16.3 Conducting the Meeting

If all the world’s a stage, a meeting is a performance just like a job interview or speech presentation. Each member plays a role and should be aware of the responsibilities associated with it prior to the meeting. If the meeting’s participants don’t know each other, brief introductions at the outset serve to establish identity, credibility, and help the group get started on the business at hand. The purpose of the meeting should be clearly stated, and if there are rules or guidelines that require a specific protocol such as Robert’s Rules of Order (Kennedy, 1997), they should be declared.

Mary Ellen Guffey (2007) provides a useful checklist for participants as a guide for how to conduct oneself during a meeting, adapted below for our use:

• Be prepared and have everything you need on hand
• Arrive on time and stay until the meeting adjourns (unless there are prior arrangements)
• Turn off cell phones and personal digital assistants; don’t just switch them to vibrate and put them on the tabletop
• Engage in polite small talk with participants before the meeting begins; don’t cut yourself off from human interaction by looking at your phone
• Follow the established protocol for taking turns speaking
• Respect time limits
• Leave the meeting only for established breaks or emergencies
• Demonstrate professionalism in your verbal and nonverbal interactions
• Communicate interest and stay engaged in the discussion
• Avoid tangents and side discussions
• Respect space and don’t place your notebook or papers all around you
• Clean up after yourself
• Engage in conversation with other participants after

If you are cast in the role of meeting leader, you may need to facilitate the discussion and address conflict. The agenda serves as your guide and you may need to redirect the discussion to the topic, but always demonstrate respect for all members. You may also need to intervene if a point has reached a stalemate due to conflict and you need to push the meeting along to not fall behind the agenda schedule.

Transitions are often the hardest part of any meeting. Facilitating the transition from one topic to the next may require you to create links between each point. You can specifically note the next point on the agenda and verbally introduce the next speaker or person responsible for the content area. Once the meeting has accomplished its goals in the established time frame, it is time to facilitate the transition to a conclusion. You may conclude by summarizing what has been discussed or decided, and what actions the group members are to take as a result of the meeting. If there is a clear purpose for holding a subsequent meeting, discuss the time and date, as well as assignments for next time based on action items this time.