People host meetings for a variety of reasons…
These are some of the reasons why people hold meetings:
Ha ha ha, while this is probably true at a certain level, it is not the point… ;p
The real point is to do any of (at least) the following possible reasons (which Sam Kaner and his Community At Work group have come up with in the Facilitator’s guide to participatory decision-making):
- Share information
- Provide inputs
- Advance the thinking
- Make decisions
- Improve communication
- Build capacity
- Build community
Is this it?
No other reason for meetings?
I was scratching my head about this (in 2016, as I’m revisiting this old draft) and here’s the outcome:
These 7 reasons for holding a meeting are a very good starting point, so there’s probably not much more that can be added to this list.
However:
‘Advance thinking‘ is pretty broad and contains useful notions underneath:
Sometimes people are coming together not so much to ‘advance the thinking’ as ‘trying to understand’ what it is they are really setting out to do.
I have been in meetings where a team was given a mandate or visualised a draft outcome but really had no idea how to go there or even if ‘there’ was the relevant destination.
Advance thinking can also mean more specifically: ‘testing, weighing, screening options’.
It can also focus on advancing ‘meta-thinking’, as in sharing ideas about process, communication, collaboration, to be more effective together towards achieving a greater result.
Providing inputs could also be labeled as ‘gathering’ inputs… But then how different is it from ‘advancing the thinking’?
What strikes me is that these 7 different types of meetings pull in the direction of different types of ‘shares’:
- facts and documents -including presentations- (sharing information),
- questions (advance the thinking),
- decisions (making decisions),
- ideas and opinions (provide input, share information),
- feelings (build community),
- capacities (build capacity),
- processes (advance the thinking)
Any type of meeting can also try and aim at each and all of these dimensions…
This initial list doesn’t pretend to be the definitive list of meeting types. But it helps to clarify the kind of contributions we’re hoping to invite, and the related group dynamics.
It’s with that ‘process literate‘ clarity that we can bring a useful mindset in approaching meetings to ensure they’re purposeful, productive, healthy and enjoyable.
And then, and only then, does it make sense to think about how to run them more effectively.
Related blog posts:
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