Effective Meetings

BPL ACCESS Staff Development Session – 01 June 2001

Donna Barnett, Melissa Bremner, George Clark, Duncan Leece, Alison McKenzie, Bob Peden, Alison Simpson, Joan Rennie

By the end of the session participants should be more consciously aware of

• the nature and many possible purposes of meetings
• what is involved in being a good participant and chair person

Technical and social aspects of effective meetings

George introduced the session by suggesting that it was useful to think about meetings as having technical aspects (agendas, procedures and minutes etc) and more human and social aspects (how to behave as a good chairperson and participant). This session would be dealing mainly with the social aspects and another session will deal with the technical aspects.

Community meetings are multipurpose

While the information in most of the handouts was appreciated it was felt that they were based on what happens in business meetings. Community meetings usually have social objectives mixed in with the business ones and they give people a chance to exchange ideas and catch up on gossip. But this was not thought to be a problem. Meetings can have more than one purpose and time can be allowed for different things.

The people at meetings

Most people at community meetings are ‘normal’ which means that they are well rounded although they may not always behave in the same way. The same person might sometimes be silent or aggressive, rambling or abusive or whatever – it depends on the topic and the mood that the person is in. It is usually OK to let people have some space to vent their feelings but the chairperson should be able to prevent them from throwing the meeting completely off course. Most people could think of individuals who are not ‘normal’ but are like the types described on the handout.

Helping to make meetings more effective

It was felt that some of the ‘innocent questions’ listed in the handout could be seen as aggressive (eg "What was your purpose in asking that?") – it depends on your tone of voice and the way that you ask the question.

Many community meetings are woolly and inconclusive and this is often due to their being badly planned and chaired. As a person taking the minutes it is usually possible to ask many of the '‘innocent questions’ in a fairly neural and non-offensive way.

As a general rule the more that people understand about how to run effective meetings the more likely they are to allow the chairperson, or indeed anybody else who seems to know what they are doing, to control it.

Chairperson skills vary a lot

Everybody present could give examples of horrendously bad chairpersons and most could give examples of others who were pretty good. Some chairpersons let meetings go off at tangents and do not stop people from rambling, others get involved in arguments and lose track of time. The good ones stay cool and focussed and stick to the agenda and the time frame.

The best chairpersons have a high degree of self confidence and can be patient but firm and fair. Some people are maybe born with the skills but they can also be developed. Often the problem is that those most in need of learning are the least able to recognise the fact! But even the worst of them pass on eventually – sadly missed!

It’s not just what you say

As paid staff we tend to go to meetings as ‘outsiders’ who take minutes or provide information or advice. How we should dress and behave depends on the meeting that we are going to.

If we are going to a conference or a meeting in a posh office with people in suits then it is best to be well dressed and a bit formal. We can afford to be more casual with groups that we have known for a long time.

There are no hard and fast rules other than that we should be sensitive to the fact that 80% of all communication is non-verbal ie what matters most is not the words that come out of your mouth but rather your tone of voice, your body posture and the clothes you wear. Whether you wear a suit, a cardigan or a fleece makes a difference to how people react to you!

"The attitudes that we adopt in any situation partly determine how that situation will unfold. Our attitudes hold the key to the kinds, and the extent, of relationships that we can enjoy, and hence to the kind of communities that we build." (Zohar & Marshall (1993))