The Retrospector

I stumbled onto an article the other day from The Chief Happiness Officer blog about the effects of starting a meeting off with a positive round. This sure triggered some memories about countless tips on project management I’ve gathered in the past, but my first reaction was that this applies to more than just meetings. Granted, it’s most applicable in a meeting environment, but I think that conference calls, emails, even the occasional self-reflection is better off when you’re able to think of something positive first before heading into a full analysis.

Effective meeting structure

I don’t want to sound like I’m advising you to misrepresent anything. By all means be totally honest with everyone about things. However, the structure in your delivery can really have a positive or negative impact on your message as a whole.

At one of the first companies I worked for, I noticed right away that there was a pattern for meetings and for most any form of communcation to a group:

1. Start with a summary of what the discussion is about.
2. Point out something positive.
3. Describe the overall goals and objectives.
4. Recap the direction and action items, if any.
5. Motivate as much as possible during the recap.
6. Thank everyone.

The part that stuck out here was the point out something positive. With any project, something is happening. It’s really not hard to find a positive to point out and give credit for in group projects unless you’re just in a really shitty project with a total set of losers for a team. If that happens, at least try to highlight something good that you’re going to do.

Having felt a sense of accomplishment and recognition is highly motivating. One of the points I’ve made in a previous article about motivating geeks elaborates more on why this is a crucial step in keeeping motivation in the group. Starting off with postive points in a meeting is a great opportunity to give that recognition in there where it’s deserved before diving deep into controversial materal for the rest of the discussion.

May as well make the best of the unavoidable

I really hate meetings. They are, however, a necessary evil sometimes to keep effective collaboration amongst a group. The one-man-show should have no trouble with just communicating status upward because all the other coordination is simply happening in his mind. Having others to work with complicates things because if there’s communication barriers mistakes work their way into flawed designs or implementations.

So, if you have to sit through or coordinate meetings every week. I would say a good idea is definitely to start off as Alex mentioned in the link above, with a positive point that can set the pace of the conversation for your entire encounter be it a group meeting, call, or email.

What ideas do you have to put a nice positive spin on things before you get started? Do your meetings ever start out with a totally negative feel where you just get totally torn between wanting to work somewhere else and digging in your heels? Maybe putting the positive note somewhere else in the meeting structure has worked well for you. Share some insight, I’m interested in what you have discovered.

Tags: communication, meeting, positive+influence, collaboration