Workplace meetings are often seen as a time-wasters because they are chaired by managers who don't know how to conduct them effectively, says business executive and author Karen Adamedes.
Adamedes, the general manager of sales at TrueLocal.com, has chaired hundreds of meetings during her career and says a chair must be well prepared, well organised and assertive.
When preparing for a meeting, the chair must first determine their objective, says Adamedes. "If you know exactly why you're having the meeting - as opposed to 'we always have one at 10 o'clock on Wednesday' - then you know exactly what outcomes you want from the meeting," she says.
A meeting with the objective of delivering information will require a different approach to a meeting where a decision must be made, she explains.
When the purpose of a meeting is to share information between managers and departments, the chair needs to ensure everyone has the chance to speak and, "if there are dots to be joined between what two different people are doing, then actually draw them out".
During the meeting, it is important for the chair to maintain control, says Adamedes. "If you are the chair, assert you are the chair," and don't let anybody else "run away with the agenda".
When a meeting gets off track, the chair needs to reassert control. If the discussion is worth following up, Adamedes suggests instructing the relevant parties to pursue it at another time before returning to the matter at hand.
Encouraging everyone to contribute is another important skill. "Anyone running a meeting needs to make sure that if somebody's at a meeting, it has to be for a purpose, so make sure they have a chance to speak," she says.
"The best meetings that I've been in are where someone will make sure that the person who has been quiet is specifically asked to have their say," says Adamedes. "Quite often they've got something very insightful to say but they just aren't prepared to put it on the table."
Adamedes' tips for leading an effective meeting are to:
Have an agenda;
Record (and later circulate) the minutes;
Keep meetings to time;
Ensure that everyone has the opportunity to contribute; and
Assign actions and follow them up.
Adamedes says the meeting's chair should set expectations which include:
How long the meeting will last;
The exact purpose or topic of the meeting;
The meeting's objective - what needs to be achieved;
How the meeting will operate; and
A run-through of the agenda.
Managing gender differences in meetings
In her new book, Hot tips for career chicks, Adamedes says that women often struggle to express themselves in meetings.
A common cause of friction - particularly between men and women - at meetings arises not from what is being said, but how it is expressed, she says.
Women have a natural tendency to get over-excited about a topic or idea and talk over the top of others without thinking. "For women it's kind of OK to do that because other women are used to communicating like that," Adamedes says. "But you can actually see on men's faces that they get really, really annoyed when it happens."
Women who put forward ideas in this way may not necessarily realise their approach has irritated others and instead interpret male annoyance as unfounded rejection of their ideas.
Adamedes says that while women do need to learn to be disciplined and wait for the chance to "break in", men need to resist a natural inclination to be insulted and annoyed by well-meaning offenders.
One way of addressing the issue is to ensure the chair intervenes quickly, asking the person who interrupted to wait until the speaker has finished their point before giving them the floor. "If you have that happen to you three or four times, there's a fair chance you'll get the fact that maybe you should wait," says Adamedes.
Another way the chair can accommodate both genders is by facilitating introductions at the beginning of the meeting.
"Even from the beginning men are quite good at walking into a meeting, introducing themselves to anyone they don't know... making it clear why they're there; whereas women will hang back."
A good chair will ensure everybody present is aware of who each person is, why they are there, and where they sit in the hierarchy of the organisation so that no one starts the meeting "from behind the eight ball", she says.
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