Running Effective Meetings For Dummies

Chapter 16

Evaluating Your Meeting Effectiveness

IN THIS CHAPTER

Overcoming evaluation apprehension so you can use your feedback

Deciding how to gather feedback

Receiving, interpreting, and using feedback on your meetings

The most neglected best practice for meetings is evaluation. Joe kind of gets on a soap box about this one. And here’s why. Take a look at your calendar. If you’re a mid-level manager or higher in your organization, you likely spend upwards of 75 percent of your worktime on meeting-related activities. In fact, you might even describe yourself as a person who goes to meetings, with a bunch of other things you try to get done despite your meeting schedule. If that’s you, you’re not alone!

Now, ask yourself this question: When was the last time you were asked to evaluate your own or other’s meetings? Some of you will probably be able to answer “yesterday” or “a few minutes ago.” However, the vast majority of you, upwards of 90 percent of you, will probably say “I can’t remember the last time I was asked.”

Let’s put these two facts together:

• 75 percent of worktime spent on meetings
• Most of the time no one asks for feedback on their meetings.

That means that probably ...