Ministry of Chittagong Hill Tracts Affairs

Managing Meetings

1. What we’re going to manage: What is a “Meeting”?

-         A Collaborative work process consists of people and content for a purpose.

1. We facilitate / organize / participate (in) a meeting.

1. We do the following things with meetings:

-         Information sharing

-         Answering questions

-         Asking questions

-         Discussing and making decisions as a group on issue(s)

-         Coordinating and directing people

-         Helping coworkers to identify their potentialities

-         Gaining perspectives on an issue

-         Observing interaction / reaction

-         Promoting a sense of community / building team

Initially

Three recommendations for initiating a meeting:

1. To do a cost-benefit analysis of the planned meeting;
2. To treat meeting like work;
3. To do it differently.

Set the purpose by asking:

-         What do I want to do?

-         What outcome(s) do I want?

-         What is the best way(s) to achieve the desired outcome?

-         Who is necessary?

Setting purpose also depends on whether the meeting is participatory (involving input from others); or non-participatory (mostly one way communication, which can be either informational, or motivational). If the planned meeting is informational, the goal is to get the information out in a short, interesting way; if the meeting is motivational, the deliberation must be short, since “...Inspiration is best served in smaller doses”. For participatory meeting, selecting people to invite and method are important.