This content was created by Chris Fenning. This content was uploaded by Chris Fenning. This is a YouTube video titled "Steps for successful meetings – Step 3: Pick the participants" (published March 2, 2023). It is an instructional/presentation-style segment (one speaker) explaining how to choose the right attendees for a meeting. The speaker outlines why picking appropriate participants matters (to achieve the meeting output, avoid wasted time and reputational damage) and gives practical criteria: participants should know or need to know the topic, help achieve the meeting purpose, and contribute to the output, with an exception for attendees who are present to receive information or learn. The excerpt is part of a series on running successful meetings.
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Hi, and we are looking at the 15 steps to run successful meetings. This is step number 3: picking the participants. Now, when you have a meeting, you need to have people in it. That means choosing the people who are going to be part of your discussion, and every time you pick a participant, you pick them for a particular reason. Someone is going to either contribute to what you're doing in the meeting, or they're going to gain something useful from being in that session. Now, there's very clear guidance that you can use to help pick people. Participants generally contribute to the output. There are some occasions where people will just receive information, but the most important people to have in the room are those who contribute to the output. If you're not clear on the output, go back and check step number 1 in this process. Now, if you don't pick the right participants, what happens? Well, first of all, if you don't pick any participants, you don't have a meeting. You need people together in your session to have an actual meeting. But let's assume that you're going to pick some people. If you pick the wrong participants, you will not get the output that you want. You will waste people's time. You'll annoy people. You'll need more meetings, and really, who wants that on their work schedule? And you will damage your reputation. Now, if you have the wrong people, you— how can you expect to get the output that you want? You've got to have the right people that contribute to that output. So don't pick the right people, you don't get it. If you have the wrong people, those who are going to take the conversation on tangents or can't support the delivery, then you might end up needing more meetings, which is a waste of people's time. And there's really something that's going to frustrate the members of your meeting pretty quickly is if they can tell there isn't the right representation in the room. If you're looking for a decision to be made but the decision maker isn't there, well, everyone else is going to be annoyed because you're wasting time and you'll need more meetings. All of these add up to reputation damage for you. People will not, will not think that your communication skills are great. They won't think that your ability to plan and run a meeting is great, and that damages your reputation at work. So now we know why we should do it right. Let's take a look at how do you do it? How do you pick the right participants for your meeting? Well, first of all, these are people who need to know or they already know the topic. If someone doesn't need to know the topic or they don't know it already, then they probably shouldn't be in the meeting. The second is they can help you achieve the purpose. If they can't help you achieve the purpose, why are they there? And the third is that they will contribute to the output. And all 3 parts are needed. If there is somebody in your meeting who doesn't know or need to know the topic, well, how can they achieve the purpose or support the output? Or they're just wasting their time if they don't need to know about something. If you've got someone in your meeting who can't contribute to the purpose or the output, then what are they getting from it? The exception to this rule— there's always an exception— the exception to the rule is if somebody is there to receive information and get smarter about or learn about a topic, then they meet this top criteria. They need to know about something. It also means that you have a purpose in your meeting of informing that person. Now, you remember, you can have multiple purposes in a meeting. You might have a general purpose to choose between various options. So we're talking about a topic, we want to achieve— we want to review 2 options and choose between them, and the output will be a decision. There might be a secondary Purpose, same topic, but we want Jill and Ben to both know about and understand this project because it may impact their work later, and that is a separate output and purpose. But in each case, all 3 of these are needed when you are choosing your participants. So as you're prepping and planning for your meetings, the 3rd step to run a successful meeting is to pick the participants.
