Effective Meeting Management

People spend so much time in meetings that turning meeting time into sustained results is a priority for successful organizations.  Actions that make meetings successful require management before, during, and after the meeting.
If you neglect any one of these meeting management opportunities, your meetings will not bear the fruit you desire from the time you invest in meeting.  Take these twelve meeting management actions to guie meeting attendees to achieve expected, positive, and constructive outcomes.

Before the Meeting
Actions before the meeting establish the groundwork for accomplishing meeting results.  You can do all the needed follow-up, but without an effective meeting plan to start, your results will disappoint you.

Plan the Meeting
Effective meetings that produce results, begin with meeting planning.  First identify whether other employees are needed to help you plan the meeting.  Then, decide what you hope to accomplish by holding the meeting.  Establish doable goals for your meeting.  The goals you set will establish the framework for an effective meeting plan.  As Stephen Covey says in the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, "Begin with the end in mind."  Your meeting purpose will determine the meeting focus, the meeting agenda, and the meeting participants.

Make Sure You Need a Meeting
Once you've developed your meeting plan, ensure that a meeting is the appropriate vehicle for accomplishing the set goals.  To schedule and hold a meeting is expensive when you account for the time of the people attending.  So, make efforts to determine that a meeting is the best opportunity to solve the problem, improve the process, or make an ongoing plan.
You may find that you can accomplish the meeting goals with an email discussion or by distributing and requesting information through another means.  Make sure the meeting is needed and not just convenient for  you - you'll get better results from attendees.

Ensure Participation at the Meeting
If a meeting is the appropriate means to accomplish you goals, check with the participants who must attend for the meeting to succeed.  The needed attendees must be available to attend the meeting. Postpone the meeting rather than holding a meeting without critical staff members. If a delegate attends in the place of a crucial decision maker, make sure the designated staff member has the authority to make decisions - or postpone the meeting.

Distribute and Review Pre-work Prior to the Meeting
How many meetings have you attended that started out with the meeting facilitator passing out a ream of handouts or projecting a PPT slide for discussion?  Frustrating?  You bet.  The meeting becomes a group read-in, hardly productive for goal accomplishment. You can make meetings most productive and ensure results by providing necessary pre-work in advance of the actual meeting. Providing pre-work charts, graphs, and reading material 48 hours before a meeting affects meeting success.  The more preparation time you allot, the better prepared people will be for  your meeting.

Documentation that will help you achieve the meeting goals can include reports; data and charts such as competitive information, sales month-to-date, and production plans; PPT slides that illustrate key discussion points; and minutes, notes and follow-up from earlier or related meeting and projects.  Pre-work distributed in a timely manner, with the serious expectation that attendees wil read the pre-work before the meeting, helps ensure meeting success.

During the Meeting to Ensure Effective Meetings
Effective use of meeting time builds enthusiasm for the topic.  It generates commitment and a feeling of accomplishment from all the participants.  People feel part of something bigger than their day-to-day challenges.  Therefore, a well-facilitated, active meeting, that sets the stage for follow-up, will produce meeting results.

Effective Meeting Facilitation
The meeting leader sets a positive, productive tone for interaction among the meeting participants.  Effective meeting facilitation starts with a review of the goals, or anticipated outcomes, and the agenda.  The facilitator helps the group members stay focused and productive.  Meeting design and the agenda set the framework for the meeting.  An effective facilitator, who keeps participants on track, ensures the accomplishment of expected, desired results to the meeting.

Use the Pre-work in the Meeting
Use or reference the pre-work and other information supplied prior to the meeting during the meeting.  You reinforce the need for participants to spend the time needed upfront to review material that is integral to accomplishing the desired results.  Your participants will prepare prior to attending your meetings and your results will bear testimony to solid preparation and leadership.

Involve Each Participant in Actions
Every work group has various personalities that show up for meetings.  You have quiet coworkers and people who try to dominate every platform.  Whether facilitating or attending the meeting, you need to involve each attendee in the accomplishment of the meeting goals.
This ensures that each participant is invested in the topic of the meeting and in the follow-up.  You'll accomplish more results with the whole team  pulling than with one dominant staff person trying to push everyone up the hill.

Create an Effective Meeting Follow-up Plan
During the meeting, make a follow-up plan with action items.  Effective plans include:

• the specific action item
• the name of the person who committed to "owning" the accomplishment of the action item
• the due date of the action item
• an agreement about what constitutes completion of the action item

Discuss real life scenarios and barriers to success that team members may experience as they try to accomplish the items that will produce the required results.  Set a time for your next meeting, if needed, while participants are in attendance.

After the Meeting to Ensure Effective Meetings
Actions and planning before and during the meeting play a big role in helping you achieve expected, positive, and constructive outcomes. Your actions following the meeting are just as crucial. Follow-up at the next scheduled meeting is never enough of an investment to ensure results.

Publish Meeting Minutes
Begin publishing your minutes and action plan within 24 hours. People will most effectively contribute to results if they get started on action items right away. They still have a fresh memory of the meeting, the discussion and the rationale for the chosen direction. They remain enthusiastic and ready to get started. A delay in the distribution of minutes will hurt your results since most people wait for the minutes to arrive before they begin to tackle their commitments.

Effective Meeting Follow-Up
Respecting and observing deadlines and follow-up will help you achieve results from your meetings.  The deadline was established during the meeting.  Following the meeting, each person with an action item should also make a plan for their personal accomplishment of their commitment. Whether they write the steps in their planner, delegate the tasks to another staff person, or just complete the task, the individual is responsible for the follow-up.
So is the meeting planner. You can improve meeting results by following up with each person who has an action item mid-way between meetings. Your goal is to check progress and ensure that tasks are underway. Remember that what you ask about gets accomplished.

Accountability for Follow-up during the Next Meeting
Have you ever sat in a follow-up meeting that consisted of each participant telling the group why they were unable to accomplish their commitment?  It is unfair to the rest of the group!  Establishing the norm or custom of accountability for results begins early in your meeting cycle.
Follow-up by the facilitator mid-way between meetings helps, but the group must make failure to keep commitments unacceptable.  Report on progress and outcomes at the next meeting and expect that all will have been accomplished.  Alternatively, check progress at the next meeting and if there is a real roadblock to progress, determine how to proceed.

Debrief the Meeting Process for Continuous Improvement
The practice of debriefing each meeting is a powerful tool for continuous improvement. Participants take turns discussing what was effective or ineffective about the current meeting process.  They also discuss the progress they feel the group is making on the topic of the meeting.  Taking continuous improvement to another level, successful teams debrief their entire project as well as the process to determine how effectively they managed to create results.  Future meetings reflect the evaluation.  Meetings evolve as an even more effective tool for creating organized results.

Conclusion
Results are achievable and predictable from well-planned and implemented meetings. Follow these twelve recommendations to ensure that meeting attendees achieve expected, positive, and constructive outcome from the time invested in meetings.

--Junior League of Winston-Salem

21st Century Learning & Innovation Skills - The 4 C's

Creativity and Innovation

Think Creatively

• Use a wide range of idea creation techniques (such as brainstorming)
• Create new and worthwhile ideas (both incremental and radical concepts)
• Elaborate, refine, analyze, and evaluate their own ideas in order to improve and maximize creative efforts.

Work Creatively with Others

• Develop, implement and communicate new ideas to others effectively
• Be open and responsive to new and diverse perspectives; incorporate group input and feedback into the work.
• Demonstrate originality and inventiveness in work and understand the real world limits to adopting new ideas
• View failure as an opportunity to learn; understand that creativity and innovation is a long-term cyclical process of small successes and frequent mistakes

Implement Innovations

• Act on creative ideas to make a tangible and useful contribution to the field in which the innovation will occur

Critical Thinking and Problem Solving

Reason Effectively

• Use various types of reasoning (inductive, deductive, etc.) as appropriate to the situation

Use Systems Thinking

• Analyze how parts of a whole interact with each other to produce overall outcomes in complex systems

Make Judgments and Decisions

• Effectively analyze and evaluate evidence, arguments, claims and beliefs
• Analyze and evaluate major alternative points of view
• Synthesize and make connections between information and arguments
• Interpret information and draw conclusions based on the best analysis
• Reflect critically on learning experiences and processes

Solve Problems

• Solve different kinds of non-familiar problems in both conventional and innovative ways
• Identify and ask significant questions that clarify various points of view and lead to better solutions

Communication and Collaboration

Communicate Clearly

• Articulate thoughts and ideas effectively using oral, written and nonverbal communication skills in a variety of forms and contexts
• Listen effectively to decipher meaning, including knowledge, values, attitudes and intentions
• Use communication for a range of purposes (e.g. to inform, instruct, motivate, and persuade)
• Utilize multiple media and technologies, and know how to judge their effectiveness a priori as well as assess their impact
• Communicate effectively in diverse environments (including multi-lingual)

Collaborate with Others

• Demonstrate ability to work effectively and respectfully with diverse teams
• Exercise flexibility and willingness to be helpful in making necessary compromises to accomplish a common goal
• Assume shared responsibility for collaborative work, and value the individual contributions made by each team member

Behaviors of an Effective Leader

Behaviors of an Effective Leader

1. Listen attentively. In our culture of Facebook and Twitter, we get used to posting statuses and updating everyone with our own lives that we are forgetting how to listen. To lead students, colleagues, and administrators effectively, it is important to listen. Sometimes, I take notes or type while I am listening to make sure that I do not talk and to have something to refer back to with the other party to ensure that I have heard correctly. Some art teachers doodle to aid listening! Just make sure that you pre-empt your doodling by stating that this is how you have learned to be a better listener! In recent times, I have been involved in many phone conferences or meetings through the computer. These experiences have forced me to be a better listener because if I am talking too much, other members do not have a chance to speak. I also have to wait for others to respond (especially if I can't see members of the meeting through the computer screen). I now realize that while I thought I was a good listener in the past, I really was just waiting to speak. There is a difference.

2. Find solutions. Instead of reporting a problem; work to find a solution. In our classes, we teach students how to problem-solve. As adults, we need to model this behavior. I often ask my students or colleagues to help me brainstorm a solution to the presented problem and then work on it together. If I have to take a problem to an administrator, I generally will present the problem and then try to give three solutions for how to resolve it. Better yet, don't even state that there is a problem and just give suggestions as to how to find resolve.

3. Give credit. This is not easy to do - especially in a school system. Our parents, administrators and colleagues often are quick to give credit to the students and teachers are easily overlooked. As a result, we find ourselves in situations where we want to add information about ourselves to gain credit. However, effective leaders move past this and in proactive communication can state what he/she was able to accomplish but also state the others involved that helped to get us there. Make a point to give credit often and regularly to those around you and develop a habit of doing so. This doesn't mean that you think less of yourself - you just think of yourself less.

4. Communicate well. Be proactive in your communication. Be clear, be concise, and be unemotional! Write, edit, and rewrite e-mails before sending. Proof your work for grammar. Think about tone and how you come across in your communication. It is important to be direct, communicate the facts, and demonstrate compassion and flexibility all in one fell swoop. This takes practice and is not easy to do! Get into the habit of thinking through conversations before they start and considering how you present not only yourself but the facts of what you would like to communicate. As teachers, we always want to say the right thing and be kind and we need to use this to our advantage in difficult communication scenarios. Rehearsing, writing, and listening will help anyone be a better communicator.

5. Acknowledge mistakes. How often do we really hear other adults state that they were wrong! Not very often! Admit when you made a mistake, apologize, seek to find resolution and then move on. Acknowledging a mistake does not mean that you have to feel guilty about it for the next year and apologize repeatedly! The key here is to acknowledge, learn and move on.

6. Value Diversity. Value diversity in age, gender, race, culture, learning styles, personalities, communication styles, etc. The list is endless. Every conversation with someone else is a chance to listen and embrace differences and to learn.

7. Demonstrate. Practice what you preach and lead by example. Your students are always watching you as are your colleagues. Think about it - what behaviors did you demonstrate today in your actions?

8. Integrity. This is defined as the possession of steadfast adherance to high moral principles and standards. In our jobs, we expect our students to demonstrate integrity. Professionally, we should expect the same of ourselves and our colleagues. A leader not only demonstrates integrity but holds true to a vision of high moral principles and standards for his/her classroom, department, school, and community. A leader will share this vision with others as well as model it.

9. Understand the effect of your behavior on others. Leaders know that every word that is spoken and comment that is written has an effect on others and that there are consequences. Think before you speak, edit before you hit the send button, and watch your facial expressions and body language because everything you do in a leadership position will be modeled or has the potential to be misinterpreted by someone else. Choose your actions carefully.

10. Is accessible. The constant balance in most leadership positions is accessibility. It is difficult to be accessible and still maintain enough time to accomplish tasks both personally and professionally. A good leader will maintain a controlled schedule and be flexible enough to modify that schedule based on needs as they arise. This is often very difficult to do and it can be a daily challenge to also make time for oneself.

11. Remains flexible. We've all seen it before - an individual so controlling that he/she leaves a path of bodies in his/her wake! Flexibility does not mean that you are weak. Rather, it means that the person that aspires to lead must be willing to listen, to be wrong, and to follow when more effective leaders emerge. It means being willing to take a detour, stop, slowdown, and change plans - all the while acting with integrity, compassion, and vision.

12. Requires accountability. Being flexible doesn't mean that you have to be a doormat. A good leader knows that results are achieved when there is accountability for both professional and personal behavior in students, colleagues, administrators, and parents. Accountability does not mean ruling with an iron fist, but it does mean that it is OK to communicate proactively about expected results and assist the other person or group of folks in recognizing how their contributions or lack thereof might affect others

13. Avoid quick judgements. Becoming a better listener also means that you learn to collect the facts before you jump feet first into making assumptions about someone, a situation, or a chain of events. Slow down, listen, ask questions, and then make your judgment.

14. Has a vision and shares it. If a leader is able to understand the big picture and break it down for others to help accomplish - this is truly a remarkable gift! Being able to effectively communicate vision and allow others to participate in your journey makes any job more interesting and allows for friendships over shared accomplishments that can last a lifetime. It also allows other to appreciate the process and learn and grow as leaders themselves.

15. Shares leadership. One person alone cannot accomplish everything successfully long-term.

16. Builds positive relationships. Isn't any job more fun when everyone gets along?

17. Builds consensus. Take the time to share vision, listen to differing opinions and build consensus for the process. In the end, everyone will win and the goal will be achieved - which is always the ultimate goal of a good leader!

Resources: The Association of Junior Leagues International, Inc.

Teachers as Leaders

Teachers are often not prepared to be leaders in their school. We are not trained on it in college as part of our preparatory studies. Yet once we hit the classroom, it is expected that we not only model strong leadership skills to our students, we ought to be leading the charge with our peers as well. I find this especially true with fine arts instructors. We have a special role within our schools to be cheerleaders for our programs and our students, to communicate proactively about our program needs, goals, and vision, and along the way, we should also know how to persuade others to support us in our endeavors.

While much is published for leadership in business, one does not see books for leadership in teaching on the New York Times best-seller list! Yet, there are many, many things we do every day to mold and influence our students to be leaders - and none of this comes from a vaccuum. Leadership is learned and it is the teachers and mentors in our lives that share it and help us along the way.