APU Careers Careers & Learning

How To Run a Meeting

By Susan Adams, Forbes.com
Special to Online Career Tips

Dr. Nadine Katz goes to a lot of meetings. Some of them last so long the participants have to order in food or switch rooms.

Eleven years ago Katz, who is senior associate dean, professor and director of medical education in the department of obstetrics, gynecology and women’s health at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City, decided she’d try to figure out how to make those endless meetings more efficient.

Her study produced great results at Einstein. Though she doesn’t like to toot her own horn–”I’m turning crimson right now,” she says when asked how her meeting style has helped her career–she has improved a slew of committee conclaves at her institution.

Six years ago she was promoted to associate dean, and more recently she became senior associate dean. “You never know who’s going to be in the room, and who might be considering you for another opportunity,” she allows. She even speaks to physicians’ professional associations about how to improve meetings.

Katz’s approach applies to meetings everywhere. Her tips go beyond the standard meeting advice about starting and ending on time, setting an agenda and sticking to it.

Her No. 1 recommendation: Prepare, prepare and prepare some more. Not only does she lay out in advance a detailed agenda for a meeting and touch base with the participants to alert them to important points, she also surveys the physical space where the meeting will be held–down to details like the room temperature and whether there might be a flickering fluorescent light bulb. “I am someone who believes in overly preparing,” she admits. When ordering refreshments, she even checks on individual taste. “If someone likes Tab, we order Tab,” she says. Small amenities like that can help participants feel welcome and eager to participate.

Katz says it’s always smart to lay out what she calls “norms,” codes of meeting conduct, at the outset, particularly when a group will be holding a series of gatherings.How does the group respond, for instance, when participants come in late? What if some attendees haven’t done their homework ahead of time? What about meeting hijackers, who try to grab the stage and steer the agenda in their own direction? Katz notes that this can be especially problematic when the latecomer or hijacker is a senior manager and the meeting leader is a junior staffer. If everyone understands the rules going in, such troublemakers are easier to rein in.

When it comes to hijackers who don’t obey the rules, Katz suggests the leader say something like, “Thank you for bringing up this issue. It’s clearly important. I’d like to check with the committee whether it’s OK if we table that point until we finish with the other items on our agenda.”

Sometimes a hijacker tries to physically displace the meeting leader, pulling his seat up and pushing the leader off to the side. Katz notes that, especially for women leaders, it’s smart to take the seat at the head of the table to command a position of authority.

That said, there are times when it makes more sense for the leader to sit in the middle of the group. Katz points to a twice-monthly operations meeting she has attended, where the leader chose not to sit at the head of the table. That put the participants at ease, she says, and it once led to a savings of $25,000, when a meeting attendee who might not otherwise have piped up alerted the leader to an impending renovation that affected trash storage. If the person hadn’t felt comfortable speaking, a structure would have been built that would soon have had to be demolished at undue cost.

What does Katz advise about long-winded colleagues who can’t for the life of them summarize their points? Wait until they take a breath, she suggests, and then jump in. Summarize their point and say, “You’ve brought up some important issues. I’d like to ask the group if we would like to continue with your point now, or put it at the top of the agenda for the next meeting.” That way the bloviator feels he’s been heard. You’re taking his point seriously. Bringing in the group helps get the meeting back on track without making the leader seem overbearing.

“You must never lose control of your meeting,” Katz concludes. “If you start to, you’ve got to wrestle it back. Remind everyone that you’ve got an agenda planned.”

This is an update of a story that ran previously.

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