How to Chair a Meeting
“If I had a choice about going to a meeting at the studio and changing a nappy, I’d choose
the nappy” – Tim Burton (film director)
It’s the big meeting; the day of reckoning, and there are big decisions to be made.
Everyone is coming – the Chairman, shareholders, stakeholders, CEO, CFO, COO, CMO, CTO and other similar titled men and women whose time is not to be wasted.
The combined cost of the meeting if you totalled up the hourly rates of all attendants, is so large it would qualify as a G20 nation.
And right there in the middle of it all is you – The Chair.
If the meeting goes well, they’ll all congratulate themselves; if it goes badly, everyone will blame you.
No pressure then.
The skill of effectively chairing any meeting, whether big or small, critical or minor, is an invaluable one for the modern professional. Quite apart from the massive impact a meeting can have on the fortunes of the company or organisation concerned, the outcome will often deeply affect you and your reputation.
So, it pays to be ready.
Here are a few tips to remember.
1) Start the meeting before the meeting.
Preparation. Preparation. Preparation. It’s the key to everything and no less so for meetings. If you can identify the topics of discussion early, familiarise yourself with all the issues, and even get feedback and opinions from the key attendants beforehand, you’ll be a long way down the road to a successful meeting before things even start.
2) Devise a valuable agenda.
There is no point holding a meeting to discuss things that can be resolved by email or a phone call, so don’t waste people’s time with meaningless items. Devise an agenda that makes the most of the occasion and shows respect to the cost involved in getting everyone together.
Don’t fill the agenda with stuff that everyone already agrees on. If that’s all you’re after, just post it on the group page in Facebook or Yammer and just ask everyone to ‘like’ it.
Focus instead on the key & critical issues that can only be resolved with all the people there in the same room to discuss it.
If people can see that the meeting is important, they will give it the attention it deserves.
3) You are God, the Father.
You are God. You own the zone. Your house, your rules. But being in control is not the same as being dominant. Being authoritative, is not the same as being authoritarian.
Approach your role like the Big Man Himself: Guide and influence but be wary of actually coming down from on high to make demands. If you’ve done your job properly, people should look back and even doubt that you were there at all. Or if you prefer football analogies, be the referee. The best ones are impartial, in complete control, and yet hardly noticed. They are not one of the players, but they make the game flow.
Do not take sides. Do not show yourself to have a vested interest in the outcome.
Control but do not command.
4) You are also ‘Mother’.
Children will squabble. They are bound to disagree. It is your job to make sure they don’t get disagreeable.
Chairing a great meeting will often require a steady hand to cajole, empower, soothe, encourage or calm down as the situation demands. You need to understand when that more maternal influence is needed and wield it, all without anyone really noticing that you’re treating them like a child.
5) Find the best decisions.
Whatever the issue, challenge or conundrum, it is your job to get the meeting to come to a decision; but not just any decision, the best decision; the right decision using all the collective intelligence of the group.
This isn’t the same as compromise. Compromise is by definition a position between other alternatives. It may be safe, but more often than not, it is also the mediocre and uninspired choice.
Rather, your duty is to help the group to seek out, identify and then get behind the right decision, whatever that may be and whoever is the source of the idea.
It means letting all voices be heard, not just the alpha male that tries to dominate every situation, and the lioness always ready to attack, but also the timid intelligent one that never speaks, and the guy that loves to play devil’s advocate.
A big part of that will involve making sure the right questions get asked and then guiding the group to come up with the best answers in response.
6) Keep things moving.
Nothing destroys interest, ideas and inspiration like a meeting with no momentum. So as the guide your role is to ensure continual forward movement. When you sense the meeting is moving in circles, it’s time to step in. Put a mark in the ground and show everyone how things have gone full circle. Restate the objective to get them all refocused, then start moving again.
If that doesn’t work, you should consider breaking, moving to a different subject, or even trying some facilitative exercises or games (which you have of course previously devised) to help everyone approach the problem from a different angle.
Even if you don’t share the timings of the meeting with the attendants, you should yourself have very clear timings allocated for each part of the meeting so that you can keep the meeting on schedule.
Whatever it takes, keep things moving or face your doom.
7) Get clear action points
An action point tells you who is going to do what and by when. Every action point must have those three elements (who, what, when) to be effective. Don’t leave the meeting with anything other than total clarity on these three things, or nothing will ever get done.
8) Record decisions & action points and follow up afterwards
A meeting with no outcomes is only slightly less depressing than a meeting with outcomes that no one remembers.
No one ever reads minutes. So make sure there is a minute taker, but do not assume that people will ever look back at the minutes themselves to find out what happened.
So, if you don’t want the great decisions and action points to be lost to history, keep a clear personal record of what was decided, as well as what action points were agreed, and then send them to the relevant people after the meeting.
This way, even if people don’t read the minutes, they will still know what happened that mattered.
It’s a tough gig, chairing a meeting. If you’re playing God, you shouldn’t expect to get love and thanks, but with any luck your reward will be in heaven.
Quotes by and about The Iron Lady
“When you decide, you divide. That’s just the way of it”
– Tony Blair
What other leader’s death has inspired as much love and hatred, affection and animosity, praise and vilification, as that of Margaret Thatcher?
In the same week of her passing, Parliament was recalled to allow politicians to express their admiration for the former Prime Minister. Yet for every kind word enthusing about her leadership over the Falklands War, conquering of the trade unions, or securing of a rebate for the UK in Europe, there were derogatory comments from opposition benches decrying her legacy of destruction of manufacturing communities, the ‘loadsamoney’ free market economy excesses, failure to impose sanctions against South Africa etc.
She was a hugely divisive figure, who has had more books and column inches written about her than any other Prime Minister since Winston Churchill.
There will be much analysis over the coming months of her legacy, looking at her policies, character and impact, but here are 10 quotes by Margaret Thatcher and by others about her, that probably give as much insight as anything else into a woman who was a hugely transformative and controversial leader:
1) “She has the eyes of Caligula but the mouth of Marilyn Monroe.” French President Francois Mitterrand
2) “Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. Where there is despair, may we bring hope.” Margaret Thatcher quoting St Francis of Assisi after her 1979 election victory.
3) “Nobody would remember the Good Samaritan if he had only good intentions. He had money as well.” 1980
4) “There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families.” 1987
5) “To those waiting with bated breath for that favourite media catchphrase, the U-turn, I have only one thing to say. You turn if you want to. The lady’s not for turning.” 10 October 1980, Conservative party conference
6) “I fight on, I fight to win.” 21 November 1990, after failing to win enough votes to avoid a second round in the Tory leadership contest. She resigned the next day
7) “Home is where you come to when you’ve got nothing better to do.” May 1991, after resigning as Prime Minister
8) It is rather like sending your opening batsmen to the crease, only for them to find, as the first balls are being bowled, that their bats have been broken before the game by the team captain – Geoffrey Howe about her policy towards Europe in his resignation speech to the House of Commons
9) And the vegetables? Oh, they’ll have the same – Spitting Image. Margaret Thatcher’s puppet refers to her cabinet as a bunch of vegetables. Though just a TV programme, this quote captured the prevailing impression of her supremacy over her cabinet a weak willed cabinet
10) “The ‘Iron Lady’ Sounds the Alarm” – the Soviet military newspaper, Red Star, gives Thatcher her famous nickname in response to one of her speeches
It is the great burden of transformative leaders to be revered and reviled in equal measure and The Iron Lady was no exception. As these quotes show, intrigue and controversy was a great part of her life.
And if the recent extensive coverage and commentary is anything to judge by, intrigue and controversy will be as much a part of her death and her legacy.
Obama Inauguration Speech – laying down the left gauntlet
“I am the people, the mob, the crowd, the mass.” – Carl Sandburg (Poet)
Politically, America leans slightly to the right. Their President, however, leans well to the left. He is a southpaw both physically (he is left handed) and ideologically and with this speech he came out punching and laid down his left gauntlet to all opponents, challenging them to follow His Way or the Highway.
In what will be looked back on as either one of the bravest inauguration speeches of modern times or one of the most foolhardy, Barack Obama finally did what all leaders are forced to do when faced with serious opposition and division. He led from the front, set out his vision and dared anyone to defy him.
Never before have Gay Marriage, Universal Healthcare, Climate Change policy, Equal Pay for Women, Gun Control and Liberal Immigration been so openly advocated on the steps of the Capitol. If in the past he has tried to maintain an impression of centrism, he abandonned any pretence with this speech. You could sense the Tea Partiers and hard-line Republicans wincing as this most eloquent of Presidents made his argument with some heavy left jabs and then a classic sucker punch.
“We, the People”, he said. “We, the People”, he emphasised. “We, the People”, he repeated for good measure. “We are made for this moment”.
This was a clear and open reminder to his political opponents that he won the election (comfortably, he would add) and that he therefore won the argument and has the backing of The People to prove it.
“We cannot mistake absolutism for principle or substitute spectacle for politics or treat name-calling as reasoned debate. We must act!”, he pronounced just in case they didn’t get that he was talking about them.
You half expected him to throw in: ‘I won! That’s right, I said it and don’t you forget it!’ And the polls back him up, showing that he is now trusted above the Republicans on the economy, which had always been his weakspot, as well as recent more conciliatory gestures and words from a number of Republican politicians, suggesting that this is a worthwhile gamble.
Barack Obama is a brilliant speechmaker. His baritone, pace variation and turn of phrase are unparalleled in today’s politics. Though this wasn’t his best ever speech, it was very good, but more importantly, it may come to be seen as his most significant. It displayed a certain confidence and the renewed self-belief of a man that has, over the past 4 years, been battered by friends, opponents, events and circumstances, but has still come out the victor.
As he headed back inside after the close of the public inauguration ceremony, Barack Obama turned around for one brief moment to take one final look at the crowd, saying: “I’m not going to see this again”.
Somehow, you sense from this speech, that he is not going to waste the opportunity of the next 4 years.
Watch out, here comes another left!
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