Monday, September 2, 2013

How To Run A Meeting And Make Progress

How To Run A Meeting And Make Progress

By Dom Richards


Running meetings is an art form and unless you master the basics, it will only become more difficult throughout your career. Why call a meeting. A meeting is called because you want to sort something out. Why do you need to sort something out. Because you are unsure of something or need help with something or disagree with others about something etc etc.

Duration of the meeting depends on your agenda, depends on how well you know the people and the materials you have to discuss. Getting the right people in the room is of utmost importance, without the right mix of responsibility and input the meeting will be a failure.

Presentation slides are important for the meeting but ensure you have the facilities available. If anyone needs to bring something along ensure you give them plenty of notice for it to be a success. Create an action list / agenda items / accountability for the key issues to be discussed.

Most importantly, during the meeting remain calm even if things get heated. A clear mind will always prevail. Have a few slides prepared if they are necessary. Follow the agenda items as listed below for success. Agenda: Context - Talk about why you called the meeting, and the issues you have. Stakeholders - Talk about why you invited certain people and make them feel important and valued. Your position - Talk about some of your ideas for solution, this will lead to a discussion so be ready to answer plenty of questions. Action items - Detail the work that's still required to resolve the issues and agree on who is doing them and by when. Close out - Thank everybody and let them know you appreciate their time and efforts.

Management presentations can be nerve racking and preparation is the key to minimising the risk of embarrassment, failure or more work. With a positive spin, it is all about selling your great work and gaining support from those who can allow additional resources or steer the project towards where it needs to go. What does management generally want. To reward those doing a good job, remove risk from the project, allow changes ;to priorities and report on the successes up the management chain. What do you want from management. In general the project needs to be finished and you want support to continue on as you have done, in fact you are there in the first place on most occasions because you have done a good job and management want to share your success.

Trust of your peers and managers, this means we will needs to highlight areas for improvement and where we had difficulty. This puts a positive spin on something that isn't ideal, but think about if you don't talk about the negatives. Do you want to sell all the positives then be asked the hard questions at the end. Respect, respect is something that is hard to earn and easy to lose. It is all about integrity and proven capability. You know you are capable, the hard part is showing them. that's where the presentation comes in handy, show them your capability and talk about how you have influenced the outcome.

Tips and tricks for presentations

Start with the context, move to the key learning and goals, finish on the benefits to the business and success.

This is the standard model for leaving lasting positive impressions, don't finish you presentation on a negative

Go through the negative details early on so that you can discuss how they arose and what you did to rectify them , always prepare for the hard questions. Preparation can be done in a number of ways, brainstorming for causes and effects is a great way to show all the possibilities.

Pictures, management love pictures, the reason pictures or graphs are so great for presentations is that they provide a simple message and provide context.

In finishing, keep it simple (KISS principle)

Remember we are all human and we all make mistakes and we all have our strengths, show them yours.




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