Ingredients Of Impactful Meetings

Effective group processes contain ingredients that create a cohesive, connected and focused container for your group to collaborate within.  The more clear and co-created these ingredients are, the more effective and efficient group work becomes. Below are the major ingredients that comprise rich gatherings:

• Advanced Notice: We juggle enormous amounts of things as we strive to keep our personal and professional lives on track;  the more you can help people plan in advance, the increased likelihood  the meeting will be productive, well attended, people will show up prepared, and thus, the meeting will be effective. This includes advanced notice of the logistics and the content. 

• Agenda Input: If you are convening people, they better have some skin in the game. Whether they obviously do, or nebulously don’t, your job as a convener is to not assume! Ask for input on your agenda before or after you send it out (e.g. “What additional questions, topics or suggestions do you have for this meeting?”). The more participants are brought into the process, and have the ability to “own” pieces of the process, the more likely they are to participate in the content, commit to the outcomes, and own the results. 
  Operating Agreements, Ground Rules, Community Agreements, etc: Meetings are opportunities for people to try out new ways of being together and help organizations evolve to more healthy, sustainable cultures. Some organizations have agreements well established, some have them and don’t use them. Many others have them operating unconsciously. Whatever version is installed in your operating system, before your group delves into the work, make these agreements made explicit. This will help you and yours work through the inevitable tensions and tumult that accompany the resolution of real challenges. Operating agreements should make clear: how decisions will be made, how conflicts will be resolved, how the group will work together, and how the group will internally and externally communicate. 

• Energy: That ephemeral thing that 99 percent of meetings don’t just lack, but drain. Energy in meetings is created by the same thing that creates energy everywhere, the concerted application of light, movement, and heat. How do we apply these elements without getting in trouble with HR? We design meetings that include movement, color, and rhythm and allow these properties to be transferred, easily, throughout the meeting space. 
  Connective Openings: Before people can connect to content, they must feel safe; connected to the space, themselves, and one another. For this reason, it is important that we take the time at the forefront of a meeting to connect. This is accomplished with "ice-breakers," check-ins and prompts that invite participants to speak in the group space and connect to their humanity and the content.

• Co-Created Middles: The middle of a meeting should look and feel more like a conversation than a presentation. If the highest paid person in the room is doing most of the talking, or the loudest voice is dominating then the middle of your meeting is likely draining your group and disengaging attendees. In the middle of great meetings there is space for co-creation. To encourage this co-creation, attendees can peel off into sub-topic groups and let their interests drive their conversation. 

• Powerful Endings: The brain is a funny thing. It tends to be a FiFo operation, remembering the first thing in (Fi) and the first thing out (Fo). So, how you start the meeting and end it are vital to how your participants experience and remember the engagement. Being intentional about how the meeting ends and ensuring it ends powerfully will begin to build momentum, engagement, and participation in your convenings. One of my favorite ways to wrap up a meeting is to invite all participants to stand up and share one thing they are walking away from the experience thinking/feeling.

Food from different cultures tastes and looks dramatically different, yet they all tend to incorporate similar elements: fire, salt, fat, and acid. Your group convenings should be the same, using the above ingredients creatively to concoct a rich experience. A meeting in a start-up environment is going to look and feel dramatically different than a meeting of a well established environmental organization. In either case, by incorporating the basic ingredients outlined in this chapter, you can begin to ensure your organizations meeting rituals are creating the conditions by which engagement can flourish and consistent productivity be practiced.