Why Meetings May be Ineffective

Meeting is a gathering of two or more people, usually to discuss some predetermined topic.
Meetings are at the very heart of management. It is in meetings that we make the key decisions that shape our future actions and the future of our organisations (Barker, 2007 page 4).

There are plenty of reasons why meetings can be ineffective or unproductive.

Firstly, meeting are most likely to fail if not scheduled in right time and place. Enough time should be given to meeting participants to plan ahead for the meeting. For an instance, ‘a must attend meeting’ should never be planned on a Friday afternoon or ‘a very important meeting’ should usually not be organized in the next couple days. Appropriate venues should be selected, and factors like size, location, environment and activities of meeting should be taken care of – (for example, a group of 20 people should not be kept in a small sized room, etc)
If the purpose of a meeting is not clear to the attendees; the aims and objectives is not defined and an agenda is not used, the meetings will generally be not effective. It is also good to prepare the agenda with estimated timings and circulate them to the attendees prior to the meeting. Sending notes to people to prepare issues and questions is also fruitful.
The meetings won’t also be successful if the chairman of the meeting will dominate and disregard others contribution. The chairman should allow all the participants to contribute but also break down the timing for each issue, ensuring each issue does not over run. Feedbacks should be asked from participants, and they should be allowed to get involved and present their ideas. If an issue gets dragged into other unrelated area, it should be pointed back to the central issue politely. The time should always be very important, and it should always stay on target. The position of the chairman should be above everything, and if there are few sides in the meeting then the chairman should not take any sides and he should also split times for both sides to tell their opinions and to ensure all the items are covered in allocated time. In formal meeting, the chairperson will outline the purpose of the meeting and remind member why they are there (VSS (ed.), 2007, page 198). The key to a successful and productive meeting is to take control of the situation.
Failure occurs if attendees will talk about a problem and not the solution. It is important to talk about the problem, but major focus should not be to talk about the problem but to talk through the problem. A solution should be found rather than discussing about the problem itself. If there are some issues that will need to be further resolved, then a new meeting can be suggested. For example, in an annual meeting of a voluntary organisation, if all participants will start talking about the financial crisis of the organisation and discuss about what they could do if there was enough funds, then the annual meeting will go nowhere. To discuss about ‘how to raise funds’, a separate meeting can be organised at a later time.
The meetings may also be ineffective if wrong people are present, the participants or the attendees should be selected and one should be very selective in special meetings like decision making meetings, problem solving meetings, etc.
The chairperson also should select a time keeper and a minute writer. The minutes of the meeting should be written down and a person should be responsible for this. It should later be circulated to the attendees. The minutes should have decisions related with the objectives or the agenda of discussions and should not be manipulated.
A productive meeting brings a deeper level of satisfaction. Thus, you should be careful about certain points as mentioned above that might make a meeting go ineffective.
 

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References:
Barker, A. (2007), How to Manage Meetings, Kogan Page Publishers, London.
VSS (ed.), (2007), Certificate in Interpersonal Skills for Volunteers, Vol. II, revised edition, University of Wales, Lampeter.