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- 6 September 2023 at 11:46 am #763AiYa – MeetingArkAdminKeymaster
Thank you, Ron
My personal experience is that there seems to be a balance point for each meeting in terms of how specific the agenda points and outcome are. If the points are too detailed (twenty items for discussion in a 60 minute meeting) I have seen just the first five actually getting discussed…
I think you point about clarity of outcomes is crucial – one helpful approach is to ground the outcomes in sensory terms (what would we see, hear and feel if we had Outcome X). People will have different criteria to know if they have achieved the same outcome.
My other thought is to go round the room and get everyone’s explicit agreement – on an individual basis – that these are our agreed outcomes for the meeting. This seems to produce a more aligned meeting than a comment addressed to the whole group.
5 September 2023 at 11:51 am #764AiYa – MeetingArkAdminKeymasterCheer, Ron!
Creating a welcoming space in the meeting room can have a surprising effect on enabling people to relax. One seminar I led had an interesting piece of feedback –
“I knew it was going to be fun because there was a beautiful display of flowers on the trainer’s table”
It is often the tiny details that make the most impact in helping people feel welcome.
26 July 2023 at 9:15 pm #6018AiYa – MeetingArkAdminKeymasterThanks Ron, that’s really clear.
25 July 2023 at 11:58 am #552AiYa – MeetingArkAdminKeymasterHi Ron!
Thank you for these. I was wondering if you could expand on how specifically each of these factors could effect the focus of the meeting? Are there particular criteria that the person can use to help guide them in each of these circumstances?
8 July 2023 at 3:09 pm #15916AiYa – MeetingArkAdminKeymasterRon, you bring up an excellent point about the impact of the meeting’s context and attendee composition on the dynamics of large public meetings. It’s fascinating how the motivation for attendance can shape the level of difficulty in managing communication in such spaces.
Indeed, in gatherings with diverse motivations, where attendees come from various backgrounds and perspectives, it can be a Herculean task to facilitate coherent discussions. The spectrum of opinions and interests can lead to a cacophony of voices, making it challenging to channel the conversation effectively.
On the other hand, when attendees share a common purpose and mindset, the atmosphere can be far more conducive to meaningful exchanges. It’s almost like comparing the lively debates at a Hyde Park Corner gathering, where passersby have different motivations and opinions, to the unified and focused energy of a political party rally or an evangelistic religious gathering.
So, when planning a meeting in a public space, understanding the motivations of your attendees becomes crucial. It allows you to anticipate and adapt to the unique challenges posed by the size and diversity of the crowd. Effective facilitation in such settings demands both adaptability and skill.
Have you encountered any specific strategies or techniques that work well in managing communication within larger, more diverse gatherings? Sharing insights from your experiences could provide valuable guidance to others dealing with similar challenges.
6 July 2023 at 11:31 am #762AiYa – MeetingArkAdminKeymasterThanks for this, Ron
One of the things I have noticed with public meetings is that the level of distraction / diversion of attention seems to increase exponentially with the size of the space and number of people present. Also that the dynamic of the group is effected by the number of people present – opportunities for any form of discussion between participants seem much more difficult at public meetings and the need for very careful facilitation increases. Wondering if you have found this about the larger meetings you have led?
26 April 2022 at 9:21 pm #6019AiYa – MeetingArkAdminKeymasterSo a cascade to a local laptop and even onwards to physical notebooks and boards.
22 September 2021 at 8:15 pm #4252AiYa – MeetingArkAdminKeymasterI was wondering if anyone has encountered the situation where the organisation’s diary system was down for an extended period of time – and what happened?
1 February 2021 at 11:59 am #765AiYa – MeetingArkAdminKeymasterThanks, Ron!
Introductions is an area that seems to have a lot of cultural factors that need to be taken into account. For example, in Japan, there are factors of the highly ritualised process of exchanging business cards. In both West Africa and the Middle East, one may be expected to share details about family and children – and ask the other people about them too – to a much greater degree than in the West.
25 January 2021 at 12:26 pm #557AiYa – MeetingArkAdminKeymasterHi Ron!
These are great – thank you.
Couple of questions for you –
First – do you have any specifics about how to invite people who you think it is very important that they attend but may be extremely busy (perhaps a person further up the organisation) and have a default of NO! to meeting requests?
Secondly – could you give an example of what might be useful framing for the person doing face to face – any pitfalls you have come across?
25 January 2021 at 12:19 pm #556AiYa – MeetingArkAdminKeymasterHi Ron!
Thank you for these.
I think there is a key point about joining instructions – it is not enough to go to the venue website and take what they say for granted about it being at the right level of detail – for example I have seen venue websites have maps of parking which just showed WHERE to park, but omitted that there were VERY FEW actual parking spaces – searching up peoples experiences of the venue and any issues that are flagged seems crucial. One cannot take anything for granted in creating joining instructions.
25 January 2021 at 12:13 pm #555AiYa – MeetingArkAdminKeymasterHi Ron!
Thanks for the above.
My experience with physical venues is that the 80/20 rule seems to apply. 20% of venues will give you 80% of your problems. I have seen venues that one might expect gold-standard service turn out to have next to no parking; have zero skills in helping set-up audio-visual equipment in terms of having the cables needed; of having forgetting / misplaced instructions on having delegates tea / coffee facilities etc.
Have you had any “character-building” experiences yourself in this department that you could share?
25 January 2021 at 12:06 pm #554AiYa – MeetingArkAdminKeymasterHi Ron!
Thanks for starting this off.
I was wondering if you had encountered situations in organisations where there is a culture of inviting just about everyone who might even be peripherally effected by the meeting to be there “just in case”. I have been in many meetings like this and wondering if there are any interventions to gently change the culture to reduce meeting attendee number without kick-back?
25 January 2021 at 12:02 pm #553AiYa – MeetingArkAdminKeymasterHi Ron!
Thank you for this.
I was wondering if you have come across issues with the different types of software used for this and if you have any ideas on how to deal with people (for example from other companies or organisations) who have to be at the meeting but are not on the internal booking system?
25 January 2021 at 11:54 am #550AiYa – MeetingArkAdminKeymasterAn interesting take on briefing documents is that of how Jeff Bezos at Amazon runs his meetings (with great success btw)
“No PowerPoints are used inside of Amazon,” Bezos proudly declares. “Somebody for the meeting has prepared a six-page…narratively structured memo. It has real sentences, and topic sentences, and verbs, and nouns–it’s not just bullet points.”
In his recent letter to shareholders, Bezos details the work that goes into these memos, which he says may take up to a week or more to write and refine:
“The great memos are written and rewritten, shared with colleagues who are asked to improve the work, set aside for a couple of days, and then edited again with a fresh mind. They simply can’t be done in a day or two.”
As my colleague Carmine Gallo recently pointed out, memos like these are a great idea because our brains process good storytelling much better than hard data. Such narrative memos give authors the chance to fully communicate the thoughts behind their ideas, and give meeting participants the chance to better understand full concepts.
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