Fabulous Meetings: How Can You Lead an Excellent Project Meeting?

Every project manager I have met spends a lot of their time in project meetings. And I shan’t rehearse all the arguments about why that time is valuable and how poor meeting practices can erode that value and turn a meeting into a liability. You’ve been there!

So, the important question is ‘How can you Lead an excellent project meeting?’

By this, I mean one that delivers real value to everyone who attends and to the organizations that are paying for their time. In this article, I will share my thoughts about how to make your meeting really Zing!

Learn About Leading an Excellent Project Meeting

I like to think of a meeting as a three-act play, with a prologue and an epilogue. And, like a good play, a compelling meeting needs to both follow certain forms, but also innovate and create some drama. Therefore, I have structured this article accordingly…

• Prologue: Before Your Project Meeting
• Act 1: Starting Your Project Meeting with Character and Motive
• Act 2: Filling Your Project Meeting with Good Conversations
• Act 3: Closing Your Project Meetings with a Satisfying Ending
• Epilogue: What Happens After the Project Meeting Closes?

A Full Course in Meetings [FREE]

Before we look at some ways you can bring your meetings to life, what if you want a whole course in Meetings? I mean, a FREE course that will make you more effective in attending, creating, and leading meetings. And yes, I did say FREE.

• On our Management Courses YouTube channel, we have a free course: Meetings.
• Or, you may find it easier to watch, on our MgmtCourses website.

And with either of them, you can watch the full course, or just dip into the videos you want to watch. Oh, and did I mention… It’s ALL FREE!

Onwards…

Right. Now you know where you can get more information and dig more deeply into creating fabulous meetings, let’s get started!

Prologue: Before Your Project Meeting

Whether you’re calling the meeting or you are an attendee, always prepare well, so you can use your time to good effect:

• Read the agenda
• Read the accompanying papers
• Think through which parts are important to you.

What do you have an opinion on, what do you need to form an opinion on, what questions do you need to have answered? Bullet-point your own ‘meeting purpose’, and then plan your key contributions.

A Pre-Meeting

Good meetings are efficient. Everyone you need is in one place. So why waste time with a pre-meeting?

Because that’s where decisions really get made. People often decide on the issues before they turn up to the main meeting. They then use that meeting to showcase their posture. So, avoid the risk of your meeting going wrong, by taking or setting the temperature in advance. If there is a pre-meeting, Don’t Miss it!

Prepare to Serve

A good meeting always has someone responsible for making it a good meeting. And they need to serve the participants. If you have called the meeting and will be chairing it, take a look at our article on Servant Leadership, or watch the video below. Then, apply the principles to the way you host your meeting.

Act 1: Starting Your Project Meeting with Character and Motive

Respect the people who are there. Start on time. Don’t wait for the laggards. You don’t know how late they will be, and waiting for them is disrespectful to the people who have arrived on time.

Obviously, there could be exceptional circumstances, causing a majority of participants to be held up. But then, rather than waste the time of the few who have turned up, defer the meeting. Or why not ask the people you have present:

‘What could this group best use our time together for?’

You may be surprised by the answer.

Getting to Know You

Never assume everyone knows each other. Unless you are sure, do a round of introductions. If you don’t know everyone in the room, draw a map of the table, in your notebook. Then fill in your map, so you have the names and affiliations of everyone at the table, right in front of you. Knowing people’s names will endear you to them.

Always start on an up

A great way to start well and lift the mood is to ask about people’s biggest successes since the last meeting. Or maybe what they are grateful for, or most proud of. A quick round of this starts the meeting off with a positive frame.

Act 2: Filling Your Project Meeting with Good Conversations

Meetings are conversations. But what structure is right for the conversation you need to have? Think about which format will work best for each agenda item:

• one-way briefing or lecture
• free-flowing dialogue
• structured debate
• round-robin sharing

Here are some of my favorite tips for getting the best out of those conversations.

Balance the Loud with the Soft

Going into most meetings, you’ll know who the assertive, dominant, talk-about-everything people are. If you don’t, you soon will!

When they start to dominate again, thank them, and then ask to hear from someone else, who does not contribute as readily. Those people have just as many good ideas and their opinions are equally helpful. So, invite them in, and give them space to be heard.

Create a Positive Culture in Your Meeting

Positive psychology tells us that if positive comments exceed negative ones by a ratio of 5, 4, or even 3 to 1, you’ll get a real boost in the mood of the meeting. Creativity will increase, and people will build on the germ of a good idea, rather than knocking it down.

So, role model the culture of the meeting you want. Rapidly call out any disrespectful behaviors, and celebrate evidence-based and courageous contributions. Build on good ideas and ask for concerns and counter-evidence when one idea seems to dominate. Above all, be generous and supportive, and give recognition for good ideas and supportive behavior.

Try a Two Minute Rule

One way to quash some of the knee-jerk negativity, which we see too often, is to give anyone a minimum of two minutes to make their point before anyone can jump in and challenge it. It compels people to listen and hear the whole point, rather than reacting to their first impression.

Shift the Meeting’s Perspective

Often, the person who leads the meeting can force the conclusions in the direction of their own perspective. This can stifle innovative thinking. Wherever you can, ask questions and withhold your opinions.

Another valuable approach is to ask the meeting about how other stakeholders would react to the conversation. Or what they would say if they were in the room. You’ll get more perspectives, richer solutions, and better decisions.

If you need the meeting to get to a particular result, it is still better to do it by Socratic Questioning, rather than telling people the answer. This is where you ask a series of questions that probe a topic and lead to a full awareness of the issues. This lets the group find the answer for itself. Better yet, you may get an even better answer than the one you thought of! Either way, you’ll get a better conversation with more nuance.

Keep Everyone Cool

Stay alert for the signs of rising emotional temperatures. Then, cool them early, before they have too much heat in them. Ask clarifying or checking questions that move people to become analytical about what they are saying. This will dampen down their emotional responses.

One way to step this up is to label the emotions around the table and ask about them: ‘I see you are becoming agitated; can you tell me what’s triggered that?’

Keep Your Meeting on Track

No one likes it when meetings over-run. To reduce the chance of your meeting slipping, start each part of the meeting by writing the objective on a board. If the meeting goes off-track, allow anyone to re-assert the objective by pointing it out. And then note the new topic that has started to take over, on a Parking Lot part of the board. Now the group can return to its original topic, and pick up on the parked idea later, if it is genuinely valuable.

Moving to Close a Topic

Have you ever noticed how many meeting conversations peter out before you reach a conclusion, decision, or action point? Or maybe they just go round in circles, because people:

• just have to say their piece… again!
• want to keep busy while avoiding making a decision.

If this happens, summarize where you have reached, and state clearly what the group needs to do to finish the conversation. Then kick-off again with an invitation to take the next step.

Act 3: Closing Your Project Meetings with a Satisfying Ending

There’s nothing more satisfying than action. Do you end your meeting by confirming ownership of decisions and actions?

You should. Decisions need to be owned by the group, but individuals may assert their opposition. Actions need to be owned by the people who have accepted them.

End your meeting with two rounds, checking for these ownerships.

1. First, reaffirm the decisions that the meeting has taken
2. Second, firm up on commitments to action. Do a round-robin and ask each person in turn to confirm that they will complete their tasks by the agreed dates. If you don’t get an unambiguous ‘yes’, you have work to do, either before the meeting closes, or in follow-up. Treat anything that is not an unambiguous ‘yes’ as a ‘no’.

Epilogue: What Happens After the Project Meeting Closes?

You’ve heard of preparation. That’s what we started with, in our prologue. Postparation is also a vital part of every meeting. If the meeting was worth attending, it is worth following up on. Schedule time shortly after the meeting to review your notes, follow-up on actions, and consider what you learned.

You took the time to prepare, so why would you not also make time to postpare?