HOW TO FIX A MEETING GONE BAD

Despite all the best practices to ensure a leader is prepared for his or her meeting, there are times when a meeting will become unproductive. The book outlines scenarios where a meeting could go wrong and suggests how leaders can anticipate and hopefully remedy them before all is lost.

*Consistently begin and end meetings on time so people learn to respect the time limits.

*Give participants jobs to do during the session so they have a sense of responsibility to the meeting.

*Preempt early departures by asking if everyone can stay until the designated time.

*Ask privately why that participant missed a portion of the meeting and suggest ways to help if the problem is chronic.

*Walk closer to the person to draw the group’s attention to the leader and away from the speaker.

*Thank that individual for his or her input and call on someone else.

*Encourage that person to let others speak for themselves if he or she is inclined to finish everyone’s sentences.

*Ask the group to change roles and encourage the shy group members to speak up.

*Ask the chronic interrupters to write down their thoughts and wait until there is a pause in the conversation before contributing their ideas.

*Keep track of ideas on a whiteboard.

*Show signs of active listening to confirm understanding of the idea.

*Acknowledge that it is an important point for the group and ask for other suggestions.

* Explain the ground rules of expected behavior at the beginning.

* Make fresh connections to get the participant on track.

* Call for a break so group members can move around and regain focus.

*Ask the group if there is something they do not understand.

*Remind the group of the agenda items.

*Suggest a short break during complicated topics so people have time to ruminate.

*Remove the item from the agenda if it truly fails.

*Allow silence if it appears that the group needs time to reflect on an idea.

*Ask if anyone needs clarification.

*Suggest a short break to help individuals refocus.

*Reschedule the meeting if the group seems to need more time to consider the agenda items.

*Raise the issue immediately in order to start the conversation. Reassure the group that each person’s opinion is valid and important to leadership.

*Encourage members to keep their comments positive and constructive.

*Focus on the substance of the idea or opinion, not the personal style, status, or relationship.

*Evaluate every idea so no one feels judged too quickly or not listened to fully.

By internalizing these best practices and suggestions, any leader can learn how to run an effective meeting.

QUESTION TYPES

Along with the different ways to structure questions, there are also different types of questions. The two most basic are and . While good questions are generally the goal, sometimes bad questions are needed to throw people off guard.

There are six different types of good questions:

contain one interrogative, one noun or pronoun, and one verb. “Who are you?” is a direct question.

are questions that interrogators already know the answer to, but that are used to find out if someone is telling the truth.

allow the interrogator to get the same information in two different ways.

are similar to repeat questions in that they also check out a person’s story to determine truthfulness with multiple variations of the same questions.

summarize a few things that people say in order to verify that they actually did say them.

are used to mitigate tension or buy some time to review notes.

Conversely, there are four different types of bad questions:

are questions that supply an answer or point someone toward the answer.

such as “Is that not true?” are complicated and cause a lot of confusion.

are unclear and not concise. These questions are often antagonizing or confusing to the subject.

are typically two or more unrelated questions strung together.