Hamburg (dpa) – All too often, the phrase “office meeting” conjures up images of a chat over coffee during working hours, gala performances by the office poseur, and a battlefield for ascendancy.
The prejudices are not far off the mark either, say experts. Even today, communication really only begins when the meeting has ended and the participants are outside.
Nevertheless, it can be highly profitable to get people with different skills and experience to come together – provided that there is a way of making all the assembled knowledge work for everyone. “The group can be more than the sum of its parts,” says psychologist and company consultant Hagen Seibt in Bochum.
In small businesses there is often no time set aside for internal harmonisation, says Sven Rudloff of Kienbaum Management Consultants in Gummersbach.
A meeting, perhaps with an overhead projector and flip-chart often appears to those responsible as far too technical, while in larger companies, management often promise themselves too much. “Meeting overkill”, as it’s known, can sometimes result in the topics covered only interesting half of the participants.
So it is that one of the most important things is the right selection of people. A worthwhile meeting generally only has five to seven participants, says Seibt. Organisational adviser Liselotte Kany in Hamburg agrees with colleague Rudloff that a group numbering a dozen is also feasible.
Kany stresses that the chosen few should go into the meeting well- prepared and with a proper agenda of topics to be discussed in some detail.
But even the best agenda cannot ensure that everyone will want to talk about the same subject, Seibt has found. “Before solutions are considered, the points of view of all those present must be collected,” he insists. In so doing, it is important that each person should sum up their feelings in their words and not simply say, “I agree with the last speaker.”
A good team leader will make sure that the less vocal members of staff also get a word in. Seibt recommends that the lowest in the pecking order, for example, a young colleague just joined, should present his or her point of view first, before anybody more persuasive gets the floor.
Rudloff too sees it as a definite boon to exploit the creativity and freshness of thinking of a company’s recent additions. “As a rule of thumb for the composition of the participations: 50 per cent should be people directly involved, 25 per cent experts and 25 per cent independents.”
Where chatterboxes are concerned, the experts are unanimous in recommending a fixed set of rules for the whole group. If the participants can agree on a time schedule, the person in charge of the meeting can stop the talkers without becoming personal. A rule could be included, for example, which limits each speaker to three minutes, says Kany.
It is much more difficult to get quiet people to contribute their knowledge as well. Rudloff suggests that the participants should first right down their proposals to solve a problem on a piece of paper or to take time away to work on it in a smaller group.
The non- talkers could explain their suggestions in front of the group afterwards. If the chairperson is a member of management, it may be worthwhile if the rest of the group are left alone for a time so that they can chew over spontaneous ideas unhindered.
In order to turn creative ideas into practical solutions, the meeting leader should set down any firm results on a flip-chart, says Kany. “Using visualisation techniques, you can stick to a result and those present can see that it’s binding.
Passages noting down afterwards in the minutes, on the other hand, are often greeted by denials or their author’s distancing from the statements. “If you ask everyone there and then: ‘Is this it then?’, you can see where resistance is straight away,” says Kany.
Seibt’s advise is that at the end of the meeting the participants jointly make up a list of tasks containing the names of the people responsible for their completion and the time frame in which they should be done or where interim results can be presented.
Rudloff believes it is enough to draw up the protocol by hand or just to keep keywords. It should be copied immediately and handed out to the others there – and not sent a week later by e-mail as is often the case.
With all these flip-charts, transparencies and minutes it shouldn’t be forgotten that real people come up against each other at meetings. Rudloff says it is not feasible to hope for 100-per-cent efficiency at such get-togethers. “Sixty per cent of the time should be set aside for planned topics, 20 per cent for the unpredictable and 20 per cent for social issues.”
Psychologist Hagen Seibt points to the American meeting culture in which the first ten minutes is reserved quite naturally for questions regarding spouses and children.
And when management allows, says Rudloff, the final moments of the meetings lend themselves excellently to raising a glass of bubbly on the occasion of a birthday or anniversary.
