Successful Meetings
Don't Just Happen
by Dr. Barbara Joyce Frank

Published as

"Facilitators: A meeting facilitator explains how her job
is crucial to the meeting process" in The Complete Event and
Meeting Planner, Fall/Winter 2000/2001.

The sales team is not performing well; communications between different departments is far from optimal;
a major change at the senior management level calls
for adjustments in mid-management-all good reasons
to call a meeting.

People are gathered and sequestered for a day.
Logistical arrangements for the meeting room, food
and audiovisual equipment are handled flawlessly by planners. Yet, instead of getting the results so
urgently needed, the meeting becomes a griping session
and people leave disgruntled. The meeting is perceived
by all to be a waste of time, money and effort. 

What went wrong and what can be done so that future meetings are productive events?

Meeting facilitators believe the answer lies in
strategically designing the meeting and facilitating the
process throughout the planning, implementation,
evaluation and follow-up stages. Facilitators are
professional organizational consultants who specialize
in meeting process and differ from planners who
concentrate on the logistics of a meeting.

The pre-meeting stage
In the pre-meeting stage, meeting facilitators work
with their client on the purpose and goals of the meeting. Meeting participants need to be very clear as to why
they are being assembled and what is expected of them
by the end of the meeting. If this is not the case, then attendees often use the opportunity to vent their
frustrations about work in general.

When the specific purpose and goals of the meeting
are unclear, valuable time will be spent at the meeting
trying to determine in a group exactly why the meeting
is being held. Needless to say, this does not reflect well
on the person who called the meeting.

Once the purpose and goals for the meeting are well articulated, then attention is directed to selection of the participants. The list of invitees needs to be based on the purpose and goals of the meeting.

For example, if the purpose of the meeting is to
get buy-in from all departments in a particular
division, then representatives of sufficient authority
from all departments of the division need to be at the meeting; if a project is being planned and will require
funding then the person holding the purse strings
needs to be present, etc.

Once the list of participants has been carefully
chosen, the meeting facilitator may need to talk to participants before the meeting to assure that they
are on board with respect to the purpose and goals
of this particular meeting. Participants will be
discouraged from bringing up matters not relevant
to this meeting. In this way, the meeting will start
on a clear positive note and the chances that the
meeting will be derailed are minimized.

The next critical aspect of the meeting is the agenda.
An appropriate agenda will be designed to achieve the
desired results by the end of the meeting. A mistake
made in many meetings is that too much time is spent
on "old business" leaving "new business" to the later
part of the day when participants are focused on
going home. Standard format used for meetings has
been for people to sit around the table with the person
in charge going through each agenda item. This tends
to be boring and a poor utilization of the creative
energies of the participants. 

A more dynamic agenda is one whereby much of the
work is done in small interactive groups. These
groups will be given specific topics to work on
related to the goals of the meeting. The small groups
will report their ideas back to the whole group and
then the larger group will work together to achieve the desired results. This methodology minimizes the
tendency for individuals to champion their own
ideas and builds instead a group dynamic and
hopefully a group buy-in at the end.

Often the client feels he/she should "run" the meeting. Although this certainly is possible, it is not necessarily desirable. The meeting facilitator as a neutral entity
can often more easily direct the process throughout
the meeting. In addition, the client is then free
to participate in one of the smaller groups and
become a part of the group process.

At the end of the meeting, the facilitator will move
towards closure and assure that commitments are
gained from the participants for future action.

Following the meeting, the meeting facilitator can
conduct an evaluation of the meeting if desired. Also the client may request that the facilitator check in with participants two to three weeks following the meeting to determine their progress on their commitments.

Employing a meeting facilitator will increase the likelihood of productive meetings.
Are their services worth the added expense? Meetings
are the way business is done and the success of business relies on effective meetings. In this fast-paced stressful working environment, highly paid professionals travel
great distances at considerable company expense
and expend valuable time in meetings. To hire a
professional skilled in the meeting process to ensure
that these human and financial resources are
effectively utilized and desired results are achieved
makes strategic and budgetary sense.