GMAP: How To Have Better Meetings Reference Guide

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GMAP How To Have Better MeetingsReference
Guide
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Table of Contents

• Why we need to have good meetings Page 3
• How to Have Better Meetings Pages 4-13
• Guidelines
• Define the Purpose Page 5
• Develop the Agenda Pages 6-7
• Create Ground Rules Page 8
• Remember Participant Guidelines Page 9
• Start and End on Time Page 10
• Plan Mtg. Facilities for Successful Outcome Page
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• Evaluate the Meeting Page 12
• Follow-up on Action Items Page 13
• How You Know When it is a Good Meeting Page 14
• Templates for Agendas Page 15-18
• References Page 19

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Why We Need to Have Good Meetings

• Use your time effectively
• Be more productive
• Meetings are a main tool for GMAP business
• Meetings are one of our main widgets
• We use meetings to achieve our strategic
  objectives
• Examples
• Governors GMAP Forums
• Measure Team Meetings
• DataView Trainings
• Briefings for agency executives and/or staff
• GMAP Staff Meetings
• DataView business requirement definitions
  development
• Cross-agency teams, such as preparing responses
  to multi-agency audits

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How to have better meetings

• The following are guidelines that will help you
  achieve a better meeting (see slides 5-13 for
  more details)
• 1. Define the purpose
• 2. Develop the agenda
• 3. Create the ground rules
• 4. Remember participant guidelines
• 5. Start and end on time
• 6. Plan meeting facilities for successful outcome
• 7. Evaluate the meeting
• 8. Follow-up on action items
• How do you know you had a good meeting?
• (See slide 14 for more details)
• Apply the guidelines to any internal meeting and
  any meeting we facilitate with external partners
• Apply the guidelines so they fit the purpose and
  objectives of the meeting and the needs of the
  participant

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1. Define the Purpose

• Identify the purpose of the meeting
• Educational?
• Strategic?
• Operational?
• Problem solving?
• Identify purpose of each agenda item
• Discussion?
• Decision?
• Brainstorming?
• Information sharing?
• Match agenda items with the meetings purpose

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2. Develop the Agenda

• Developing the agenda
• State the purpose of the meeting
• Determine who needs to be at the meeting
• Define the roles and confirm that people
  understand their role and are prepared.
• Leader or facilitator Keep the meeting on track,
  people on task, summarize decisions
• If you are staffing the leader make sure agenda
  is complete, and meet ahead of time to prep the
  leader
• Participant
• Presenters
• Optional Timekeeper, Separate facilitator,
  Presenters
• If you use a person to take notes or a tape
  recorder state why and what you will do with the
  information or recording.
• Have an agenda that has topics, purpose, desired
  outcomes, and follow-up assignments (See template
  examples)
• Clarify outcomes. What do you want?
• Use verbs to achieve clarity
• Complete, decide, debrief, finish, agree,
  coordinate, give feedback

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Develop the Agenda Cont

• Know your audience
• The key to success lies in getting your
  audiences attention.
• How do you do this?
• Put yourself in the audience members shoes and
  ask
• What does this have to do with me?
• Why do I need to know?
• What do you want me to do?
• What is the bottom line?
• What Makes a Good Presentation?
• Begin your presentation with the So What For
  any given agenda item, the speaker should be
  crystal clear on the So What.
• If you want engagement, you need to plan ahead
  develop questions or exercises for your audience,
  and pause points for yourself.
• Know what you want people to do or think after
  you are done presenting!

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3. Create the Ground Rules

• You may want to create your own ground rules
• Here are some examples that the majority of state
  agencies use as common values and ground rules
  for regular meetings.
• Listen Actively
• Participate
• No one-on-one sidebar conversations
• Turn off pagers and cell phones
• Start and end on time
• Be present
• Keep an open mind
• Have fun
• Each participant has responsibility for personal
  progress
• Be willing to ask questions
• Use the Parking Lot for ideas that are not up for
  discussion today (Someone should be assigned to
  follow-up)
• If the meeting is unusual (for example, would
  require additional facilitation), consider
  customized ground rules.

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4. Remember Participant Guidelines

• Come prepared
• Review the agenda
• Read any prep materials
• Come prepared to participate
• Listen and try to understand
• Ask questions Tell me more
• Explore minority opinions openly
• Have courage to speak up in a meeting and know
  when to be quiet
• Pause before responding
• Do not monopolize the conversation
• Hold yourself and others accountable for ground
  rules
• Stick to the purpose
• Have compassion for others (Hard on issues soft
  on person)
• Participants share responsibility with the
  meeting lead for a good meeting outcome.
• If you find yourself in a bad or boring
  meeting Ask yourself, what can I do to make it
  better?

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5. Start and End on Time

• Start a meeting on time
• Plan enough time for each agenda item
• Manage the time allotted for each agenda item
• Consider using a timekeeper
• Allow enough time to close the meeting on time
• Remember to review decisions and assignments
• If you are going to do an after action review or
  Plus/Delta, leave time
• Respect the participants schedules

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6. Plan meeting facilities for successful outcome

• Arrive early for set up needs
• Assure appropriate lighting and sound systems
• Plan for technical needs and set up/test ahead of
  time
• Assure the room is really large enough for the
  number of attendees.
• Remember table set up
• Small group exercises (room for several tables or
  chairs)
• Class room training (room for writing and
  participants able to see the instructor)
• Discussion (round or rectangular table set up)
• Can all the participants see the presenter?
• Consider where you sit or stand as a presenter
  (setting the tone)
• Use visual aids such as video, flip charts,
  overhead slides
• Use three systems of communication Visual
  (sight), auditory (sound), and Kinesthetic (feel)
• For more interaction eliminate large tables or
  horseshoe arrangements
• For half day or whole day meetings check out the
  space ahead of time and remember
• Windows
• Enough room to move around
• Remember food/refreshments
• Have enough breaks included in the agenda
• Parking for participants

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7. Evaluate the meeting

• There are different ways to evaluate the meeting
• On a scale of 1-5 How did the meeting go for
  you? (1low/5high)
• Plus/Delta One thing that worked/liked about the
  meeting one thing that you would change or
  improve about the meeting
• Eric Allenbaughs 3 Questions
• Overall Assessment On a scale of 0-10, how did
  this meeting go for you?
• Stretches What could we have done differently to
  have made this meeting a 10?
• Strengths What went particularly well?
• If you gather feedback, make sure you use it,
  and tell people you are using it.

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8. Follow-up on Action Items

• Before the meeting ends, summarize any decisions
  and/or assignments Who will do what by when?
• Define how you will follow-up (another meeting,
  email, etc.)

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How you know when it is a good meeting

• Did people participate?
• Did you follow the agenda for the meeting?
• Did it start and end on time?
• Was the purpose achieved?
• Were follow-up/action items addressed?
• Were different learning styles accommodated
  (visual vs. audio, handouts)?
• Were the participants clear on their purpose,
  objectives, expectations, role, and assignments?
• Did participants provide positive comments
  during/end of the meeting? Ex This was a great
  meeting.
• Bonus Participants were engaged and motivated.

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Templates for Agendas

• All meetings should have an agenda
• Agendas should have a consistent look and feel
• We developed the following suggested templates
  for more formal meetings
• GMAP staff meeting template (see handout)
• Decision meeting template (see handout)
• Example Leads Team Meeting
• For decision meeting agendas, which include
  desired outcomes and action items. This template
  may be used for internal and external meetings.
• Informal template More bulleted list of topics
  (see handout)
• Example Communications meeting

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GMAP Staff Agenda Template
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Decision Agenda Template
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Informal Agenda Template
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References

• Effective Meetings The 10 Success Strategies,
  Eric Allenbaugh, Ph.D., 2007. www.allenbaugh.com
• Facilitation At A Glance! A Pocket Guide of Tools
  and Techniques for Effective Meeting
  Facilitation, Ingrid Bens, M.Ed., 1999.
• Death by Meeting A Leadership Fable...About
  Solving the Most Painful Problem in Business,
  Patrick Lencioni, 2004.
• Thank you to various state agencies that shared
  resources to make this possible.