The Politics of Meetings for People Who Hate Politics

There's a lot more to running an effective meeting than having the right room, the right equipment, and the right people. With meetings, the whole really is more than the sum of its parts. How the parts interact with each other and with external elements is as important as the parts themselves. And those interactions are the essence of politics for meetings. This program explores techniques for leading meetings that are based on understanding political interactions, and using that knowledge effectively to meet organizational goals.

ou're preparing for a team meeting in about an hour. It's your meeting, and you expect a difficult discussion, because a very polarizing issue must be decided by the close of business today. Some of the attendees, including the team lead from a subcontractor whose work is perennially late, will be attending by telephone. As you're puzzling through the problem of how to handle the mess, you get a phone call from your boss. The VP of Marketing called her, and he wants to "sit in on this one." He wants "to make sure things turn out right," whatever that means.

Are you confident that you can lead the team through such a complex situation effectively? Do you know what your choices are, and what tools are available to you?

Leading meetings effectively, and participating in meetings effectively, requires much more than agendas, conference rooms, flip charts, markers, speakerphones or projectors. You also have to know how to use them, and that's where politics enters. People need to feel heard, they hate to waste time, and the chair needs to know how to handle sticky situations. This insight-filled program deals with issues such as:

• What to do when powerful people "sit in"
• Where to sit in the room
• How to craft an agenda that drives the meeting
• How to prevent duels and how to intervene when necessary
• How to prepare and run telemeetings
• How to handle handouts
• How to plan and run an "issues-only" meeting
• How to avoid playing "Serial Status Report"
• How to get the right volunteers

Most of us begin our careers not leading meetings, but participating in them. As we advance in our organizations, we tend to carry this participation-oriented stance with us, and that causes problems. As leaders, we focus too often on participating in meetings, rather than leading them.

Managing a meeting begins with managing yourself. To keep your head clear, and to be ready to handle the sticky issues that sometimes arise, you must limit your load. In this workshop we provide a general framework that helps meeting leaders focus on leading the meeting rather than participating in its content.