Meetings

Occasions where people come together to exchange information, make decisions and agree actions.

Meetings have a reputation for being boring but that is only because they aren't used as opportunities to develop people. Any meeting, big or small, routine or controversial, planned or unplanned, long or short, is literally packed with interesting things from which to learn.

Broadly, lessons learned are likely to fall into three categories:

• what is learned from the subject matter discussed at the meeting
• what is learned from the way the meeting was structured, ie the objectives, agenda and time-keeping aspects
• what is learned from the way the participants behaved during the meeting.

Oddly enough, the first category, the subject matter, is the least fruitful from a learning point of view. Of course, the whole idea of having a meeting is to decide something, plan something, agree something, gather people's views about something, or to inform people about something. There would be no point in having a meeting unless there was at least one 'something', ie a topic that was worth bringing people together for. It is likely, therefore, that everyone at the meeting will increase their knowledge and understanding of the topic or subject matter.

Fine. But the subject matter is but a fraction of what can be learned at any meeting if it is used as a learning opportunity. Consider the following possibilities to do with the structure and organisation of meetings

• how to set objectives for meetings which describe desired outcomes that are measurable
• the best process to use to get the objectives agreed and understood by all the participants
• the advantages of circulating an agenda before the meeting or whether it is best to agree an agenda at the start (or not to have an agenda at all)
• whether to start with 'information' agenda items and work up to the more demanding collective decision-making items and vice versa
• how to get meetings to start and, even more important, finish on time
• the optimum maximum length for a meeting so that it is productive and effective
• the advantages of focused single topic, as opposed to wide-ranging multi-topic, meetings
• the effect of the venue and physical surroundings on meetings (temperature, light, noise, the shape of the table).

Here are more potential lessons to do with the way people behave during meetings:

• the effect of different participation rates on the meeting, ie contrasts between people who talk often and at length and people who are quiet
• the style of the chairperson and when to be directive and when to be non-directive
• the quality of ideas generated by the meeting and how they are 'processed'
• the ratio of questions to statements
• how often people interrupt and how some people are interrupted whereas other people are not
• the ratio of supports and builds to disagreements and criticisms
• how often there is a summary and the effect summaries have on people's behaviour
• how decisions are reached and whether they are by consensus, majority or acquiescing.

There are a number of ways to boost learning from meetings. Firstly, you can rotate the chair so that different people get the opportunity to have a go and learn from the experience. Secondly, you can have a process review at the end of the normal agenda and share perceptions of what went well and what could have gone better. Thirdly, you can experiment with different aspects of the meeting by, for example, tackling things in an unusual order, changing the venue, making it a standing-room-only meeting, having visitors. Fourthly, you can get someone to be a dispassionate observer at the meeting and give them the right to intervene whenever they want to make a process observation (but ban them from making observations on the topic or task).

None of these ideas is mutually exclusive, so you could do all of them. Meetings need never be boring again.