8 Ways to Be a Better Leader During Meetings (Plus Bonus Facilitation Strategies!)
Most strategies to improve meeting effectiveness are pretty tangible and measurable. However, being an effective leader during the meeting is one that requires constant attention, feedback, and improvement. The types of situations you will encounter in a meeting require constant vigilance to your leadership behaviors.
Be transparent—Tell your team that you are trying to be a better team leader. Tell your whole team that you are trying to get better at using the agenda to guide meeting discussion. Do they have any suggestions to help you? If you share your own desires and expectations about the meeting, they will help you to achieve that. They will actually help you lead a better meeting by controlling their own behavior and even that of others.
Be the leader—Your role in the meeting is to be the leader of the group. You are not actually a member of the group when you are the leader. Well, except when you are. Especially when we have a split role as manager and player, it’s impossible to not have an opinion or have information that will help guide the discussion. However, be very careful about sharing that information. Because you are the leader, your opinion has more potential than others’ opinions to influence the outcome. When you have to step out of your meeting leader role, be sure to call it out. In this way, it gives the audience a chance to see that this piece of information is equal in value to other players’ input. For sure, never start with your opinion and then ask others to respond.
Be a role model—Whatever behavior you exhibit is the behavior you can expect from your team. Enough said. Consider asking trusted advisors if there are ways to improve your meeting leadership.
Pay attention—in addition to paying attention to your own behavior as a leader and role model, pay attention to the agenda and pay attention to the participants. Keep the agenda front and center and use it as your guide. It is an action plan—not a list of topics. Pay attention to the body language and verbal cues of the audience. When you perceive negative emotions—ask about it. “Is there something in the way you shared that comment?” “I see shaking heads. Are you be willing to share your thoughts?” “Have we discussed this enough? By a show of hands, who is ready to decide?” “Who would like to summarize?” Use your progress review questions to keep everyone on pace with the discussion.
Set standards—Take time with your regular group to establish meeting standards and protocol. When it is not a regular meeting group. Take a moment to lay out your meeting standards and expectations. Ask others if they would like to add anything they need from a meeting? Don’t be afraid to lead the meeting regardless of who is attending.
Manage contributions—It is okay to call out individuals for their opinion as long as your intentions are good ones. Don’t embarrass people on purpose. You know whom you haven’t heard from. You know who has differing opinions. Make sure you are fair and equitable. It is okay to ask individuals to give others a chance to speak up, ask them to “bottom-line” their comments, or stay on topic. The agenda will help a given person ensure their favorite topic will be discussed. Use facilitation tools, for example, to get individuals to do private thinking before answering or share in small groups. If you know your participants’ tendencies, talk to them outside of the meeting about how it impacts the meeting objectives overall. This can be a courageous step, but don’t expect some magic tool or method to fix this aspect of meetings. Some situations are best addressed outside of the meeting.
Don’t try to be the expert—When we are leading a meeting, it is easy to feel like we have to have the answers already. The purpose of the meeting is to access the groups’ knowledge and get alignment. When asked a question, try giving it back to the questioner. “I don’t know. What do you think?” Make it a real discussion point. Or try relaying it to other members of the group who might know. “Great question. Have you got an idea?”
Manage confusion—It is easy for participants to get lost in their own thoughts during a long meeting. Or to get lost in others’ thoughts as they ramble on. Use the agenda to keep conversations on topic. Regularly engage people to keep them in the conversation. Give people permission to figuratively step out if you know it is of no value to them. Break ideas down into smaller pieces and address one piece at a time. Do progress checks to keep everyone moving along in the discussion. Write down conclusions or summaries in a public space. It is too easy to forget what we already agreed to and want to go back and revisit.
Meeting leadership is one area for continuous improvement. Pay attention to the meeting leaders’ behaviors in some of your favorite meetings. How do they do it? Try it out for yourselves.
5 Strategies for Facilitating Better Meetings
If you're looking for tactical, actionable advice, I wrote out the top 5 facilitation strategies that I use to make meetings more effective, more enjoyable, and more participative. You can implement these tactical strategies TODAY and see immediate improvement. Click here to grab the strategies and start having better meetings!
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Jonathan partners with high-performing technical specialists to reach their full potential as people leaders. Combining his science background, corporate experience, and teaching skills, he creates a knowing and trusting relationship necessary to ask clients to do the hard work of building new skills, using their time differently, and embracing values that bring them and the organization the greatest success. To learn how Jonathan can help your organization, visit envisionpartnersllc.com.