How Leaders Conduct Effective Meetings

Imagine you and a close friend have a difficult situation that you need to address, how would you handle it? Would you sit down, have a meaningful dialogue so you both feel heard, then agree on how to deal with it? If so, congratulations, you’ve employed an effective strategy to achieve a desired result — maintain a great friendship.

What if your team at work needed to address an issue (e.g., increase productivity, communication…), would you meet with them, discuss options, and eventually agree on a plan? Of course! That’s because you have a process that includes setting goals and developing plans.

How Effective Are Your Meetings?

So, if this general approach is effective in our personal and work lives, why don’t we use it when we attend workshops, seminars, or conferences? The American Society of Training and Development reports that corporate America spends $100.25 billion per year on training and educational conferences. Yet, how many of these meetings conclude with attendees setting clear goals and having specific plans to reach them? Think about it. Don’t we attend educational conferences because we want to improve something? Of course! Yet, how often do we really use those ideas to achieve the desired results? We get back to work and become caught up in our old routines, or sometimes try to do too much and end up achieving very little.

A while back, I delivered my program called Use It, Don’t Lose It — How to Apply What You Learn at ANY Meeting, to the American Society for Quality (ASQ). I shared four fundamental steps to help them apply what they learn from ANY meeting:

1. Set a S.M.A.R.T. Goal after the meeting

2. Increase your Commitment to that goal

3. Strengthen your Belief you will reach your goal

4. Use Feedback to stay on track when you get back to work

These are the keys to making your huge meeting investment (time, money, energy, opportunity costs…) payoff, based on my review of several hundred-research studies over the last decade. Not concluding a meeting this way is like shoveling piles of cash into a blazing potbelly stove.

The program at ASQ went so well that they, and several other associations (National Speakers Association, Society of Radiation Oncology Administrators…), have asked me to end their meeting. As one leader told me, “We conclude all our project meetings with goals and action plans; we need to start doing it at all our educational conferences.”

How do you make your meetings, conferences, workshops effective? What techniques do you use to increase commitment, belief, and feedback?

Keep eXpanding your leadership,

Dave

P.S. Dave Jensen and his team transform proven leadership tools into your success stories. Dave is an executive coach and an engaging speaker at conferences, meetings, and retreats. He can be reached in Los Angeles, CA at (310) 397-6686. Click here for more info about the research-based, online 360-leadership assessment (XLM): http://xlmassessment.com/ )

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