Dealing With Common Meeting Problems
In every company or business, many different personalities have to work together. Great managers and leaders know how to handle these when overseeing a group trying to accomplish something. Managing the personalities takes development of strong people skills. Leaders joke that solving the business problems is the easy part; dealing with individuals is much harder.
No doubt, there will be times where difficulties happen during the meeting. The best way to handle it is see the problem coming, and find ways to prevent it from happening.
Jill was relatively new to the company. She joined the company recently and was on her way up the corporate ladder. She had proven herself as a talent by taking on a few big projects, and helped complete them on time successfully. She was always thinking up the next big idea, and one day it came to her.
She thought of a new marketing idea that could breathe new life into their product. The idea was very quirky, intelligent, and added a twist to the advertising campaign. She wrote down the details and what she thought would be a mini storyboard campaign. She had taken marketing in college, and remembered the steps to getting her idea on paper. Jill soon had something in succession that could tell the story and make a great idea stand out to the customer. The whole idea was brilliant!
She presented the idea to her core managers and really pushed herself to lead this idea. The managers agreed that she could take on this project and instructed her to present it to marketing. The goal was to bring on the core marketing team and give her the opportunity to develop the concept.
Jill scheduled a meeting later that week with the core marketing team. She went into the presentation of her new idea. On the first board, she presented the introduction to her idea. One of the marketing team members quickly stopped Jill, and he suggested changing the character to a more cartoonish type. Then the assistant marketing chief mentioned the character should be more in line with a different product.
The conversation went on about a cartoon character for another 15 minutes. Then the marketing team came back to look at the next slide. They quickly spun this off into several ideas about a cheesecake and a Corvette.
After the meeting was over, Jill returned to her core managers to update her progress. The block of time came for her presentation. "How was your presentation to marketing Jill?" the team leader asked.
Jill paused for a moment."It's like herding cats up there."
A great laughter erupted from everyone in the room.
"Yes, you do have quite a bit of Type A personalities in marketing," the leader explained.
"Next time, let's set the ground rules with them about going off on a different direction, and let them hear you out."
4.1 Too Formal or Informal of a Meeting
Too formal or informal of a meeting causes members a hard time to adjust. They simply do not know how to respond or provide the information available.Members feel out of place when a meeting becomes too formal. Having a low-level employee meeting with executives can place a high amount of stress and uncertainty on them.
When it's too informal of a meeting, the members tend to relax too much and not obey the ground rules set. This looks poor to the team leader or chair to allow a loose informal meeting on a business topic.
Participation in the meeting might suffer if the meeting is too formal.
4.2 Lack of Planning and Detail
Lack of detail can lead to mistakes and oversights on a project. "The devil is in the details." Missing a key piece of information due to lack of attention to detail can derail an entire project.
When there is a lack of planning, this prolongs confusion in the group. When members do not even know what conference room to attend, due to lack of planning, you can quickly lose attendance and credibility as a leader.
Lack of planning or detail can cause the meeting to lose focus quickly. The team can go down an entire different path, because the constraints are not there to stop it.
Participants keep talking around the issue, and never to the solution or problem. The real issues are not resolved or addressed.
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