Comments on: Don’t be the secretary

By: Alistair

Alistair — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 20:31:00 +0000

Meetings *can* be great and productive, but all too often they are tedious and unproductive. The role of meeting facilitator is crucial to the success of a meeting. I recently attended one of the best meetings I’ve ever been to. What made it so good was that it was well organised (not by me, I should add). It was a project retrospective meeting and the relevant attendees all had 2 minutes to talk about 2 good things and 2 bad things about the project. Other attendees got to listen but not talk. After this we had a time-limited session to identify and discuss the 2 main negative points that had been raised. This was followed by a summary. The whole took an hour and five minutes and everyone went away feeling we’d really achieved something, identified important issues and ways of avoiding these.

Instead of someone having to make notes, I took along a little digital recorder and stuck the resulting MP3 on a Web page afterwards for people who could make it along to the meeting to have the chance to listen to. It will also be useful to listen to the recording a few months down the line and check that we’ve improved on the issues we identified.

I find note-taking can be (oddly) distracting and can restrict you from taking part in a meeting. Making an audio recording can be an alternative, provided the meeting isn’t too long. Provided someone sums up, you can always just publish the recording of the summary.

By: Gordon McLean

Gordon McLean — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 13:33:34 +0000

I agree, and generally tend to become a meeting faciliator by default!

By: w0

w0 — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 13:27:56 +0000

Nothing irks me more when TWs agree to be reduced to the secretary (and not to say that a strict-secretary-role isn’t honorable, but it’s not a skilled, professional job). It’s one of the things that diminishes our profession.

I think tho, because of our vocational perspective and ability to focus on the big picture & end result, TWs are in the position to function as a meeting facilitator or leader. There’s some sense that a communication facilitator is a fluffy job, but if you can shorten a meeting from 5 to 4 hours, or eek that much more value from the discussions, you’ve provided a real service to the group.

I was in a meeting a few weeks back and it quickly dawned on me how the discussion was going in circles. Had I actually gotten out of my chair and written the points we were struggling with on the white board, we could have saved 5 minutes; in an hour-long meeting that’s significant.

Further, why am I the only person I know who thinks that meetings are great? Common wisdom states that no one likes meetings and that they’re a waste of time. I’ve always felt that meetings are where the most progress on a project takes place. After all group members are on the same page there’s a renewed sense of enthusiasm for the project.