This post is by Thomas Kayser, who worked for Xerox in the area of organizational effectiveness for 30 years. He is the author of two books: “Building Team Power: How to Unleash the Collaborative Genius of Teams for Increased Engagement, Productivity, and Results” and “Mining Group Gold: How to Cash in on the Collaborative Brain Power of a Team for Innovation and Results.” E-mail Tom.
Meetings can be highly productive, if they are facilitated according to shared ground rules. The first ground rule is the responsibility of the person who called the meeting; the remaining ones are a shared responsibility among all attendees to ensure winning outcomes:
- Live by PDORA. For every session, create a document clearly stating: The meeting’s Purpose (Why we are here); Its Desired Outcomes (What we will achieve by the meeting’s close); Assigned Roles (Primary facilitator—the manager, secondary facilitators—everyone else in attendance, minute-taker, timekeeper, and scribe); and an Agenda with clock times and topic leaders).
- Show respect for the agenda but remain flexible in using it—modify times, priorities, and items as circumstances dictate.
- Call for a process check and ask, “What is the best use of our team’s time right now?” whenever we see time on an agenda item running out and we haven’t achieved the desired outcome linked to it.
- Use a “parking lot”—a separate flip chart page—for collecting information that is important to hold on to, but is not germane to the topic currently being processed.
- Stimulate contributions by actively seeking information and opinions from others in a sincere manner, using open ended questions. (“Why do you think it won’t work?)
- Test comprehension when unsure about what’s being said. (So what you’re saying is . . . Right?)
- “Open the gate” to bring in quiet or non-participating individuals.
- Positively recognize and support the constructive participation of others to maintain an open collaborative climate and keep people involved.
- Summarize and post all decisions and action items along the way for all to see.
- Avoid being a disruptive meeting participant, but when a person is disruptive (dominating, interrupting, starting side conversations, tuning out, rambling, overly argumentative/sarcastic), all attendees share responsibility for dealing with it.
- Welcome and foster constructive differences as the key to critical thinking, while always being alert to stop personal attacks.
- Be flexible in team thinking and the search for options because the team’s collective wisdom produces better ideas than solo or dictated thinking.
- Be more concerned with “what’s right” rather than “who’s right”.
- Review all decisions that were made, all action items, that were assigned, the “parking lot,” and any postponed agenda items at the end of every session.
- Conduct a meeting assessment at the close of every session. (Ask: “What did we do well today?” “What could we do better next time?”)
What are the ground rules for your meetings?
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Thanks Tom. I have quoted your statement in Mining Group Gold many times that unless you are very clear on the purpose of the meeting, you don't have a right to use people's time to meet. I have lived by that standard.
You imply keeping notes that everyone can see by discussing "posting" but I would like to underscore the value of keeping this visual record of the discussion points. Humans keep only a limited amount in our short term memory (plus or minus 7 on average) so especially when making decisions, we need to see it.
Kathleen, thanks for your comments on my Groundrules article. Recording and posting the group's memory so perspectives, ideas, proposals, viewpoints etc. can be referred back to, modified, built upon, challenged, fought over (in a constructive way), combined, expanded etc. as the team works its way through a critical decision is an absolute necessity for a productive session. I could not agree more. It is the glue for success!
Hi Tom,
So good to hear your words of wisdom! We worked together at Xerox a while back and I use your meeting effectiveness principles with whatever group or team I facilitate. I encourage managers and employees to ask once a year whether the meetings they participate in are necessary or whether some other communication method would be more effective. Works wonders!
JoAnne, thanks for reconnecting. Our time at Xerox was a true learning experience and the company provided a ready-made laboratory. Who would have thought 27 years ago (1984) that my assigned project to write an internal manual for managers to help them better facilitate their problem solving and quality improvement teams would add up to this–a third edition of a book that still keeps attacting many readers. Keep advocating and role-modeling and "mining the group gold."
Recognise the importance of nonverbal communication when gaging people's reaction to ideas , sduggestions or plans that have been brought up
Gary, right on. A facilitator with a good "third-eye" attuned to the body language as well as the words and tone spoken in a group session will be more productive than one oblivious to that aspect.
Thank you SmartBrief (@SBworkforce) for publishing such a meaty meeting format article. Thomas Kayser's 30 years of experience in organizational effectiveness at Xerox are clearly evident here, especially the two-way synergy and mutual policing inherent in his argument: It requires both moderator and participants to police on-point, on-agenda contributions, whilst "parking" random tangents (new ideas) for potential appropriate follow-up analysis later. The age-old wisdom of "what's right" still trumps "who's right," while documenting everything and testing comprehension prevents any ideas or opportunities from falling through the cracks (http://bit.ly/fspPgh).
Baron@RedBaronUSA.com / @redbaronUSA (twitter)
Baron, I appreciate you kind words on my little article on Groundrules. Secondary facilitation is a major key to success in my system. The world's greatest facilitator cannot be effective if the rest of the members act like a bunch of undiciplined wildcats and do not share responsibility for a succesful session.
In our experience running on-line idea workshops I think all that you say is equally valid for on-line meetings as well.
Some things are easier on-line whilst others require more careful handling like assessing non-verbal communication for example but the principles remain the same.
You are correct 1000 times over. In fact in my new book "Mining Group Gold", 3rd Edition, I added a whole chapter covering exactly what you said–namely how the same tools and principles for face-to-face meetings can be very productively applied to virtual sessions.
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