Three Principles For Holding A Good Meeting

As a way of communication, meetings are very important.

It provides leaders with a mechanism to spread vision, make strategic plans, and develop threats and opportunities to respond to plans.

The meeting also helps to brainstorm, and to improve the participation of employees.

However, there are too many meetings to waste time compared to those that are valuable and productive.

Apart from discussing issues to be addressed, the conference can also strengthen formal or informal reporting structures, providing clues about organizational values and power pmission.

There is no free meeting for cost.

Gathering a CEO and several vice presidents for a couple of hours may cost tens of thousands of dollars.

Were employees overthrown by too many meetings?

In the eyes of employees, how wasteful they spend their time at meetings?

How can enterprises make better use of meeting time?

It is estimated that the senior managers attend meetings about 23 hours a week.

Generally speaking, employees of large organizations attend more meetings than small organizations.

Studies show that from 1960s to 80s, the number of meetings attended by ordinary managers has doubled.

A survey of 1900 business leaders showed that 72% of people thought that the time spent on meetings increased over the past 5 years, while 49% expected to spend more time in meetings in the future.

The number of meetings is not decreasing but increasing.

Today's organizations have become more flat and less hierarchical than ever before.

Their team adopts self-management, and enterprises tend to fully empower the employees below to pursue improvement.

Based on the assumption that employees possess important information and other resources needed by organizations, interaction between employees can stimulate important ideas and innovative ideas. Meetings are usually regarded as a medium of communication.

However, researchers found that there was no direct relationship between people attending meetings (the number and time of attending meetings) and job satisfaction.

In addition, they found that the relationship between the needs of attending meetings and job satisfaction was determined by personal "upward mobility".

People who have a strong desire to achieve their goals will decrease their job satisfaction with the increase of the number of participants, and those who do not have a strong sense of purpose are eager to attend more meetings.

Three different studies have shown that the most influential factor on job satisfaction is the feeling of people attending the meeting.

If the meeting time is prolonged, the negative feeling will intensify.

If an employee takes part in a messy meeting, he will feel depressed, will be dissatisfied with his work and will even want to leave.

Some of the data we collected are consistent with the above situation, that is, more than half of the respondents said they would openly complain about the meeting.

When asked about the effect of the latest meeting, there were more positive answers, 36% thought it was very good and very good, 33% thought it was good, 16% thought it was bad or bad, and 16% thought it was bad or bad.

More than half of the staff who made positive evaluations of the last meeting thought they saw opportunities for improvement from the meeting.

In fact, it can be opened better.

To this end, enterprises should pay attention to three points: improving staff and managers' meeting skills; setting standards; adopting the best and innovative way to convene special meetings.

Although most employees think they have a high level of meeting skills, this is not the case.

If employees simply learn some basic skills of meetings, such as how to prepare the agenda, how to encourage participation, and how to coordinate cultural differences and conflict resolution, many enterprises will see significant improvements in the meeting.

First of all, enterprises should regularly investigate employees' evaluation of meetings and should make them part of the annual employee survey procedure.

In addition, it is an effective way to diagnose conference problems and improve the agenda of meetings.

In addition to giving feedback to supervisors, the organization also provides a comprehensive assessment of the skills of employees' meetings.

The first principle of conference management is to know when a method is applicable and when other methods are applicable or better.

Instead of letting individuals choose, it is better to set some general guidelines by the organization.

For example, when an unsolved problem hinders the advancement of a project involving multiple departments, you can convene a meeting.

Or, only when the agenda of the conference is urgent and the participation of all staff is required.

Once the organizers have to hold a meeting, they must decide who needs to actually attend the meeting, who do not need it, and how to let the interested parties who have not attended the meeting know the contents of the meeting.

Companies should give their employees freedom and allow them not to participate in meetings other than or beyond their professional knowledge.

We are in favour of this double standard that members of the core group and peripheral personnel can participate in meetings in different ways.

A core group member refers to a person who plays a direct role in pushing forward the issues to be discussed at the meeting.

Peripheral personnel can provide important professional knowledge and advice, but their participation is not necessary for every decision.

Instead of letting them attend each meeting, it is better to involve them when they need their advice.

Only by communicating with them the importance of the two roles and the reasons for division can they avoid the bad feelings that the two sides have participated in each meeting.

In order to have a good meeting, organizers should know which methods are applicable and which are not applicable, and should adopt the best method.

Here are some basic principles to bear in mind:

Before the meeting, organizers should send out the agenda and relevant background information in advance.

If it is convenient, participants should be invited to supplement the agenda.

The agenda should give the approximate time for each topic.

To do this, one is to improve efficiency, the two is to ensure that each topic has sufficient time for discussion.

For example, before a solution conference is focused on solving a problem, we should first ensure that everyone has agreed to define the problem.

Similarly, before weighing a particular solution, the standard of the scheme must be discussed in advance.

In order to encourage participation, clarify the key points of meetings and achieve the desired results, the conference should be programmed.

If the group is to hold a continuous meeting, the basic rules should be worked out at the first meeting.

This helps to identify the roles and expectations of leaders and participants, as well as how to feedback constructive ideas when these people fail to give full play to their role responsibilities.

Conference organizers should boldly try to encourage participation and stimulate cremation of ideas.

For example, during meetings or giving people a few minutes of brainstorming, participants will be divided into groups.

For example, you can designate a group member to play some special roles (for example, to play a client or to participate in the meeting in future).

Similarly, meeting in a new environment can help stimulate innovation and break stereotypes.

To enhance the effectiveness of the conference, participants should regularly evaluate the meeting to find out which areas need improvement.

Even for this meeting, we can prepare for the next meeting.

In addition, we should check the progress and process of the meeting, as well as the basic rules and effect of the meeting.