Call it chairing or facilitating, running a meeting is essentially a leadership task.  Your task is to provide vision, direction and support. 

The best meeting leaders wear their authority lightly.  Leading a meeting should be like being an air-traffic controller, managing the space within which the group does its work. 

This article looks at the skills of running an effective meeting:

• opening the meeting;
• managing agenda items;
• encouraging participation;
• using questions and statements;
• summarizing;
• dealing with difficult situations; and
• closing the meeting. 

Opening the meeting

A meeting that starts badly will take time to recover. Plan the first few minutes carefully. 

• Start on time.
• State the objective of the meeting or of the first agenda item.
• Make all suitable introductions.
• Announce procedures, timetable and the rules of engagement.

Adapt your leadership to the maturity of the group.  It may need time to establish itself; it may be so well established that it needs something new to jolt it out of complacency.

 
Managing agenda items

Lead by example.  Focus the group’s attention on the item’s objective.  Ask questions, listen, encourage, praise and – if necessary – discipline.

Take each item separately, and in order.  Don’t start a new agenda item before completing the previous one.

• Clarify the item’s purpose or objective.
• Start the conversation positively.
• Remind the group how much time is available.
• Invite the ‘task owner’ to take the lead.

Encouraging participation

Some people will need encouragement to participate.  Others will be hard to keep down!  Meetings can easily become ‘tennis matches’ between the more dominant participants; others can be left observing helplessly from the sidelines.

 Encourage true democracy in two ways:

• task behaviour: initiating discussion, building and suggesting;
• process behaviour: gate-keeping to allow quieter participants to contribute, time-keeping, re-directing and summarizing.

Distinguish ideas from people.  Praise useful ideas; if you must criticize, focus on the idea rather than the participant who contributed it. 

Separate different stages of the conversation.  Look for different points of view in the early stages; encourage more evaluative thinking in the search for a decision.

 
Questions and statements

You can use questions and statements, not merely to clarify task-based issues, but to control the conversation. 

Questions allow you to manage without exerting overt control.  They can help us find out or check our understanding; they can also help participants question their own thinking or develop their ideas. 

• Open questions (our famous ‘six Ws’ that are Kipling’s ‘six serving men’) are ideal for opening up a conversation.
• Closed questions (which can be answered only by ‘yes’ or ‘no’) are useful for bringing a conversation back on track, or closing down a line of thinking.

Statements are useful at the start of an agenda item, to define an objective and the conversation’s scope.  You can use statements to offer facts; but you can also use them to temper conflict or confusion with objective information; to gauge the group’s mood; and to provoke, energize or stimulate.

Summaries 

Time your summaries well; don’t intervene if the conversation is in productive full swing, but do be ready to summarize if the group begins to lose its way. 

Summarize within items to:

• control them;
• mark phases in the conversation before moving on;
• bring together different strands of a conversation; and to
• check on agreement or difference of opinion. 

Summarize at the end of agenda items to seal an agreement or clarify exactly what has been decided.  The minute-taker can often take on this task, to help them check the accuracy of their notes.

Summarize at the end of the meeting to help the group review its achievements and to point the way forward to the actions that people have agreed to take on.

Dealing with difficult situations

The meeting that goes according to plan probably never happens.  At some point you will have to deal with a difficult situation – or a difficult person. 

A basic rule is to treat people as group members, rather than troublesome individuals.  This can be easier said than done!

Conflict is probably the most difficult situation a Chair must manage.  It usually arises because people see things differently.  If you can surface that difference of perception, you may be able to manage conflict more easily.

Hostility can come from feeling powerless.  Anger may focus on the past, or on what ‘they’ have done.  You may need to refocus the group’s energy on their own situation, and on the future rather than the past. 

• Remind the group of the objective of the conversation.
• Resist being drawn into an emotional vortex.  (This can be hard: emotions are contagious.)
• Slow the conversation down.
• Don’t interrupt.
• Turn complaints into objectives.  Ask for ‘how to’ statements as ways of defining a problem.
• Focus on solutions rather than problems. 

At times you may also need to deal with hidden agendas, with power games, or even with attempts to hijack the meeting.  You may need all your authority as air-traffic controller to bring the meeting back to its objectives and to the group’s shared values.

Closing the meeting

The end of the meeting is probably more important than its opening.  The group is about to disperse.  You must remind people of the tasks they have agreed to carry out, and reinforce the sense of achievement that will motivate group members to return for the next meeting.

All agreed actions should have an ‘actioner’ and a deadline.  They should be stated in such a way that you (or the minute-taker) can check that the action has happened. 

Plan the meeting’s last few moments. 

• Summarize what has been achieved and what will be done.
• Check that the minute-taker is happy with their record of the meeting.
• Set the time and date of the next meeting, if necessary.
• Praise and thank the group for their hard work.

Many managers speak of the particular challenge of running meetings with the very people they manage.  Acting as ‘air-traffic controller’ can be tricky if the participants in your meeting are your direct reports.  But we can turn the question around: it’s in leading meetings that we are most visible to our team.  Leading a meeting is your most public opportunity to demonstrate your values as a manager and a leader. 

This content was provided by one of our users, alanbarker830