Chris Fenning explains how to validate a meeting's topic, purpose, expected output, and attendee list at the start. Wrong people or topic can cause distraction, disruption, and reputation damage. He provides example language to let unnecessary attendees opt out.
Chapters
Hi! We are looking at the 15 steps to run successful meetings, and we have made it all the way to step number 6. What is step number 6? It is validate with the participants. Now, this might seem a little bit ambiguous. What does it mean to validate with the participants? Well, everything you've done up to this point— steps 1 through 5— you should now validate with the participants. You need to check Is the topic, purpose, and output right? And do we have the right people? It's worth validating that because if you don't have the right topic, purpose, and output, and if you don't have the right people, how can you have a successful meeting? It's going to be a lot harder. So if you don't do this, if you don't do these 2 things, what you're going to have is distraction and disruption and frustration and probably the wrong output. And reputation damage. We've seen this turn up a few times in this 15-part series. So why is there distraction? Well, if you don't have the right topic, purpose, or output, and there's something else that's more important that people should want to be focusing on, they're gonna be distracted. They'll be focusing on something else. Equally, if you have the wrong people, well, they may be distracted or they may cause a distraction. If they're not the right people to do the the purpose and to achieve that purpose in your meeting, they might disrupt or distract, or by the fact that they're not getting involved at all, that can just be a distraction for the other people who still are involved. All of that causes frustration, frustration for the people who should be involved and are trying to produce an output and frustration for the people who don't need to be there. And if you don't have the right people, you're gonna get the wrong output. And if you don't have the right output, remember that first of the 2 questions is to Check you have the right topic, purpose, and output. If you don't have that, well, then you're gonna get the wrong output. And all of this damages your reputation and your communication skills and how people perceive you within the company. So, so how do you do this? Well, it's very, very simple. You ask. At the beginning of the meeting, you ask, is the topic, purpose, and output correct? And do we have the right people? Is it right? Are the people right? And then once you've covered these 2 things, if everybody says, yes, we've got the right topic, purpose, and output, we can then effectively answer, do we have the right people? Yes, we do. And if we don't have the right people, if you've got people in the room who don't need to be there, can they leave? Also, if you don't have the right people and somebody is missing, are you able to achieve the topic, purpose, and output. Maybe you can only get halfway towards achieving that particular output. So when you start your meeting, you need to validate the topic, purpose, output, and the people. And this last bit can be really, really valuable. If you've accidentally forwarded a meeting or someone's been invited that isn't relevant, give them the chance to leave. They will be grateful to you. Let's take a quick look at an example. How could I actually do this at the beginning? What are the words? that could be used? Well, something that I've said quite a lot in my corporate career when meetings were forwarded many times was this: Hey everyone, just as we start the meeting, I want to say this invite was forwarded a lot of times, a lot of people invited in addition to the original list. If this meeting isn't relevant to you, you can leave. Now, this might sound like a really scary thing to say. Well, people leave my meeting. But if the topic, purpose, and output are clear, and if the people in the meeting have said, yes, we are the right people, then no one will leave. But if people say, well, I'm not actually needed for that topic, purpose, or output, they will then be able to self-select out and you'll avoid some of those problems we talked about earlier. So having gone through the process in steps 1 through 5 to plan and set up and invite people to your meeting, Step 6, it's a really important one. Validate all this with the participants, then you can begin.
