When you take people to meetings, magic or mayhem can happen. I’ve seen both and the magic is worth the risk if you can control the mayhem. Some of the mayhem is self-inflicted by avoidable mistakes.
5 Deadly Meeting Mistakes
- Pile On – When people add on to answers given by other members of the team it does not provide completeness. It creates a sense of lack of confidence in the members of your team to whoever else is attending.
- Fidget – Wiggling legs, tapping pencils, spinning chairs and so on are all fidgets. I have even seen members of a team get up mid-presentation to refresh their coffee while someone is presenting.
- Glancing – When a question is asked by their team, and we glance at each other to figure out who will answer, we look suspicious and unprepared.
- Digital Interrupts – Emails, texts, ringing smartphones in the middle of a meeting are unacceptable. You think everyone knows it until someone blows it.
- Double-talk – Over-talking anyone in the room happens because we anticipate the question, disagree with an answer, or are just focused on our own response.
What to Do:
- Assign the Host – During your preparation before the meeting you must assign a host from your team to manage the questions and interruptions. If anyone asks a question, the host’s responsibility is to confirm the question and then delegate it to one team member to answer. This helps to control Double-Talk, Glancing and Pile on.
- Agree on the guidelines – Set the expectations for the rules before the meeting with your team. This helps with Digital Interrupts and Fidgeting.
- Rehearse the meeting – Rehearsing the meeting is not just about getting the presentation right, it’s about getting all of the things that are not in the presentation right. These include the seating arrangements, anticipated questions, what to do if some of the members of the other group do not show up and so on.
There are plenty of bigger challenges in important meetings to conquer, so you do not want to be interrupted by avoidable mistakes.