3 Steps to Have the Right People At Your Next Meeting

​Here is a riddle: What happens in a meeting when the right people aren’t there? The answer: Nothing—other than reinforcing the stereotype that meetings are a waste of time. 
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The meetings you want to be known for—inspiring, engaging, results-driven—require having the right people in them. This is a basic premise for meeting effectiveness but one that is commonly violated. To have the right people in the room, you need to shift your approach to extending invitations. Two common extremes are inviting everyone you can think of or attempting to fly beneath the radar by inviting as few as you can.

Avoid these extremes by following three simple steps. First, with your meeting outcomes defined, consider what each potential participant will contribute in support of achieving the goal. Here are a few examples of what the right participants can contribute:

• Share valued content based on experience or expertise.
• Commit resources—money, materials, people, or others.
• Approve plans developed during the meeting.
• Accept responsibility for next steps.
• Represent an otherwise under-represented perspective in the meeting. (This contribution can be critical in certain situations. Post-meeting power plays and political posturing by the unrepresented can easily derail a meeting’s accomplishments after the fact.)
• Facilitate the meeting’s processes.
• Manage administrative needs such as documenting decisions, agreements, and results.

Second, determine if the people you are considering inviting will have decision-making authority during the meeting—either by default or by delegation. Delegated decision-making authority can work, as long as the ultimate decision maker will stand behind what his proxy committed to during the meeting.
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And, third, before extending invitations, decide if it will be acceptable for invitees to send a representative, and if so, how the representative will participate. You don’t want a room full of stand-ins there to take notes on what happens—you want everyone present to be making things happen.
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These three steps ensure you are asking the right contributors to be there and positioning the meeting to accomplish its goals in the time allotted—rendering it anything but a waste of time.
 
Looking for more guidance on boosting your productivity in group and one-on-one meetings? That is what Don’t Waste My Time: Expert Secrets for Meetings that Inspire, Engage and Get Results is all about.  Get your copy today and run better meetings tomorrow!

​©2019 Kimberly Devlin, All rights reserved