Successful project managers cultivate relationships with stakeholders and senior leaders that include strong expectations and agreements around meeting substance and culture. Ineffective organizations often suffer from bloated meetings, usually punctuated by PowerPoint slides that feature paragraphs of text that have already been e-mailed to participants. Project managers can set the bar high for meetings by requesting that participants review a written status report at least one business day before the meeting. This way, participants gain the benefit of a project manager’s recommendations while preparing their own discussion points.
It can be hard for a project manager to act as a meeting moderator, especially if she is asked to defend or explain key decisions. In cases where project managers must become more active participants in discussion during a status meeting, another meeting participant should be designated as the moderator. This way, a less impassioned member of the team can keep discussions on track if the conversation veers off course or becomes heated.
With talking points clearly set, a project manager act as a meeting moderator. Keeping teams on task often requires setting a clear boundary around the amount of time to be spent on a given subject. For most highly functional teams, spending ten to fifteen minutes on a topic can lead to no more than three or four quality decisions during a one hour meeting. Because many productivity experts recommend limiting meetings to ninety minutes or less, project managers must choose agenda items that discussion groups can impact in a short amount of time. Otherwise, it may be more appropriate to convene smaller task groups to handle specific issues.
