Meeting Before the Meeting: Leveraging Your Interpersonal Skills for Effective Meetings

  Benefits Realization   Stakeholder Management   Strategy   Teams  

Multiple research results indicate that the majority of workers spend about a third of their workweek in meetings. For project managers, program managers, and C-Suite executives, those numbers are much higher, and for good reasons. The bulk of the work involved in leading project teams revolves around discussions with vendors, contractors, project sponsors, team members, and many other stakeholders. Still, despite having a lot of practice time under our belt with meetings, it doesn’t seem as if we’ve got the hang of it.

Many people who attend meetings report them as being very boring and unproductive. As a result, the sentiments towards most meetings can range from absenteeism, tardiness, or lethargy.  One study estimated that large companies lose up to US$100 million to unnecessary and ineffective meetings. Another study concluded that US$37 billion are lost each year to unproductive meetings. In the project management space where meetings constitute a greater part of the work, it is important that we do all we can to avoid such waste. So, how can we turn this around?

Ensuring that every meeting is effective, productive, and pleasurable to those in attendance should be a desire of everyone who leads teams of people. This presentation will show how having “the meeting before the meeting” can translate to better meeting outputs. You will also learn about the right structure that will keep your meetings on track and make them more productive. Putting these into practice can transform the quality of your meetings, reduce waste, and lead to better buy-in from your stakeholders.

Learning Outcomes:

• Identify the benefits of having the meeting before the meeting.
• Outline and adopt the FAA (Facts, Analysis, Action) structure for productive meetings.

Most project managers spend a big proportion of their time in meetings. We need meetings to get our job done. Yet, the majority of project team members and leaders consider project meetings very boring and unproductive. In this presentation, we look at how tapping into interpersonal skills can translate to better meeting outcomes. You will also learn about the right structure that will help you keep meetings on track and make them more productive.