A Successfull Business Meeting

What is a Meeting?
A meeting is where a group of people come together to discuss issues, to improve communication, to promote coordination or to deal with any matters that are put on the agenda and to help get any jobs done. For any meeting to be successful it needs the support of the group involved, or the organization behind it and it must have the intention of achieving some goal or objective. Purpose of Meetings
You have to be very clear on why you are calling a meeting. That is, you have to be very clear on what you want to accomplish and why you are bringing together the group of people that have been invited.
Meetings are held for any of the following reasons:

• To sort out any conflicts.
• To negotiate a contract or agreement, or matters to do with it.
• To deal with a current problem within the group or within the business or organization.
• To receive a report for assessment and review.
• To supply information to those present or to canvas views of those present on the particular matter at hand.

Types of Meetings
There are six types of meetings: (1) organizational meetings; (2) regular meetings; (3) special or emergency meetings; (4) work sessions; (5) public hearings; and (6) executive sessions. This section describes the salient features of each type of meeting.

1. Organizational Meetings.

Usually very soon after each election, a meeting may be necessary to establish the procedures concerning conduct of council meetings. Local practices may vary, but generally the meeting should establish: regular dates, times, and locations for routine council meetings; rules of procedure for conducting business at meetings (Robert’s Rules, etc.); and assignment of council member duties (i.e., mayor pro tempore, committee chairpersons, etc.). Many municipalities adopt and publish a schedule of meeting dates for an entire year, while others are set by charter.

2. Regular Meetings.

This is the official, final public action meeting. It is the only meeting where the council may adopt ordinances or regulations. There is no requirement that councils meet any set number of times per month (nor even that they meet at all) in the Maryland Constitution or in state law. This requirement is left to each municipality’s charter. The sample charter formally in the Annotated Code of Maryland recommends meeting at least once each month (Art. 23B, Sec. 8). Many municipal charters throughout the state prescribe regular meetings and require that the meeting date be set at the annual or semi-annual organizational meeting of the council. One very important feature of the regular meeting is the public forum aspect. The regular meeting generally includes at least a citizen comment period and often incorporates a formal public hearing on one or more subjects. While allowing public comment to some degree, the regular meeting always allows the public an opportunity to hear the council discussion on each subject.

3. Special or Emergency Meetings.

Regular meetings are scheduled in advance (usually one or two per month) to allow the public, press, and persons having business for the council to attend the meetings.
However, emergencies and special situations may require convening a special meeting often with little, if any, advance notice. Examples of special meeting items include, but are not limited to: emergency ordinances, unexpected matters requiring official action before the next regularly scheduled meeting, emergency equipment replacement, financial problems, and health and safety emergencies. While the occasional need for such meetings cannot be denied, the term “emergency”
should be used very carefully to avoid abuse of the special meeting. The procedures for calling special meetings are generally provided in each municipality’s charter. However, special meetings run the risk of violating the state Open Meetings Act if conducted without reasonable notice to the public. Therefore, it is particularly important in conducting special meetings to record the vote which calls the meeting and the notice of the meeting.

4. Work Sessions.

These are the most common meetings in most municipalities. Work sessions are essentially “shirt-sleeves” meetings where the council discusses issues informally to achieve more complete understanding of one or more subjects. Many work sessions are held in another room away from the formal council chamber with a “round-table” type seating arrangement to promote informal discussion. These sessions take many forms and cover virtually any subject matter. Typical work sessions will include a variety of items and will generally serve as a background discussion about items scheduled for official action at the next regular meeting. For example, the council may discuss possible designs for a new playground, hear status reports, discuss an ordinance that has been introduced and awaits enactment,or consider ideas for new programs. Some subjects, such as the annual budget, may be the topic of many such sessions before official action at a regular meeting.

Work sessions are not formal meetings; therefore, the council cannot take official action or final votes. In order to allow some understanding of the status of discussion items, most councils use either a “consensus” poll of the members or a “straw vote” to determine the sense of the council concerning each item. This consensus is not binding on the council members at a subsequent meeting when official votes are taken, but it does serve as a reasonable guide for the public, staff, press, and other council members. Work sessions must be open to the public. The open-ended, informal discussion format, however, is
intended to allow council members to discuss agenda subjects in a give-and-take fashion without the
formality of hearings, formal motions, and written reports. The number of council members and staff
participating in these discussions, combined with the tentative nature of many of the subjects, lead most councils to prohibit or discourage citizen participation in the discussion during work sessions. Citizens and the media are welcome as observers but usually may not participate unless called upon as resource persons. Municipalities may find it desirable to schedule a regular date and time for work sessions throughout the year. This allows council and staff to plan workloads and schedule other events. It also provides reasonable notice of the meetings to the public which is required by law.

5. Public Hearings. 

The council holds public hearings when it is considering a subject having unusually
high community impact and when it is considering items for which local, state, or federal regulations mandate such hearings. The main purpose of such a hearing is to obtain testimony from the public. An issue on which a public hearing is held may be the subject of several work sessions and may generate potentially more citizen participation than can be accommodated at a regular meeting with its other normal business items. An additional meeting of the council for a public hearing can be valuable in providing the public an opportunity to learn the current status of a project and give the council, as the public policy makers, clear indications of public sentiment before making a decision. Additional work sessions at a subsequent meeting generally follow the public hearing before final council action on the matter at a regular hearing.

6. Executive Sessions.

If allowed by charter, these meetings are closed to the public and press and generally are held for discussion of legal (litigation, advice from counsel, etc.), personnel, or other confidential matters. There are very specific legal provisions for closing the meeting such as recording the vote of council members who authorized the meeting and recording the circumstances of the meeting in the official minutes of the municipality. Executive meetings should be held only in accordance with the strict mandates of the Open Meetings Act.

What makes a good meeting?

1. Participants’ ideas are heard
2. decisions are made through group discussion and with reasonable speed, and
3. activities are focused on desired results.

Good meetings require good leaders and good participants. A good leader understands the purpose of a meeting, makes sure that all participants understand this purpose, helps keep the discussion on track, works with participants to carry out the business of the meeting in the time allotted, and tries to ensure that everyone is involved appropriately in discussions.
Good participants come to a meeting prepared for the business at hand—with reports ready, concerns over key issues thought out, and questions about key issues organized. They also bring to the table their best listening skills and group manners. These participants, for example, take turns talking, stay on the point of discussion, and help to move decisions forward.

What are characteristics of a successful business meeting?

1. Begin as Scheduled

Regardless of your meeting’s length, it is necessary for you, as the meeting manager, to steadfastly start meetings on time so that stragglers will realize that they are late and that the others, indeed, arrived as scheduled. This rewards those who have been prompt rather than making them wait around for those who have not been. Organized managers start meetings on time!
Robert Levasseur, in his book Breakthrough Business Meetings, suggests that at the start of any meeting, “participants reach a common understanding of what they’re going to do and how they’re going to do it.” Hence, everyone needs to be present at the start. Levasseur says that this normally takes ten percent of the meeting time, so if you’re going to be meeting for 30 minutes, you only need 3 minutes or so to deal with some basic issues such as:

• the main purpose of the meeting,
• the participants’ desired outcomes,
• the actual agenda itself, and
• the key meeting roles, which for smaller groups is understood at the outset.

2. Tardy Slips

Even after you illustrate how necessary it is to be on-time at your meetings, some individuals may still arrive late. There are several techniques, which work to varying degrees of effectiveness, to encourage promptness:
Require tardy people to apologize to the group. It then becomes their responsibility afterwards to catch up with the group for the parts they missed. Never backtrack for late arrivals, it will only force everyone to stop and wait while the guilty party receives a personalized briefing. * Hand out plum assignments in the first few minutes so that tardy people are left with the least desirable tasks. This is a great incentive for arriving early.
In certain organizations, and this is not my preference, the tardy are the subject of early discussion. In other words, they are the target of gossip, innuendo, and outright jokes. So be late, and be vilified!
Find out what works for your participants, and what steps you are willing to take to encourage promptness. You may quickly catch on that none of these subtle coercions is as effective as pre-interviewing participants, circulating an agenda, and demonstrating on a repeated basis that the meetings start promptly as scheduled.

3. Agendas as Game Plans

The winning formula for keeping meetings on track involves a strong agenda, organized in the best possible sequence, with estimated time frames for each agenda item. Most participants do their best to honor time frames if they know in advance that a particular item will be allotted five or ten minutes.
Follow the agenda strictly, eliciting the input of others as needed. Encourage the attendees to participate and as each agenda item is discussed, ask participants to keep in mind the following questions: what is the specific issue being discussed, what does the group want to accomplish in discussing the item, and what action needs to be taken to handle the issue?
Schedule meetings around breakfast rather than lunch or dinner. Most people have to get on with their day and hence would be glad to get down to business. Also, some of the topics that emerge in the meeting can be carried out during the course of the day.

4. Define, Resolve and Keep it Moving

When your group identifies the needed action for a particular issue, key questions include who will act, what resources does he or she require, when will the issue be resolved, and when will the group discuss the results? Upon successful conclusion of these questions, the group then moves on to the next issue, then the next. You will find yourself progressing in a group effort to get things done.
Every question does not always need to be addressed for every issue. Sometimes an agenda item merely represents an announcement or a report to the group that doesn’t require any feedback or discussion. Other times the issue at hand represents an executive briefing, because the matter has already been resolved.
On occasion, unnecessary discussion ensues, and an item ends up requiring twice as much time (if you’re lucky) as originally allotted. Often you will find that participants make up for the overflow in one area by being briefer in other areas.
For those items on the agenda that have a corresponding objective, you have the responsibility to seek out progress towards the objective. What else needs to be accomplished, and by when, to meet the overall objective? As with any goal or objective they need to be written down, quantified, and assigned specific time frames.

5. Undershoot so you Can Overshoot

As a meeting planner, you know how prudent it is to undershoot the time frames within a meeting. A wise meeting manager may allocate five minutes for a topic that he or she will personally be covering, knowing that it will actually require about three minutes. Hence, several minutes can be saved. Then, if somebody goes over the allotted time frame, then overall the meeting still stays on track and ends on time. What a world.
For a meeting that lasts longer than 30 minutes, schedule a break some time in the middle. Otherwise you’ll lose the attention of participants who are thinking about other extraneous topics. You may also lose the attention of some participants simply whose attention spans have been, shall we say, influenced heavily by mass media today.

6. Condition Your Meeting’s Environment

The quickest way to lose the participants, other than being an interminable, crashing bore, is to conduct your meeting in a room where the environment can be distracting. This could involve the temperature being too high for participants, or poor ventilation. That, coupled with a dark meeting room, encourages people to fall asleep. Snooze city. It’s an anthropological phenomenon — as soon as it’s dark, the brain gets the message that it’s okay to doze off. A warm, stuffy room only aids the process.
Make sure your meeting room is well lit and has excellent ventilation. If you have a choice between having a room be slightly too warm or slightly too cool, opt for cool. A cool room will keep participants fresh and alert. The discomfort may prompt attendees to complain, but at least no one will go to sleep.
Regardless of where you’re meeting, here are other room organizing techniques:
Meet in a room where participants won’t be disturbed by ringing phones, people knocking on the door, and other intrusions. You want to achieve a meeting of the minds and accomplish great things; distractions do not help.
Meet where there is wall-to-wall carpeting and walls adorned with pictures, posters, curtains, and the like to help absorb sounds and offer a richer texture to the voices being heard.
Contrast this environment with a meeting held on a tile floor, with cold metal chairs, and blank, thin walls. Participants can’t wait for the meeting to be over when the meeting room feels like a holding cell, no matter what’s being discussed.
Meet where the seats are comfortable and support the lumbar region of the back. However, overly comfortable seats may have a detrimental effect and encourage people to nod off.

Sources :
http://www.startrungrow.com/information/business/1,2383,purpose-of-meetings.htm
http://www.mdmunicipal.org/DocumentCenter/Home/View/267
http://breathingspace.com/characteristics-of-a-successful-meeting/

Group's Member :

• Amelia Purnamasari
• Anisa Sagitasari
• Dian Ambar Riani
• Selvy Kusumadewi

Class   : 3SA01

 www.gunadarma.ac.id