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These are a few of the comments we have heard from clients over the years. You may find them astonishing bearing in mind that the key to organisational success is its people, and the only way a group can perform is through effective communication.
“Meeting after meeting after meeting and nothing ever seems to get done. In fact, I spend more time in meetings than actually doing any work.”
“It’s the same agenda over and over – just with different words.”
“To be honest I only go to meetings so I know what’s going on, I don’t contribute but then I don’t think the people who hold the meetings want me to.”
“There’s never any more than one point on an agenda that I’m interested in – once that’s been covered I spend the rest of the time thinking about what I have got to get done that day.”
“I don’t see the point of all these meetings; they’re only discussion groups, nothing good ever comes out of them.”
“I keep getting asked to meetings to give my professional opinion, but I never get a word in edgeways and it’s always the usual suspects who hijack the meetings.”
“We hardly ever have meetings but when we do they are a waste of time as we never get to discuss the real issues, or if we do, we go off on tangents.”
Whenever we are asked to study an organisation to identify its fail points, we almost always find the one key failing is lack of effective communication.
Some of the companies we have worked with have tried to cut meetings to a minimum. This has created its own set of problems such as ‘silo working’ and ‘blame cultures’, because no one has a definitive answer to questions such as:
“what’s my full responsibility on this project?”
“am I meeting all my internal customer requirements?”
“do I have any internal customers?”
“things seem to be going OK in my department but how are the others getting on?”
“are we actually working on the right areas to the right spec?”
All these are real and common questions, gathered from organisations that cut back on meetings in order to maximise time and increase organisational performance.
Unsurprisingly, all the companies that took this step have since reverted to the normal meeting schedule (if for no other reason than because meetings had started to happen in secret, resulting in decisions being made without key people being present).
It seems we are unable to live with meetings but we certainly can’t live without them, so what do we do?
The answer is reasonably simple – ‘effective meeting facilitation’.
Meeting facilitation is a means of working with participants to manage all the tasks necessary to run a productive and impartial meeting. It helps identify the group’s common purpose, for example making a decision, solving a problem or simply exchanging ideas and information. It does not lead the group, nor does it try to distract or entertain. Its sole task is to open the meeting to meaningful, targeted and fully participative discussion.
Our meeting facilitators are experienced in a range of techniques that help groups use their meeting time to good effect. They will work with your organisation to identify the objectives of the meeting and develop the most appropriate technique for the job. During the meeting they will keep people on track to meet the objective, while ensuring that the direction is never preordained. The outcome of the meeting will be wholly up to the participants.
Examples of some of the facilitation tools we use are:
In order to provide a package with 100% added value, our consultants will ensure that all the techniques used on the day can be easily re-used by participants in future meetings.
All our courses are custom-designed to meet your specific needs. If you have questions or would like further information, please contact us.
Tel: 01454 410000 • E-mail: enquiries@pendragon-hr.com • Web: www.pendragon-cs.com
Pendragon Human Partnerships, Annwn Court, Shepperdine Road, Oldbury-on-Severn, South Gloucestershire, BS35 1RL
To download the full Facilitating Communication brochure in PDF format - click here
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