This document provides 10 tips for effectively managing meetings based on a Harvard student's module on meeting skills. The tips include recruiting a strong diverse team, creating a conducive workspace, allowing equal participation, establishing an innovative brainstorming process, ensuring collaboration, balancing work and fun, achieving consensus, sharing responsibility, following up after meetings, and reviewing meetings for continuous improvement. For each tip, the student provides their personal perspective on how to best implement the suggestion based on their experience leading meetings.

1. Meeting Skills: Using Innovation to Drive Team Dynamics MODULE #4 Kavya Shankar Harvard University Class of 2014

3. #1: Recruit a strong team

5. If you ask me There is absolutely nothing more important than developing a strong team. You can be completely passionate about an issue and ready to innovate and take the organization to new levels, but, as cheesy as it sounds, there is no I in team. You need people who will tell you when your ideas suck, who will feed off of your excitement, and most importantly, those who will help you deliver and implement. Sometimes, these people can be your friends, but many times, I find that there ends up being a conflict of interest with your friends, especially because it’s hard sometimes to be viewed as an authority in their eyes as well as is hard to tell them what to do. Choose people who prioritize your activity, who are passionate about what they do, and who are reliable.

6. #2: Create a working space conducive to discussion

8. If you ask me The workplace is crucial to productivity. The absolute worst thing ever is when everyone is on Facebook during your meeting. It gets to be incredibly frustrating and slows down the progress. Build in works into the meeting, but make sure that the workspace is such that everyone can hear everyone (eliminates side conversation) and so that everyone is an active participant. Sometimes, it works well to get to your meeting early and to move around the desks in the classroom so that it is a circular formation. That way, everyone feels included and it’s hard for side conversation to start. Additionally, this way, everyone can see the board.

9. #3: Keep group polarization in mind

11. If you ask me I admit, I cause group polarization a lot of times. I voice my opinion very loudly and make it awkward for people to express something against my ideas. This is definitely not conducive to making the best decisions possible. You want to make sure that those who are louder don’t make all of the decisions. Give everyone a chance to speak and to think about what they want ahead of time by sending out the agenda. Additionally, you can sometimes go around and ask everyone for their opinion before free-for-all discussion. This lets you really synthesize viewpoints for the best possible decision.

12. #4: Create an innovative and specific process for brainstorming

14. If you ask me You want to create a working environment that is conducive to idea generation. If you set the standards way too high right from the start, people will be nervous about freely giving their ideas for fear of judgment or saying something stupid. Let the team know at the beginning that any idea goes at first and that you all will work on filtering and narrowing down the list afterward.

15. #5: Collaboration is King

17. If you ask me Sometimes, there’s the quiet person who is afraid of talking. But other times, the person seems quiet but actually has something to say. The problem is that the louder people are dominating the discussion. The best way I’ve seen to get around that is to sometimes go around in a circle and have everyone express his or her opinion. Another option is to single people out (nicely) such as “Bob, do you agree with that?” Finally, another option is to ask at the end “Is anyone NOT okay with this?” That gives the opposition a chance to speak out without feeling bad about being negative or pessimistic about an idea.

18. #6: Achieve the work-fun balance

20. If you ask me Side conversations are awful and while they are typically somewhat entertaining, they definitely detract from the meeting. You don’t want your meetings to be boring, but you still want to get work done! What I’ve done in the past is when someone says something off-topic, you write the topic on the side of the whiteboard. Then, at the end of the agenda, you guys go back to the different points and talk about them.

21. #7: Aim for a satisfied group consensus

23. If you ask me It sucks to have about half of your team feeling upset with the decision that is being made. To avoid something like this, be sure to ask “Is anyone NOT okay with the decision?” If nobody speaks up, that hopefully means that people at least understand the decision even if they don’t support it. The goal is to make sure everyone is invested in the project, so another option is to give each person ownership over a component of the project so that there is a strong sense of responsibility and accountability.

24. #8: Ensure shared responsibility

26. If you ask me This goes back to the idea of making your teammates happy. Ask them what part of the project interests them the most and assign based on that. I’ve found that the best work is produced when the team is excited about the idea, and this excitement starts with you as the leader. If you are truly passionate about your cause or about what you’re working on, then that passion will become contagious.

27. #9: Keep up the momentum post-meeting

29. If you ask me A lot of times, you’ll have a fantastic meeting, but then nothing will happen between that meeting and the next meeting. To avoid this, that evening after the meeting, send out the minutes with a list of exactly who needs to do what by when. Then, follow up a day or two before that deadline specifically with that person to make sure that they are on track. This ensures the highest amount of accountability. Sometimes, I ask individuals to give report-outs at our next meeting. This adds accountability because it’s embarrassing if you haven’t finished your work and everyone knows it.

30. #10: Review, reflect, and revise!

32. If you ask me There are a lot of different ways to do this. One thing I’ve done is a midyear evaluation of the officers. This is done anonymously and the feedback is used to constructively build a plan for improvement. Additionally, doing pluses and deltas helps find out what can be changed about the meeting structure. Finally, make sure you develop a culture that is conducive to feedback so that your teammates don’t feel embarrassed or awkward telling you to change something.

34. THANK YOU! KAVYA SHANKAR HARVARD, CLASS OF 2014 [email_address]