Plan, manage and conduct meetings

Equal opportunity to contribute

Fair and equitable opportunity to contribute

• Refer to the ground rules, which should include guidelines on listening and allowing others to speak
• Allocate times for each person to contribute
• Provide small group opportunities that afford more people the chance to speak
• If a person is constantly interrupting, whether on purpose or unintentionally, handle the situation in private.

Maintain focus in meetings

In essence a meeting is a ‘controlled conversation with a purpose’.

Many meetings can go off-course due to:

• Topics taking longer to discuss
• Differences of opinion being discussed and debated for longer than expected
• New topics introduced.

Maintain focus in meetings

Common deviations away from meeting focus

Social conversations:

• Topics that are of a social nature or not relevant to the meeting should be stopped in an appropriate manner
• Quite often they can be discussed before a meeting commences or after a meeting concludes.

Maintain focus in meetings

Common deviations away from meeting focus

Reaching a decision:

A common decision making strategy could include:

• Define the problem or situation
• Define criteria to submit information or input
• Generate alternatives
• Evaluate alternatives
• Vote or seek agreement on a course of action
• Construct a strategy or implementation plan
• Allocate or assign tasks to relevant participants.

Maintain focus in meetings

Common deviations away from meeting focus

Presentations taking too long

It is not uncommon that a person making a presentation takes a lot longer than anticipated.

Solutions include:

• A formal or friendly reminder
• Use of ‘time remaining’ cards
• Clock or timer depicting end of scheduled time.