During these challenging economic times many companies are cancelling meetings because of the cost associated with these meetings or the ‘optics’ of meeting. I would like to argue that having meetings is more important than ever. Snowden and Kirkpatrick wrote in Harvard Business Review November 2007 that “conditions of complexity call for high levels of human interaction in organizations – and meetings play a key role in helping leaders accomplish goals. Certainly these are some of the most complex times in history. Meetings are one for the most important tools leaders have for tapping into their intellectual capital and for building the social capital so necessary to weathering tough times”.
The question is not really weather to have meetings or not, but rather how to make sure your meetings have value. We recently facilitated a 4 day team meeting with a focus on team development and strategic planning. With a carefully crafted design and expert facilitation you can accomplish so much at a meeting that the time is invaluable. One participant commented “While I have a moment of your time, I just wanted to re-thank you for the retreat. The positive changes in our team are so evident, it kind of boggles the mind actually. You will be happy to know, we are using many of the tools you gave us and trying to use the others”. This meeting was of huge value to this company and their CEO said the only thing he regretted is that he did not dedicate more time to the meeting.
When you are planning your next meeting, consider the following:
1. What are the objectives and expected outcomes
2. Who needs to attend
3. How much time is required
4. Place great attention to the session design to make sure it is engaging and educational
5. Make sure the meeting has a component of networking, socializing and team building
6. This could also be a great time to do some ‘tune-up’ training
7. Make sure everyone is walking away with new information and an action plan
8. Think about how you will measure the impact of this meeting
If you consider these things, you may find your next meeting does have greater value and you will get less resistance for meetings in the future.
Tags: communication, complex times, kirkpatrick, leadership, meeting facilitation, meeting value, Motivation, positive meetings, Scott Kress Frontier Team Building Summit Training Team Development Leadership Everest, success, team building, team development