Meeting facilitation skills are important in the business environment. People who are good at facilitating or running meetings lead very effective meetings. In well-facilitated meetings there is little wasted time and highly productive results. Therefore, it is critical to business success to understand what it takes to have a great meeting. To help build meeting success, here are four things a meeting facilitator or leader should do for a truly effective meeting.

1. Understand your role as a meeting facilitator. As the meeting facilitator, you are responsible for ensuring that an agenda is set and that meeting members agree to the meeting processes. As the meeting progresses, you ensure that the agenda and processes are adhered to, while suggesting an additional problem-solving or brainstorming process where necessary to unblock the group from achieving the purpose of the meeting. meeting.

2. Make sure you have a meeting agenda prepared in advance. Providing a proposed agenda (with deadlines for each topic) at the beginning of the meeting and getting the group’s agreement prevents the meeting from drifting. The agreed agenda can be used to refocus the group and avoid losing control during the meeting. Although it may sometimes be better to change an agenda to cover urgent issues, this should be done at the beginning of the meeting with the agreement of all present before the meeting continues.

3. Always keep a record of your meeting and assign a recorder. youThe meeting record should contain all brainstorming, decision-making, and other discussions in a way that is visible to all members while the meeting is taking place. Having a visible record using whiteboards or flipcharts often prevents members from repeating themselves to ensure they are heard. It also helps get members back on track if someone starts to stray from the agreed topic. To help ensure that records are captured, someone else can be assigned the role of recorder. A registrar is not only responsible for compiling meeting minutes, but also for posting and distributing them in a timely manner to all meeting members so they can take appropriate action.

4. Capture and assign action items for meeting follow-up. During the meeting, have a visible place where all actions are listed as they arise. That way, if the facilitator or recorder doesn’t take action during the discussion, one of the meeting members will probably recommend adding it to the list. At the end of the meeting, make sure someone volunteers to complete an action or is assigned the action until all the actions have been turned in. Also, be sure to assign a deadline as to when actions must be performed. Having a deadline and posting actions in minutes encourages people to get things done to keep projects moving and not let the group down.

People who are good at facilitating or leading meetings not only run effective meetings, but also help the organization by wasting little time and increasing group productivity. If a meeting facilitator or leader wants an effective meeting, then the four things listed above should be helpful in achieving better meetings. This list of things will increase the chances of a successful meeting by helping the facilitator or leader improve their knowledge of the business of holding meetings.

NOTES: The four items listed in this article are summarized from the book “RA!RA! A Meeting Wizard’s Approach” by Shirley Fine Lee, copyright 2007. Also see “Ten Mistakes Meeting Leaders Make” and some of the consequences of making those mistakes. .