You've prepared for the meeting, and now it's time to make that preparation useful. Watch out for common problems: letting the discussion get off track, letting the meeting run too long, and not getting participation you need.

Have the Right Roles

Inviting the people who need to be at a meeting isn't enough. You need the right roles. If you remember some of the team roles mentioned in Chapter 9, you'll have a sense for who you need here. Someone has to lead the meeting. You might think that should be you, as the team leader, but not so fast! Someone else might know more about the topic or actually be in charge of the aspect of team activity. In that case, take a back seat and let someone else take the position. The person might need some help in learning how to run a meeting, but you can always provide some coaching, and this is a great way to empower and delegate.

You'll want a facilitator to make sure everyone adheres to whatever rules you establish for the meeting (for example, no interrupting another person). People in this role can also suggest tools, like brainstorming techniques, that might help achieve specific ends. The documenter is responsible for taking notes for later distribution, and the timekeeper keeps an eye on the clock for everyone.

Stay on Time

You cannot afford to have meetings that start raggedly and end unpredictably. A meeting should have a hard end time. If you legitimately need to go past that point, then you can call a follow-up meeting or try to address as much as possible through the normal working process. What you want to do is keep everyone as on point as possible. You might need to limit aspects of discussion so that no one person takes more than, say, ten minutes on a given topic.

Stay on Track

Keeping people focused is difficult but essential to successfully running a meeting. The biggest meeting problem is aimlessness. To cure that, inject a dose of direction. The agenda will help, but only if you stick to it. Staying focused has an additional edge because it helps you stay within the time constraints.

There may be times when off-track issues are important. Make sure you note them down and follow up later, whether directly with people, through a meeting, or whatever avenue that makes the most sense.

Encourage Participation

A group gets together in a meeting to speak and listen. If you don't need the active discussion of others, then you are probably better off sending a memo or e-mail. You may find, though, that even if you need the participation of others, they may stay quiet.

You can directly engage them.

Create an atmosphere of openness. Demand a respectful attitude from yourself, and others will take note. Try occasional brainstorming sessions in which everyone offers as many ideas as possible without anyone criticizing or analyzing them. If some people seem painfully shy, you might ask them questions to draw them out. Request the opinions of those with expertise on specific topics. Make it a meeting, not a glorified lecture. At the end of any one discussion, when the meeting itself is about to conclude, leave some time to ask if anyone has any questions, concerns, or observations. Seldom will people bring something up, but for the few times they do, you'll be glad that you made this a regular feature.

Time Out

Pacing is important in meetings. You can put people to sleep or leave them scratching their heads, trying to grasp the details of what happened. It's fine to make the time restrictions you've set for the meeting, but don't do that at the expense of comprehension. Also, don't keep a meeting running longer than it needs to. If you've gone through the agenda, don't add things on. Everyone has things they need to be doing, and if you show that you respect their time, they're more likely to be cooperative in the future.

There are also times that meetings go long. Very long. There are even all-day meetings that you might legitimately need. Don't expect people to sit hour after hour. Plan frequent breaks.

Take Note

Go to a meeting and you'll see a collection of people sitting around with pads of paper, occasionally scrawling something down. They are all making a show of doing something, but they aren't, really. Now you've got a situation in which the participants, who may need to take specific actions as a result of the meeting, may or may not take adequate heed. This is why you have the documenter — someone whose responsibility it is to record everything of importance and to make the notes available after the meeting.

The documenter should work with a copy of the agenda at hand, so notes can refer to sections of the meeting. For a particularly complex encounter, you might consider having two documenters, each one independently taking notes. At the end of the meeting, you'll have two sets of notes that you can compare for a better chance of actually capturing all the pertinent information.

There are two schools of thought with documenters. One is that it should be a person involved with the subject. Another is that you should use a third party who is uninvolved with the proceedings, allowing those who are involved to participate. The former makes the most sense. If someone isn't involved with a project or event, it will be difficult for the person to take coherent notes or even to grasp what is happening. There are too many people who managed to successfully walk and chew gum at the same time — or participate in a discussion and take their own notes — to say it is impossible.