Acquiring a Meeting Attitude: Preparing

By admin

Our attitude for a meeting is quite similar to that for the formal presentation. We need that attitude of healthy indifference we talked about in Part II. We can’t control all the participants, so we had better not care very much about their responses. We follow the steps of preparing, and anticipating the unexpected. Then we go about our business and, once prepared, look forward to whatever comes after the meeting, and get ready to enjoy the meeting as it unfolds.

Getting ready for a meeting, just like getting ready to write a document or to present a briefing, has two aspects: physical preparation and mental preparation. These are not unfamiliar to us, because we looked at how they applied to documents and presentations in Parts I and II of our little book. However, the uncertainty of the meeting introduces additional dimensions to these aspects.

Physical preparation is pretty much the same as that for a document or a presentation. If we have used the scripting techniques in our planning stages, preparing the physical material is essentially the same as discussed earlier for documents and presentations. The real issue in physical preparation for a meeting is not the materials, but the environment—what will be the logistics and choreography of the meeting room, and how we can best use this to our advantage. Earlier, I commented several times about the meeting being essentially a less-controllable situation than the document or the presentation. However, the environment is often an exception to this rule. We may actually have more familiarity with the physical space than for a document or presentation because it will often be the local conference room.

The first thing to do is pay a visit to the meeting room, ask ourselves a few questions, and do some thinking. Where will the chairperson sit? Where will we and the other participants sit? Where can the interruptions, such as doors and telephones, come from? How do we want to address the participants—sitting, standing, or moving to the front of the room? How shall we distribute materials—all at once or as they are addressed? Basically, we need to determine, based on our knowledge of what is supposed to transpire, how we shall physically fit into the event. If we want to be noticed and have strong issues to address, we would be better off seated close to the point of attention, which is usually the chairperson or the projection screen (if charts will be shown). If we want to disappear into the crowd, we would be better off somewhere in the middle of the rest of the folks. If we want to escape early, we need to be close to an exit, and oblique to the gazing direction of the chairperson. There is no magic rule for all of this, and we cannot describe and resolve all possible instances in a book of any size, much less in a little book. The essence is simply to prepare and anticipate how and where we want to fit in. Think of it as a play to be choreographed, with due allowance for the unexpected, as I shall discuss later in this chapter.

Mental preparation for a meeting is very similar to that for a presentation: we care a lot about the material, less about the participants, and very little about the outcomes. We want our handouts, charts, or discussions to be polished and professional, and that is why we prepare them as we would for a document or a more formal presentation. But it’s just not a good idea to get all excited over the anticipated outcome of a meeting. We probably have to care a bit more about the participants than we would about the audience for a more formal presentation, because these participants may be mostly colleagues who will be interacting with us regularly. So we are at a bit of a disadvantage here because we cannot simply brush off the participants as we would most presentation audiences.

The key is not to worry about the outcomes of a meeting, and once again to look forward to the next actually enjoyable event in our lives. Now, for some people, meetings may actually be enjoyable. I have heard of such people, but, as with leprechauns and extraterrestrials, I have not had the pleasure of personally knowing any. For most of us, a meeting is like a visit to the dentist—a lot of pain, noise, and drilling. So why dwell on the discomfort? Just look ahead to your next enjoyable event. As with preparing for a presentation, this attitude will relax you.

Outcomes of meetings get too much attention, in my opinion. Just for fun, do a little experiment sometime. Pick a project or other activity that involves a series of meetings and do some analysis. Record the outcomes, which should be directions or conclusions of importance to the project, and keep track of what happens to them. What bearing do the outcomes have on the actual efficiency of the program or its products? If you think you will find a correlation, then you will be surprised. Directions are often ignored and conclusions are frequently overturned by other events (or the next meeting in the queue). If you actually do find a correlation among meeting results and project performance, by all means try to figure out how it happened and write your own little book about it; you will have discovered something unique and valuable.

Then, given that meeting outcomes are not such a big deal anyway, our mental preparation is easy. We simply review our material and assume an attitude of contented indifference. We are going to attend, participate, and offer our wares, but what actually happens in the meeting is not a big deal because its outcomes are likely to have a shorter life and less significance than that of a fruit fly. So we can just relax, get through the meeting, and enjoy the show—which brings us to the subject of unexpected turns of events.