Conducting meetings

If you are working on your final project as part of a team, then there will come a time when you will need to arrange meetings to discuss how the work is going, and how to move things forward.

For whatever reasons; interruptions, delays, chatting etc, meetings can take much longer than necessary becoming time-wasting exercise rather than useful communication tools. So with that in mind, here at the IET we have come up with some useful advice to help you make the most out of meetings and show you the best ways to go about conducting them.

Know where you are going

What do you want to accomplish between the beginning and the end of the meeting? What is the purpose? You should always have a clear, specific objective whenever you participate in a meeting. Come up with a plan of action, brainstorm a long-standing problem, educate, inform etc. Whatever it is you want and need to accomplish, make sure you and everyone at the meeting is clear on why you are getting together. Meetings without a clear purpose are meetings that become a waste of precious time, and when working on something like a final project, every minute counts!

Have a set agenda

The cause of failure in almost every endeavour comes from a lack of thoughtful planning, and meetings are no different. Consider the issues at hand and put together a simple outline before everyone arrives, making sure you stick to it. List all the points you need to discuss and the amount of time you will be spending discussing each issue.

You have to keep focused to these points otherwise the meeting can go off on a tangent and you could be discussing the number one single in the charts this week rather than more pressing issue such as your final project. With that in mind, meetings are always more effective when a leader controls the direction of the meeting and keeps everyone focused on the agenda. Even the best-intentioned participants can sometimes start discussing topics irrelevant to the issue at hand, and an effective meeting leader will politely stop such digressions quickly.

Schedule intelligently

The best times for meetings are at 11am and 4pm. People are more likely to focus on the subject at hand before lunch and around quitting time. However, try to avoid scheduling meetings right after lunch. Most people experience an energy dip right after a meal, and the larger the meal the less their ability to pay attention and participate.

Also, the best time to schedule a future meeting is at the end of one. Rather than making phone calls and sending letters announcing an upcoming meeting, set a time and a place to meet again whilst everyone is still together in the same room. This will be a time saving exercise in its own right!

Be prompt!

A successful meeting is all about time management. If a meeting is scheduled to begin at 11am, start at 11am sharp and not at 11.06 or 11.15. There are those of us who have a bad habit of arriving late, and students are often stigmatised with that label, but to make those who arrive on time wait for those who do not is both unfair and inconsiderate – they have work they need to be getting on with, just as you do!

When people know that your meetings start promptly, whether they are there or not, they will arrive on time more often. So be punctual, and begin every meeting on time, every time.

Meetings should not only begin at a precise time, but end on time too. As well as having an agenda you stick to, give yourselves a deadline by which the meeting must end. Time limits create a sense of urgency, and all of you will usually react by concentrating on the issues at hand, avoiding the idle chatter that can come about easily in these situations. Deadlines really encourage you all to be more efficient and effective, especially as the end of the meeting approaches.

Lengthy meetings tend to be de-motivating, so when considering what time to have your meeting end, consider a maximum of two hours as a good guide. Amount of time to be spent on each item of the agenda will then be able to be determined by the amount of time available for the whole meeting. Work out a rough plan of how much time is available for each item, and put this on the agenda itself to act as a guide.

If time is really an issue and you want to have a very brief meeting that will last no more than 10 minutes, have everyone stand during the meeting. You’ll find that there is a correlation between comfort and the length of conversations, and standing up is less comfortable than being seated, so you’ll find you’ll get through things much quicker without a chair!

Taking minutes

To be truthful something you needn’t really worry about is taking minutes. On occasion minutes may become necessary, but for the majority of the time, a simple ‘action’ reminder will be enough for each of you to go away knowing what to work on next.

It may be however, that you have been asked to keep notes from all stages of your work, including meetings as an entry in your logbook. So only prepare detailed written notes where necessary, but think very carefully before you entirely omit any sort of written note or reminder.

A written note after a meeting serves three specific purposes:

A prompt to action – A reminder to those who have taken on tasks at the meeting to do them and do them on time.
An ‘aide memoire’ at the next meeting – Forming a link between sessions of regular meetings, ensuring that all points are reported or progressed further. This is often represented on the agenda as ‘Matters Arising’.
A record – What has occurred and particularly what decisions have been made. This may be an essential permanent record (perhaps an addition to your project log book) or merely a convenience.

If notes are to be taken, they must be:

Accurate – This is obvious but important; any sloppiness of reporting or omissions can cause problems.
Objective –Whoever prepares them mist report what was said, not inject their particular point of view.
Succinct – Unless they summarise effectively they are likely to go unread.
Understandable – If they are to provide a useful spur to action and a correct record they must be clear.
Business-like – Making it clear what action is expected of whom by when.

One final piece of advice on taking minutes / notes. If you are the one responsible for compiling them, do so as soon as possible after the meeting has finished. This is simply because you are more likely to remember the details accurately at that stage, plus many people will not get down to the actions they may have been delegated until the notes arrive back with them, so early circulation can reduce any delays in implementation.

Worthwhile?

Is your next meeting really necessary? This is something you need to consider. Don’t have meetings during project time because it’s a routine, have them because you all need to be together to discuss some issues that have come up, or you need to see what stages you’ve all got to with the work etc. The meeting that appears essential on Monday might not seem so urgent by Wednesday. If the need for a meeting doesn’t seem as great as it did when you first planned it, do everyone a favour and cancel it. No-one really likes meetings, so they wont be angry at you for calling it off; more likely they’ll be happy because some extra time has now become available to concentrate on the more important aspects of the project, such as work…

With thanks to:

Hugh Griffith and Nina Thornhill. UCL

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From the IET