Grant development should involve meetings, after all, who wants to write all by yourself, with no input? At some point in your grant development career you should be involved in meetings, but do you know how to lead a dynamic meeting? 

How many meetings have you attended and walked away wondering….

• What just happened?
• Why did I invest my time attending this?
• What would have made that meeting better?

A meeting is a process of coming together for a purpose. Participants typically follow an agenda (No Agenda! No meeting!) and interact with each other. We hold meetings for different purposes: to update members, exchange information, make routine decisions, identify issues, complete a task, build consensus, develop strategic plans, make group decisions or solve problems. Whether you are holding a small, large, regular or special meeting, it is critical to have someone in charge of planning, facilitating and following up after the meeting.

Sometimes it takes a little more than just a good agenda and snacks to run a productive meeting! To increase the effectiveness of a meeting and/or to deal with complex issues and decision making, groups will often have a facilitator assist with the meeting.

The old adage of “There’s nothing certain in life, except death, taxes and meetings”, rings true in our way of work. If you look at the statistics, the average time spent in meetings is staggering:

• Most business people spend approximately 25% of their time in meetings.
• Middle managers often spend at least two days out of every week in meetings.
• It’s not unusual for executives to be in meetings for up to a whopping four days a week!

Next week, we will discuss understanding facilitation which will make that 25% of your work life beneficial.