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DRINK & DRUGS NEWS :: Q&AYou ask the questions - you answer the questions. Please keep your answers coming, and feel free to email a new question. Thanks to this issue's respondents for their contributions. Question:Week after week I attend our regular team meetings - but frankly
they're shambolic! There's no structure and people come away muttering
that it's been a waste of time. The process demoralises me every
week. My manager is good in other ways - but can anyone suggest
a simple format for effective meetings that works? [Carrie,
by email] Your replies...Dear Carrie What we do at our team meetings is to rotate the chair so that a different person is at the head of the meeting. We also start with a warm up, ice-breaker type of thing. Then we also have a limited agenda, and agenda items have to be in two days before the meeting so as to avoid any other business at the end. We also have team meetings fortnightly - this we find really helps and has brought a bit of life back into our team meetings as they also used to be dull. John and Shaun, Lifeline, Kirklees
Dear Carrie Problems with meetings happen when there is a lack of clarity over the purpose of the meeting and who is leading it. If you want to have an effective meeting you need first to agree the purpose of the meeting as a team and write this down. If this proves difficult ask the question, what would happen if we did not have the meeting? Maybe there is a better way to do what is required. Establish who is chairing the meeting and agree that they are empowered to keep the meeting on track in line with the agreed purpose, agenda, and time constraints. Meetings are for four things: giving information, getting information, discussing something or deciding something. Have an agenda for each meeting which sets out agenda items, likely time required, who is leading on the agenda item and what is required from those attending the meeting - eg people attending receive information, provide information, discuss something or come to a decision. Things on the agenda should affect the majority of those attending the meeting - if not, deal with them in another forum. Stick strictly to a time limit, and if you finish the business early, celebrate and use the time to network with colleagues. Keep a record of key action points agreed at each meeting and hold people to account for delivery at the next meeting. Each take responsibility for ensuring that agreed actions are undertaken and that the meeting remains focused on the required task and is not hijacked. Always spend at least two minutes at the end of each meeting checking out that the meeting is operating effectively - things can quickly slip back to the bad old days. For a whole range of tips on making meetings more effective try www.effectivemeetings.com John Jolly
Dear Carrie, Don't give up on your meetings - they are essential for communication within a team. Properly run meetings save time, increase motivation, productivity, and solve problems. Having meetings allows creative thinking and gives an opportunity to discuss new ideas and allows everyone in the team a chance to give their opinion on new initiatives. Everybody has ownership of plans and strategy, which prevents people disassociating themselves with projects. The 'it wasn't my idea, nothing to do with me' attitude isn't an option if everything has been discussed by the group. Even in this day and age, good meetings provide a far more meaningful level of communication than telephone conversations and emails. Bad meetings (which is what you say happen within your team) have the opposite effect. People feel that their time has been wasted, that 'I could have been getting on with some real work' or that the meeting has not provided a proper forum for sharing of ideas and planning but has been dominated by one or two people who may be the loudest or the most pushy. You need to make sure your meetings have a proper structure to them - and that involves forward planning. They need a proper agenda that is circulated to everyone involved in advance, and you need a firm chair taking control of gathering input from all the attendees, getting agreement on outcomes and making sure that everyone agrees the responsibilities and action points they are taking away. Someone has to take full notes of the meeting, and these notes need to be circulated soon after, so no one is in any doubt of what has been agreed and every person present knows what is expected of them. The next meeting should have an agenda item where everyone reports back on the progress they have made with their various action points. All of this is fairly obvious stuff but by the sounds of it your problem is getting your manager to implement such a structure. You should voice your dissatisfaction with the way the meetings are running to your manager and suggest a more structured approach. But maybe rather than putting the onus solely on him or her, why not suggest that everyone takes it in turn to chair the meetings and take the minutes? That way everyone has equal responsibility for making them a success. Lee Hayes
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