Meeting Design
Meeting Design
Meetings are crucial for companies since they help in communication and coming up with strategies which a company requires to put in place. For this reason, various stakeholders hold meetings to receive communication on relevant information which requires awareness or endorsement for the company to continue with its adoption. Therefore, the success of a meeting depends on its design and the practices put in place to ensure that such a meeting becomes a success.
The best design of a meeting is to lay down the plan of a meeting. This will include identifying the meeting objectives, designing the meeting based on those objectives, executing the meeting, and finally assessing the meeting results (Cohen et al., 2011). Following this criterion, it will aid to a great extent in running a meeting which eventually gives the value to its purpose as every aspect of the meeting is tackled by details and objectives of the meeting. The objective of the meeting in this scenario is to address the negative aspects of the company and thus there is a need to choose the wording and the approach to suit this situation. It involves addressing the problem and not celebrating the achievement. Thus there is a need to be wise in the choice of words to portray remorsefulness and devotion to addressing the challenges at hand.
The ultimate purpose of a meeting design is to ensure that the objective of the meeting is attained. For this situation where the meeting involves the board of directors scattered across the country, there is a need to ensure that the meeting touches on the objective of the company and the issues at hand. The issues which need to be addressed in the company include low profits, pending lawsuits and high level of employee turnover. These are not positive things about a company’s performance. In order to attain the objective of the meeting of deliberating on these issues then there is need to come up with the suggestions which aim at resolving them.
First, there is a need to start with the strengths and positive things in the company. This involves recognizing the fact the company is headed in the right direction and to clearly show that the company despite having challenges has a potentiality. This will begin by looking at functional areas such as the operations, the human resource policies which have been put place. Also, there is also need to look back to some years back and acknowledge the success which was attained in order to make it clear that despite the challenges in which the company is facing there is hope since the company has been doing well in the past.
After which the meeting is steered towards mentioning of the challenges which the company is currently facing. Each of these challenges is addressed independently in order to be able to understand each problem and its possible causes. When the members have known what the problems are, there is need to propose the solutions by engaging the members to give their views over some of the challenges which have been identified as the cause of the problems in which the meeting seeks to address.
Members’ engagement will then be made possible to ensure that all the resolutions which are provided are not one person’s affair but unanimous decision. This will help the members feel respected and worthy in decision-making. It also gives an opportunity to come up with better suggestions of what can be done to solve these challenges. Maslow’s psychology supports the rationale for choosing to approach the meeting from the perspective of the objective and also starting with the strengths.
According to Maslow, a lower level of needs is satisfied before moving to the next level and therefore in the meeting scenario; there is need to make the board feel that their presence is worth by allowing them to participate and thus this help in unlocking what is in them (Winston, 2016). Also focusing on the strengths before looking at the negative aspects also helps to create a sense of consideration and possibilities. It will prevent the negative perception of the company’s performances in as far as the issues at hand are.
The design of focusing on the strengths first before the weaknesses is also informed by the psychological perspective of positivity which aims at studying the strengths and possibilities and thus enables people to thrive (Fredrickson, 2009). Beginning by focusing on the positive things allows the board members to participate since their psychology at that moment will remain positive and hopeful. The positivity aspect despite reporting the low profits and, high employee turnover and lawsuits will help create participation by all members of suggestions through member engagement, and thus this will lead to a productive meeting since the members will have a consultative discussion and resolution and thus that is the aim of every meeting.
References
Cohen, M. A., Rogelberg, S. G., Allen, J. A., & Luong, A. (2011). Meeting design characteristics and attendee perceptions of staff/team meeting quality. Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice, 15(1), 90.
Fredrickson, B. (2009). Positivity. Harmony.
Winston, C. N. (2016). An existential-humanistic-positive theory of human motivation. The Humanistic Psychologist, 44(2), 142.
