3 Questions To Better Meetings

Prior to the recession, a Canadian financial services company hired a former U.S. President to address their company. You could ask what a former President could say that would be worth a six-figure speaking fee? And the answer would be "nothing really." But the company would be sending a message that it had done well enough that it could afford to hire a former U.S. President. But luckily, for most organizations, those days of self-aggrandizing have been replaced by more fiscally responsible strategies.

A national bank hired a professional football coach to speak for 90 minutes on leadership to its managers. After the speech, the coach came down into the audience, shook hands and made small-talk with each attendee. When asked to recall the celebrity's content, most had difficulty - but everyone could recall verbatim the small-talk. His celebrity overshadowed his own message - the reason he was paid to speak.

If your organization is going to take the time to meet, then the organization needs to be better as a result of the meeting.

I have spoken with associations who feel the need to hire celebrities as marquees saying, "we use celebrities to bolster registrations for our meeting." Dare I say, if you need a celebrity to get people to come to your meeting, then perhaps you need to reconsider having the meeting altogether. There is obviously little perceived value in attending. (Note: a few select celebrities have been able to transition their celebrity into functional, how-to strategies for organizations - but very few. Choose wisely.)

The same goes for your meetings in the office. Here are 3 questions to achieve better meetings:

1. Is there a specific purpose for this meeting or are you holding it because you've always had a Tuesday Management meeting?

2. Is one person holding the meeting to look like a celebrity or is it really going to make the workplace better and is it readily evident how the organization might become better?

3. Could all but one point of your meeting agenda be replaced by a single page memo and if so, can you focus the meeting on just one issue and still call it a meeting?

Make your meetings worthwhile. Have a purpose, a strategy and an outcome of making your workplace better. Otherwise, let your people do their work. There needs to be perceived value in attending a meeting.

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Kevin Burns - Workplace Expert and Speaker