone vents but nothing is accomplished, and (key to all the rest)
•Weak leadership and/or poor meeting facilitation
I recently attended what was supposed to be the kickoff session of an intense three-month project planning period. There was no agenda, no opportunity to prepare in advance, and no attempt to create continuity between the current meeting and an earlier goal-setting session. Rather than facilitate a group planning session, the leader turned the entire meeting over to a single member of the team—two hours later, only one person’s ideas had been presented and discussed. And without even a skeleton of a plan those ideas were floating around devoid of context. What was billed as a planning, decision-making meeting turned out to be an informational meeting characterized by mostly one-way communication and no planning!
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