FireFly Facilitation Answers a Blogger’s Meeting Effectiveness Question

Have a tough question or issue you’re dealing with? We love receiving comments from our readers and are happy to respond to specific questions!  Here is another question from a recent blog visitor…

I manage a team of 10 student staff members and we meet on a weekly basis. As a student myself, I understand that they have other things going on and are often disengaged during our meetings. After meetings, they come to me asking the same questions that I already went over. It's very frustrating. How do you recommend leaders engage team members in this type of situation and help them retain the important information?

My top 4 recommendations for situations like these are:

1) Keep a targeted agenda in front of everyone at all times. Be sure it shows time allotted for discussion of each item. If time runs out, quickly decide how to deal with it – e.g. postpone further discussion until the next meeting (perhaps with prep work in between); allow X amount of additional time now; pick up the discussion at the end of the meeting, time permitting.

2) Be clear on the expected deliverable for each agenda item. For example, is it for idea generation, evaluation, decision, or planning? Limit the number of items that are for information only. Use handouts for these items with clear bullet points of facts they need to know; everyone has a very limited attention span for these kinds of topics.

3) Restate the outcome of the discussion before moving on. This gives people a sense of accomplishment and clarity about what was decided. Best practice tip: Flip chart decisions and actions throughout the meeting. Capture – for all to see – who is to do what by when. It amazes me how much more seriously people take their accountabilities when you write it up for all to see!

4) Make time for a 5-minute wrap up at the end. Do a round robin, with everyone recapping what they are accountable for delivering. Good questions for the leader to ask to get people thinking about the impact of the meeting: “Who needs to know what we decided today? How are we going to communicate this to them?

These 4 simple steps will keep everyone on point and engaged!