7. Meeting
Meeting is a gathering of two or more people that has been convened for the purpose of achieving a common goal trough verbal interaction, such as sharing information or reaching agreement.
There are some types of meeting: chat or informal discussion, brainstorming, project meeting, department meeting, meeting with suppliers, with customers, broad meeting, annual meeting and extraordinary general meeting.
There are 3 kinds of meetings: discussion, decision-making and giving information. Marion Haynes maintains that decision-making meetings need to follow a specific structure. The rational decision process includes the following steps: to analyses the situation, to define the problem, to set an objective, to state imperatives and desirables, to generate alternatives, to establish evaluation criteria, to evaluate alternatives and to choose among alternatives.
There are four essential elements in decision-making: awareness, understanding, empathy and perception. Knowing the goal gives everyone head start on participating effectively. It should be cautious of meetings that are held just “to talk about something”, because this type of meeting seldom accomplishes anything.
The chairperson is the main participant of the meeting. He or she has to be a good organizer. What they do before the meeting is as important as the meeting itself. They should make sure the agenda is complete by asking those involved what should be on it and then circulating it to everyone concerned. The agenda for an effective meeting will provide a complete description of how the meeting will proceed.
They also should check the venue, making sure the room will be free, without interruptions, until the end of the meeting. In order to be prepared every participant should make sure that they know about any research, readings, or surveys required to participate.
The chairperson should be a good timekeeper. They should start the meeting on time, without waiting for the latecomers. They should appoint a minute-taker to take the minutes, making sure that opinions and action points are noted. They should make sure each point on the agenda is allocated the time it deserves and should keep the timetable. When the time allocated to one point is up the chair should make sure that discussion moves on to the next point, even if the issue has not been completely covered or resolved.
The agenda is usually headed with the date, time and location of the meeting, followed by a series of points outlining the order of the meeting. Points on a typical agenda may include: open meeting, support for absence, approve minutes of the previous meeting, a list of specific points to be discussed, arrange details of next meeting, tea or scones, and close meeting.
The chair should make sure that each participant has a chance to make their point, and should deal tactfully with disagreements, making sure that each side feels their point of view has been noted. It’s very important to make sure that everyone’s participation adds value to the meeting.
They should also try to avoid digressions, where people get off the point. Finally they should ensure the meeting finishes on time, or early.
After some meetings, it’s necessary for the minutes to be circulated, especially if there are action points that particular people are responsible for.
At the next meeting, the chair should ask for the minutes to be read out and see if all agree that it is an accurate record of what happened and see if there are any matters arising. And they should check what progress has been made on the action points from the previous meeting.
In the meeting participants discuss things. In the discussion some people may agree with chair. Others may disagree. They may have differences of opinion with the chair, but the important thing is to keep calm and remain courteous. It’s OK to disagree, but it’s not OK to be impolite and rude or to lose the temper.
An argument is when people disagree about something, perhaps becoming angry. Chair’s argument is also the set of ideas that they use to prove their point: to show what they are saying is true. Decision-making is not always an identifiable activity. Frequently the discussion can evolve into a consensus which can be recognized and verbalized by leader without the need to put things to the vote.
To close meeting the chair should indicate that the meeting is almost over, then check that no one has anything else to say, restate the purpose of the meeting, introduce a summary of the decisions taken, ask if everyone is happy with chair’s summary, indicate that colleague will organize a presentation next week, fix a date for a new meeting and finally thank people for coming. After the meeting, it is essential to follow up with action. A brief memorandum of conclusions should be written and distributed. Inform appropriate people who did not attend the meeting about essential decisions made.
Finally, each meeting should be viewed as a learning experience. Future meetings should be improved by solicing evaluations and deciding what action is required to conduct better meetings.