Many, many things have been written about meetings, lots of bad material and lots of good material. My take is simple. The meeting must be set to accomplish something and they must have pace and tempo.Pace is speed at which a meeting is conducted and is a tough balancing act for the moderator. Endless discussion must be channeled. It is important to have everyone have input, but endless loops must be avoided or eliminated. The opposite is also truth, though. The meeting cannot be a dictatorial, marching-orders type meeting, with the expectation that everyone will be on board. These types of meetings are sure to produce either outright or passive resistance.
The second characteristic is tempo. Meetings generally fall into three categories; one-time ad-hoc, multiple ad-hoc or repeating meetings. It is important that multiple ad-hoc and repeating meetings have a good tempo. Too fast and nothing gets done between meetings. Too slow, or worse, no follow-through, and the meeting object does not get accomplished. The tempo set by the moderator is crucial, especially during startup. Participants look to see the level of seriousness of a meeting by the effort which the moderator or principles are putting into the meeting subject (including the meeting itself). Lack of follow-through is the quickest way to lose the participants.
1 comment:
In my experience, most meeting organizers completely disregard any consideration of pace or tempo. Of course, many moderators put Herculean effort into their Powerpoint deck and little effort into thinking about why the meeting is being held in the first place. The fastest way to lose me is to have a flashy presentation but no real content or purpose behind either the slides or the meeting in general.
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