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Quick Tips For Effective Noontime Meetings by Susan Keane Baker

There are some time-tested best practices for effective noontime meetings. You may be familiar with these – are you using them?

1. Provide an opportunity for everyone to contribute to the agenda. “Staff meeting agenda items” box that people can drop questions or challenges into during the week. Everything submitted 24 hours prior to the meeting gets a place on the agenda.
   
2. Pay attention to the details. A clean meeting space, adequate seating. Food helps.
   
3. Use a timed agenda and appoint a timekeeper to keep the meeting chair on track.
   
4. Keep a running list of actions that have resulted from the noontime meetings. Three months from now, people may forget that you decided to change the type of trashcan liners. A running list shows that the noontime meetings get things done.
   
5. Establish and post some ground rules. For example, “We start and end on time. We listen with respect to the opinions of others.”
   
6. Schedule meetings on a consistent basis. It’s every Friday at noon, or the second Wednesday of every month. People can then make appointments and take care of personal errands on non-meeting days.
   
7. Ask attendees what they like and dislike about your existing meeting format. When one manager did this, a staffer said that the meetings had become 90% gripe sessions, which she found discouraging. Others hadn’t noticed until it was brought up. They agreed that better balance could be achieved by limiting gripes to the first ten minutes of the meeting, followed by positive news or discussion.
   
8. If you invite a vendor to provide lunch, respect the dignity of that person by publicly acknowledging his or her effort.
   
9. Find a way to recognize those who attend regularly and those who arrive on time. One medical center publicizes that box lunches are provided for the first thirty people who arrive for the lunch time meeting. (Attendance is encouraged, but not mandatory.)
   
10. Communicate what happened at the meeting to those who attended and those who didn’t. Minutes should clearly indicate action items, and who is responsible for them. The minutes should be used in creating the agenda for the next meeting, so that action items aren’t forgotten.
    
11. Consider rotating hosts for the meeting. Create the list of responsibilities associated with hosting, and recognize each host.