Add Structure to Your Meetings
Meetings are a tricky topic to teach. My sense is that the advice I give sounds so simple and straightforward that it is underestimated in its power to make a huge difference. I’ll keep trying, though!
Today I want to focus on structure in meetings, starting with an example. I facilitated a gathering last night of graduates from a coach training program I attended this year. At the end of the meeting several people acknowledged my facilitation and their appreciation for what they called “guard rails” and “bumpers” that supported our time together.
People appreciate structure in meetings, and a facilitator gives that structure its integrity. Some balk at the idea of structure, afraid that it might stifle their freedom and creativity. I argue just the opposite. Structure and freedom paradoxically go hand-in-hand. The structure allows participants to relax and focus because they know and understand the bounds placed on the conversation. They trust they’ll get their turn to speak. They trust they’ll be heard. They trust their time won’t be wasted.
An example of the some of the structures in last night’s meeting were:
We used a Google document to keep us together on the “same page.” We could see where we were in the agenda at any given point.
The agenda itself had a structure: a list of what would happen and roughly when.
There were processes laid out that were designed to avoid rabbit holes and tangents. For example, since we are all colleagues, we have a section called “shameless plugs” in order to share services and events we are promoting. In a friendly way, I made it clear that the process for doing these plugs would not involve back-and-forth conversation; that could happen offline.
Structure in meetings - structure that a facilitator protects - can create a sense of psychological safety because participants are clear on how to constructively participate, and there’s a common understanding of what is needed to achieve the meeting’s goals.
If you think your meetings might benefit from a bit more structure, start simple with these three things.
A shared document that can be edited together in real-time, even if it’s just blank for note-taking (I’m not a big fan of screen-sharing for this because it’s hard for other participants to read).
Have an agenda that includes time estimates. (Some leave these out to allow for flexibility and fear of not adhering. Work expands to fill the time you give it, as Tim Ferris taught me in The Four Hour Workweek. And you’re much more likely to be able to adhere if everyone knows what those time estimates are!)
Lastly, think through and write down some simple steps for how the group will address each agenda item.
If you’ve read this and you’re sort of shrugging like, yeah, that makes sense and would probably help, go try it! It’s the practice, not the theory, here, that will get you somewhere.
There’s much more I can say on the topic of meetings, but we’ll leave it for another day.
