Business productivity coaches, Laura Waite and Collin Lyons, share their thoughts and expertise in today’s guest post.

Meeting Outcomes:

How to get your meetings where you want them to go

by Laura Waite and Collin Lyons

If you spend any time in meetings, here’s a scenario you may find familiar: an hour is allocated to discuss the issues and what needs to be done about them. The group examines every angle, shares each person’s opinions, and then turns its attention to considering what to do… only to discover the time is up.

Many of us find meetings less productive than they should be. This may be familiar to you, either in your meetings or those of your clients. As coaches, on committees or in teams, we rely on meetings to come together, share ideas and ultimately make decisions. However, research shows that only 50% of meetings get through all the planned content*.

You don’t have to be stuck in that rut, and neither do your clients! There’s a simple tool that can turn meetings into brainstorming powerhouses and, whether you find yourself running group meetings or you have a client whose productivity levels are low, everyone can end the meeting feeling positive and clear about the road ahead.

The tool is called “Meeting Outcomes” and it’s the key to a productive meeting, because it ensures you are engaging the right people on the right problem. Essentially, a Meeting Outcome is a brief description of what you will make, decide or generate during that meeting. It provides a solid goal for attendees to achieve. Here are some tips to make Meeting Outcomes work for you:

Before the Meeting, Decide Your Outcomes

• Write a description of the Outcome – A Meeting Outcome is a description of “what” will be made, decided or generated during the meeting, not “how” we should go about doing so. (By contrast, an agenda provides a path through the meeting – a description of “how” that Meeting Outcome will be achieved.) If you are leading the meeting, write a brief description of what you intend the group to make, decide or generate during that meeting, which you can then include in the invite you send to attendees. Specifically describing the Outcome for the people invited to the meeting allows them to be clearer on their ability and desire to help achieve that Outcome, which in turn ensures that the people in the meeting are interested and eager to actively engage.

• Often, the best Outcome is an expression of a problem that needs to be solved, for example: Do we have action plans for addressing the most important risks? Do we have a basic understanding of how we will be working together? Do we all agree on the new team structure? Thinking of an Outcome as a question gets you to really focus on the problem or situation to be addressed. This is a great tip for ensuring you don’t end up with an agenda (the “how”) instead of an Outcome (the “what”). The second reason, and some may argue the more important reason, is that a question forces everyone to think about the answer: rather than just saying “done”, you’ll need to think about whether the answer is “yes or no”.

• The Meeting Outcome needs to be clear and specific and you’ll want to aim for one that can be realistically completed in a single session. It’s usually best to have just one Meeting Outcome, whenever possible, to encourage focus.

• If necessary, break the Outcome down – If your Meeting Outcome is too large to be completed in a single session, break it down into smaller ones that the group can achieve over multiple sessions.

• Communicate the Outcome and invite participation – Make sure that every potential participant receives the description of the Meeting Outcome. Open up the invitation list widely to ensure you get the right people to solve the problem. You should find that those people who choose to attend are the ones who are most passionate about achieving the meeting’s Outcome. Not everyone will have a vested interest in achieving the Meeting Outcome. It might fall outside their expertise, or relate to a project or goal that person isn’t working on, or is simply something they aren’t interested in. Giving every potential participant the Meeting Outcome beforehand allows them to make a well-informed decision about their participation. If the passion isn’t there, nor should be the participant.

Meeting Outcomes are one of the most valuable tools on our coaching belts – we use them whenever we plan a meeting and our clients are regularly impressed at both the outcome and the ease of application, often remarking that it increases the productivity of the meeting substantially. Ultimately, the energised, focused attitude that Meeting Outcomes encourages not only increases a meeting’s productivity by making sure it goes where you wanted it to go, it also provides you with positive, willing attendees who will be excited about your coaching ideas – and excited to take them away and use them!

Want to enhance your technique? Tips for deciding Meeting Outcomes together as a group, using Meeting Outcomes to decide whether to attend a meeting and helping people focus on Meeting Outcomes once you have them are available on our website 🙂

* CyberMeetings by James L. Creighton and James W. R. Adams

About the Authors

Laura Waite and Collin Lyons are the duo of business productivity coaches behind Flowmotion. For people in the office world who want to feel the buzz, Flowmotion is an enterprise that will awaken your passion for work. To address the all-too-typical experience of unenergetic working lives, our mission is to redesign how people interact with their environment to generate engaging, productive and collaborative atmospheres and organisations. We share several decades of experience providing organisational transformation and executive coaching and have worked with large and global organisations including: British Telecom, British Petroleum, Standard Life Assurance and Investments, British Gas/Centrica, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Allied Irish Bank and the UK Government. You can find us at www.flowmotioncafe.com 🙂