Cathcart Institute is the creator of http://Cathcart.com and of http://Academy.Cathcart.com
Leadership Communication- Timing & Time Frames | Conference Speaker
Woman: I wanted to remind you of the meeting we are supposed to have with the people on the Land View account. Sam’s running the show.
Man: This is the third time this month we are meeting with these people. I wonder if they have any idea how much Sam is wasting. He turns 50 minute meetings into all morning affairs. I have 8 phone calls to return. I wonder if there’s any way I can skip it.
Woman: I don’t know. The Land View people need your expertise. You really should be there.
Man: Hmm… You’re right. Instead it will be another late night at the office. Maybe if I start now I can make a dent on those calls. Thanks for the reminder.
Narrator (Jim Cathcart, Conference Speaker): There’s a story floating around at the conference room of one large corporation has no tables or chairs. Now think about that. The meetings are what might be called “stand up meetings”. There are short to the point and productive. Imagine you’d go into the room and be handed your materials, you look around there’s no place to sit. You would probably get out of there real quick, or you’d at least to have relaxed board meeting with everyone sitting on the floor. Now as you recall, one of our vital six meeting elements is time and as the meetings timing, it’s time frames and the time constraints that relate to it.
Let’s talk a little bit about how these factors should be considered when you’re planning a meeting. Here’s how to begin. First, think about the people who are going to be invited to the meeting. The people who ought to be invited, and them make a list of these people and prioritized them in terms of the most essential person down to the least essential person, then phone them from the top of the priority list on down. Ask for three dates and times when they’ll be available to meet. Ask them to tentatively reserve those spots on their calendars. And when you dates and times from the most essential people.
Choose one of the dates that is best for everyone involved and firm it up as quickly as possible. You see this type planning, not only insures that you’ll get essential people to your meeting, it also gives the participants time to prepare. I believe you should avoid surprise meetings because this blows a whole work day for anyone. The success any meeting depends in part of giving people a chance to prepare mentally for what you are going to talk about. Be sure to give enough advance notice, so people can really think it through. As for time frame, psychologist say that group productivity goes down after about an hour and a half, so 90 minutes would be a good time frame for a maximum of uninterrupted time.
Single session should be 90 minutes in length certainly no longer than 2 hours. With really one hour being the optimal time frame. Remember in school how all the classes were about an hour along and they have a little break in between for shifting classrooms, well often classes were 50 minutes with 10 minutes between classes. In those time frames were for a very good reason because as I said creative contribution and the degree of comprehension seems to go down after the first several minutes of the meeting. The more you can break them up several times during the day was stretch breaks, refreshers or a change of pace, the more active participation you’ll have.
Longer meeting should therefore be broken down in to at least two session with a ten or fifteen minutes break. When the meeting will be longer and has a break plan, put the break on the agenda so the participants can look forward to it, otherwise they’re expecting things to go for a great deal of time and they start worrying about when they get the next break. All day meetings should have a morning session made up of two solid one and a half hour work session with a break in between them. For the afternoon period, the work session should be even shorter let’s say an hour. With another break in between to guard against boredom.
You see the problem there is that physiologically after lunch, people tend to slow down. The food is being digested, they’ve been awake for quite a while now, so you need something to live and up an afternoon session and you need to make the afternoon portions shorter than the morning portions of the meeting. Then there are the time constrains to consider. What other factors affect this meeting? Is everyone got to have to go to another part of the building immediately after the meeting? If so, you need to allow them enough time to make that trip, and schedule your meetings so that it ends accordingly.
Is this meeting schedule in an awkward time because of it is a holidays or other schedules? Is there a work schedule or production schedule that’s got to be disrupted because of your meeting. These are things to look into and taken to account before you schedule your meeting. If you don’t, a disrupted or poorly attended meeting could very well result. Now let’s look at another one of those vital elements format. Here are the questions you should ask yourself when you’re planning the format of a meeting. What process should the meeting follow? What’s the agenda? What’s the seating arrangement for this meeting? How formal should this meeting be? A simple agenda for a meeting is best when you have single topic short meeting because you can give a lot of thoughtful discussion to an issue and get it over with, and doesn’t require great deal of other data. Longer meetings need a more elaborate agenda, and longer meetings tend to inhibit discussion because people want to ensure that the meeting will in fact end.
A lot people don’t participate during long meetings because they don’t want to drag the meeting out. So keep your meeting short and keep them focused. Placement of the participants in the meetings is an important consideration. Try to have just about only as many seats as you have people. Excess empty seats give the impression of poor planning. Select the seating that fits your meeting, for seminars use tables so that they can take notes. For a speech, use theatre seating. For meals, try round tables instead of long banquet tables.
For discussions, set it up conference style with everyone gathered around a rectangular or a circular table. The level of formality selected for a meeting is really kind of a judgement call. If it’s to be a formal business meeting and you want everything to be the legal letter of the law, then lay it out that way and conduct if formally using parliamentary procedure as the meeting’s guide. If on the other hand is a meeting where the objective is getting the other person’s point of view, be more casual, get them involved, sit down the sunshine talk about things there, go for a walk on the beach and talk about your ideas.
Do what works. A good plan means a good agenda, and a good agenda should concentrate on one or at least very few major points or issues. It all be well organized, but not so tightly organize that it doesn’t allow for discussion. And the agenda should be distributed to the participants in advance, usually two days or more before the meeting except for the more sophisticated, more intense meetings like a board meeting, in which case you may want to send your agenda out a week or more ahead of time, maybe even a month in advance. The agenda should indicate who’s going to be present.
Where the meeting is going to be held. What time the meeting’s going to start, and how long it will last? And also to allocate time frame as a good idea showing how much time is allocated for each of the items to be discussed. Show the time for the start of the meeting. When each item will be covered and the time for the breaks. For example, your agenda might read 9 A.M. welcome an introduction by Mr. so and so. “9-10, Topic A” then you put down the topic to be covered at that time. 10:30 morning break, 10:45 Topic B, Noon Lunch, 1 P.M. Topic C and so forth. And be sure you put an ending time on the last segment so everybody knows when the meetings is going to be over.
If you want a specific discussion, have specific questions on targeted topics prepared in advance. For instance, let’s say the topic on your agenda for the 9:15 session is “How to improve employee morale” underneath that you write down questions such as, “are higher wages the answer? When should we give raises and bonuses or working conditions a major factor here? After that you might type on the agenda group questions and discussions or something along those line, this tells the participants that they are expected to ask questions or give their own opinions, and gives them a guideline to frame those questions so that they can think about them in advance. Alright, so you’ve plan your meeting and your agenda has been distributed, now what about actually conducting the meeting. When you’re conducting a meeting, the steps you need to follow are very predictable. They are preparation, orientation of the group, meeting overview, gaining active participation from the group, keeping the topic flow on the agenda, ensuring follow-up and implementation, an enclosure. Let’s go through this one at a time. For preparation first of, get together in advance all the materials that you need. Be sure to arrive early enough that you’re there before anyone else so that you can set-up your equipment, and if you’re using those little name card that they call “Table tents” where you put them on the table in front of each person’s place, set those up in advance.
If you have hand outs, booklets or other materials either put them at each person’s seat or set them up at the table at the entrance where they can be passed out as the people enter. Set-up and check up your equipment, if you’re using audio visuals set-up your viewing screen, projector, video tape or whatever you’re using. Check out the lighting and the sound system, it’s a good idea to have a technician available during this time in case something isn’t working or needs adjustment. When you actually began the meeting, the next step is orientation. You need to orient the people to what is going to happen. Greet the people. Tell them how long the meeting will be. When the breaks are, and where the restrooms are. Mention refreshments if any and when they will be served. If the meeting is going to run longer than 90 minutes, it’s a good idea to have some pitchers of water of coffee available, or even soft drinks and snacks. Introduce yourself and your position if the participants don’t know you well. Introduce anyone else who will be speaking if they are new to the group also, and if you have a lot of speakers, instead of introducing all of them up upfront it might be better to just let their name badges performs that task informally. Since introducing everyone upfront might take considerable time away from your meeting, you could mention to the group the necessities stay on agenda, get immediately into it and then introduce each speaker as his/her time came up. Be aware of the participants comfort level. For example, segregate the smokers from the non-smokers. Hold the meeting in the room that’s clean, well-lighted, comfortable, and when where you can control the temperature.
If it’s too hot or too cold that can be a real hassle for the participants. For example, one time in Tulsa, Oklahoma held a meeting in the winter, the heating system had broken and I had eighteen people coming to this meeting. I did everything I could do to fix the heating system and get the room warmer, but it just didn’t work. We didn’t have an alternate night and they were no other meeting rooms available, and a lot of these people had travelled long way for that meeting. So actually I had to do something that night, here I was facing a meeting in a room that was literally fifty four degrees. There was even ice on the inside of the windows. When the people arrived I said “Ladies and gentlemen, its fifty four degrees in here. And like you I’m freezing.” I’m sure a lot of you are uncomfortable, and we do have someone here who’s seeing if there some way we can fix it, but what I like you to understand is where going to have a short meeting tonight, so button up your coat, move next to someone you like, or maybe you’d like to know better and let’s make the best of this situation. They laughed, they got together and things went a lot better than I had expected originally. We were able to accomplish something at that meeting, but what would have happened if I had not say anything at all. They have been sitting there freezing, thinking why isn’t this guy doing something about this it’s too cold in here. You see if there are concern with the temperature, then I’m going to be concentrating on the matters that had. So the point is do what you can about the problem, and acknowledge the problem if you can’t solve it completely. Tell the participants what is being done, and then move on with the reason for being there. The problem is then no longer an issue to them because they know that it is being handled. They know you care and they know you’re doing something about it. Another time I was at the other extreme, I was in a meeting room and the basement of a church in Southern Arkansas. It was one hundred six degrees in humid. Can you imagine? No air conditioning and no air circulation. Even the ceiling fan was broken. Everybody in that room was miserable, and they were wearing suits and semi-formal attire. I was introduced third on the program that night, and these people were dying by time I got up to speak. I started out by pointing to two people and saying excuse me would you two please grab those stacks of paper plates over there and hand one to everyone. And as soon as everyone had a paper plate I said “Ladies and gentlemen, I like you to participate in a simple exercise with me.
Grab your plate with your left hand, hold it up at the level of your ear. Now, I’m going to count one, and I want you to immediately bring a plate across in front of your face in a swift motion, are you ready? Okay, one…” And they moved the plates in front of their faces then I said “Now, bring them back on the count of two, I went two.” I said “Alright, let’s repeat that one, two, one, two, one, two, one, two okay go ahead and fan yourself.” Now that’s corny I know that’s very corny, but what I did was something to break up the mood to get the people loosen up a little bit. You see something was needed to give these people permission to make themselves more comfortable. Everyone was just sitting there dripping with perspiration, totally miserable and no one that evening had acknowledge it. I got up and I did that ridiculous thing with the paper plate in a playful way, and they ended up having fun. I made them feel more comfortable sitting there fanning themselves, and I shorten my speech dramatically to about 1/3 of its plan length. They were happy. I was happy, and especially afterwards when we got all of there to a cooler location, all of were comfortable.
Now once you’ve put the participants at ease with a little orientation to the meeting it and you’re going to do, give them an overview of the items you’re going to cover. It’s like the old sales things, tell them what you’re going to tell them then it tell to them, and then tell them what you told them. So give them an overview what the meeting will entail and then stimulate participants as early as possible to be involved. Call on people from the beginning to start sharing their ideas. When the participants know they are going to be called on, they’d pay more attention, sharper and more alert. When practical, call on the new people and the junior executives for their opinions early in the meeting, and then call on senior executives later because calling on senior executives first tends to stifle contributions by the younger members of the group because they are comparing themselves and saying “Gee… I don’t know if my idea is profound or as important as his or hers.” if you are in charge of the meeting, be a moderator rather than dominant meeting later. If you’re doing the majority of the talking and are leading things too forcefully, what happens is it discourages participation from the people attending the meeting. So play as low a profile as is appropriate for what you’re trying to accomplish. Help the group to communicate by re-stating their suggestions, clarifying their ideas, you know what I mean. Someone just got enough and spoken, and when she finishes, you summarize her point briefly and then invite comments from others. For example, you say “Susan makes the point that maybe we should consider instituting a system for determining who gets bonuses and how. Alright, what are the rest of you think about that?” As a moderator, it’s extremely important for you to be a good listener, mono [phonetics] to the group’s participation so that everyone has a chance to talk. If the more reluctant members aren’t speaking up, you might say “There’s one question I’m wondering about.” and then state the question. That way everyone in the room can think about the answer.
You can then turn to someone and say “Barbara, what are your thoughts on that question?” she has known had a chance to think it thru and then respond, but if you don’t state the question before you call on her, if you just say Barbara I have a question for you and then you ask her the question called “It’s really a lot harder for her to answer because she has been put on the spot in front of everyone else before she even knew what the question was going to be.”. That really tough on people. Now that’s one way to get participation going, and you should always make it a point to get everyone’s participation when possible. It’s important because studies have shown that people will more readily accept a decision if they have a chance to fully express themselves on the subject. If they feel they’ve had a part in making the decision, people tend to support things they help create. The next steps in conducting an effective meeting are maintaining the flow of topics, keeping the discussion going from one topic to the next on the agenda, and making sure that any decision which have been reached are in fact implemented. Sometimes the responsibility for implementing a decision will obviously fall to one particular person, someone who is in charge at the department or area which is affected by that decision. Other times you can find someone from among the decision supporters to take the responsibility for follow-up, so if a lot of people were in favour of it, you look those people to choose the one to do the follow up. The final step in conducting a meeting is closing the meeting itself. I suggest that you bring the meeting to a close gently as a rule it’s going to be obvious when a meeting has ran its course, so summarize for the group, and briefly review what was accomplished. What is left to be accomplished and what assignments were made. Talk about what follow ups are going to take place and so forth. Make some announcements if you need to, and then make some kind of statement of adjournment. For example, ladies and gentlemen that completes the agenda I look forward to seeing all of you next Tuesday at our employed [phonetics] meeting. Good day. Something like that just kind of wraps it up and lets them know it’s officially over. Provide for the important follow up, something some outcome to be produced so provide for that. Make sure to provide assignment sheets for action or make agreements about when to check back with each other. Get out your calendars right then at the meeting and schedule the next meeting as you’re there on the spot. Ask for a report from someone at that upcoming meeting or whatever, but just be sure the follow up does take place, otherwise allow the decision that were made will never be acted on and that’s one of the biggest problems with meetings.
When I first introduced this six vital meeting elements at the beginning of this program. I mentioned all of them out under your control. There are also some other controls that you can use to encourage successful meetings, and I’d like to tell you about them now.
First of all sell the meeting, don’t just announce the meeting, but indicate what’s going to be covered and why that’s going to benefit the people who come. Generally, you can do this in the memo you send out to announce the meeting, if you’re just phoning people, do it verbally. Give them a reason though to be ready to participate. Second, tell the people you’re inviting what to bring in the way of reference material background or things like particular report that deals with meeting’s topic, and tell them what to plan on for the discussion. Third, spell out specifically what they are going to get from attending the meeting, whether new it’s new information, the opinion of others about the meeting’s topic or decision that will affect them. Next, sell the meeting’s time, selling the time depends on your patterns really. Do you always wait for stragglers? If so, why should people arrive at your meetings on time? You see if you start late what’s you actually doing is punishing to those who came on time, you’re making them just sit there while you wait for the people who didn’t come on time. This makes it seem like the people who are late are more important than those who were on time. You imply that the ones who came on time did something wrong, and believe me they will get the message and the next time they’ll come late. When your indicating the meeting time on the announcement, if you’re sending out a page such as the meeting will be held at 3 o’clock, put 3 o’clock sharp and underline the word sharp then begin at 3 P.M. even if you have only 1 or 2 people there begin when you said you would, or [laughing] schedule it for 2:59 that will get their attention. They will come to the meeting and say “Why 2:59? Why not 3 o’clock?” say I wanted to make the point that we are going to begin the meeting at the appointed time. Next, get people to show up prepared for the meeting. This really isn’t as hard as it sounds. To do it, K-I-S-S keep it short and simple.
Help them prepare for the meeting by sending relevant reading material as far and advance as possible. Such material could include a list of those are attending background material related to the topics you’re bringing up. The agenda with goal for the meeting clearly defined. The time schedule, day, date, time, place and so forth and even time limit specified. You should also give some indication of what’s expected from each person whose coming. Say something like in the margin and write a little note “Please come prepared with your suggestions on how to address this problem.” in the memo announcing the meeting include some questions you will be addressing so they have a chance to think through their answers. Often people ask “How can we get everybody to stay to the end of the meeting.” Many people seem to come to meetings and say “Look, I got to dash out early.” and then they do. Try loading the agenda, and here what I mean by that, schedule something exciting toward the end of the meeting or get the participants to commit to you that they will stay for the entire meeting. You might say “Please clear your agenda so you can be present until 4 P.M. we are starting promptly at 2 and we will be there until 4.” plan to be there for the entire 2 hours, then just tell them “I need to know whether you can be there exactly for that time frame because it affects the way I’m putting the meeting together, and then for Heaven’s sake stay on time, stick to the schedule, handle the important items first and then the trivia if you have time left for them. One control that encourages successful meetings the people don’t often consider is the use of creative meeting ideas, now this is kind of fun. Here are some quick creative meeting ideas that will make people more eager to attend and stay until the end of your day. Even when it’s a little tiny meeting you can still make it fun. You might try using a theme that would be used for a banqueter [phonetics] or convention sometimes. Themes are good ice breakers. There are good to of the get [phonetics] people started on working and talking with one another, you’re going to have like 50s party or you could do something to give your meeting a boost toward positive personality because each meeting does have its own personality. You can even decorate the meeting room if you have time and the inclination to do so. For example, the theme could be a shipwreck and when you think of a shipwreck you think about islands, palm trees, coconuts and sands. You know you can do that and decorate the room that way playfully, assuming it’s appropriate to the theme of the meeting and the purpose of the meeting. If it’s a celebration bring balloons and streamers. If your theme is productivity, decorate the room with to-do-list, production schedules and business things do it on a light hearted manner though. If themes are carried through with costumes and things like that or whatever kind of trappings [phonetics] you can add that are appropriate, then the people who come will more easily mix and mingle like VIP’s and lined employees will mingle more readily because it’s more of a festive atmosphere. People tend to let their hair down and not be quite so guarded when they are parading around in a costume or in character or something like that. It may sound like I’m not taking the meeting seriously, but that’s not the case at all. I’m just saying look for creative ways to add a little spice. Themes don’t have to be included in the meeting itself, you can confine [phonetics] the theme to just the meal or the coffee break. For example, I once was convention chairman for a meeting held on Independence Day and we decided for an evening banquet we will hold on 4th of July celebration. We decorated the whole room with red, white and blue bunting, and we had streamers and flags everywhere. We served hotdogs, popcorn and Popsicle it’s just like a huge picnic. We even had a man who impersonated Ben Franklin come up and give a brief speech it was delightful. You can have a circus or at the ball game theme. You could have a local sports figure come during a break in a meeting and maybe sign some autographs, or you could meet at the golf course, race track or at the opera. You can have a back-to-school theme and serve lunches in an elementary school type lunchbox with half pint milk cartoons, or have people do things like they used to when they were kids, or you can have 30 minutes in paradise or refreshments like fresh fruits or Hawaiian coffee would be serve. The juice could even be served out a fake volcano.
There are a lot of ways to use your playfulness and creativity to spice up a meeting and make it more enjoyable. Creative meeting ideas don’t stop with themes. What if you need to meet with several company people, but each one is at a different location? Well it may well cost too much to get everybody together in one place. A creative cost effective meeting idea then might be have a teleconference. Teleconferences can be fascinating. Teleconferences are meeting’s where the one thing you don’t share is the common location. Now teleconference is a creative way for holding a meeting when you want to keep expenses low and keep the meeting as short as possible. It isn’t the time though for a theme or that kind of playfulness, but you can certainly use creativity for putting together your teleconference. A few days ago I participated in one. The day and time had been arranged and I had to prepare an agenda as did all the other people. I was at my phone at the appointed time and ready to go when the call came in. Introductions were made so that I was aware of everyone who was there and they were all introduced to me. I was also given background on one of the people who was going to call in later to join us in that meeting. I then suggested a game plan that we followed and I went through my agenda item by item, and I paused after each statement I made. If there were questions, comments or concerns they came during the pauses and people would go “Hush… Hmm… Oh… Yeah… Good idea” you know giving me some audible feedback, and by the way I told the group that I needed that, I said “Hey! If you agree with me say something or grunt. Give me a sound you know” if you disagree give me a sound that way to so the work communicating as fully as possible. I can’t see you so I need to hear from you. Now during the meeting I made one comment and heard no feedback, just silence and I said “Hey! That last idea I brought up didn’t get any reaction at all. Was that because you didn’t like or didn’t understand or what?” then one person said “Jim, I don’t think that idea fits in.” I said “Okay, let’s talk about it.” We discussed the issue. We resolved it then move on to another subject. You see teleconferencing is an excellent tool, but it requires you to use all of your communication skills. You must use those communications skills at full strength, you can’t assume anything. You have to get as much feedback as possible on everything since you’re not receiving any visual feedback at all. Incidentally, I conducted my part of the teleconference from my kitchen table dressed in a jogging suit on my day off. It’s a lot of flexibility in those meetings. For a teleconference to be successful let me give you the following guidelines. First, restrict the number of participants to fifteen people or less.
Second, focus the meeting on a single issue. This is critical, otherwise the meeting could go on forever. Limit the conference to no more than 15 minutes if you can because the longer it last, the less focus it will become in attention spends dwindle. Send out agendas in advance if at all possible and let the participants know what would be covered. Notify the people of when the calls are going to come in, so everyone will schedule them. And finally before the teleconference is to begin, make sure you’ve double checked everything. When you’re ready to begin have one person in charge of patching in the calls to your phone and have a person perhaps your secretary hold on to the phone for you until everyone’s on the line. That way you can continue to work until everything’s put together and once everyone is present you can get on the phone and begin the meeting. So those are the ways to go about making every meeting successful. It’s you who makes the difference whether you’re in charge or a participant. Meeting with success is your responsibility, your obligation to the participants when you’re in charge of the meeting. When you’re not in charge but are present as a participant, you have the opportunity to make the meeting count for you and for the others who are present. How? By thoroughly planning how you will participate prior to your attendance by actively contributing to the achievement of the meeting’s goals through how you are involve and by following up on a decisions that are made. Make every meeting count. Doing that depends on you, you make the difference.
Are you looking for a conference speaker?
For more information contact Jim Cathcart or Cathcart Institute, Inc. at http://Cathcart.com