Meeting Etiquette

A word about group meetings. In general, they are the biggest waste of time known to man. A one on one meeting with a client tends to be very useful. When the talking points are over, the meeting is over. But when 5 or more people get together to discuss a number of topics on an agenda, the reverse is true. There is always one person, usually more than one person, who doesn't understand what the meeting is about.

Here are some general guidelines:

1. Understand the purpose of the meeting. If we meet to discuss fundraising possibilities for a business non-profit organization, no one there wants to discuss what the font size should be on the organization's website. That is not the purpose of the meeting and it is a waste of my time to debate it. If we discuss the possibility of charging for an education session to members of an industry, I don't want to discuss the types of materials that would need to be distributed.

2. If you have nothing valuable to add, use restraint and shut up. To those of you who don't know how to sit in a meeting and not talk, a word of advice: general strategy sessions are just that. They exist to debate the pros and cons of various approaches to solving problems. They do not exist so you can demonstrate your knowledge of some minutia detail that won't be an issue if we can't talk our way through the major points.

3. Don't continue to debate the unknowable. If we don't know the answer to a particular issue, assign the topic to someone to look into outside the meeting and give them a deadline for reporting the information to the group. There is absolutely no point in continuing to debate a topic when the critical piece of information is not in the room. Done, move on to the next topic.

4. When necessary, form a committee. Do not try to solve a complicated problem with 20 people in the room, 15 of whom do not care about the problem to begin with. Form a committee and debate the issue outside of the 15 uninterested people and then report your findings in a clear concise way at the next general meeting.

5. Provide an agenda and manage the meeting. The person who calls the meeting should be organized enough to spend 2.5 seconds typing out an agenda and spend the entire meeting keeping people on track. You know that person who wants to discuss the color of the ink is out there - you have to find a way to occupy him/her so he/she won't run away with the meeting. Try putting the snacks in front of him/her.