How can we plan and facilitate effective and engaging meetings? In this episode, we explore strategies for getting the most out of the time spent together with your teams.

Rachel Myers, Founder | RM + Company

Rachel has over 23 years of experience working on all sides of philanthropy. She served for 12 years as an Executive Director for two nonprofit organizations and has worked for the past 9 years on the funder side at her local community foundation. Along the way, she's also served as a trustee for 11 years for her local public library board. The experience of working both as a staff member, and as a volunteer board member has provided her with unique insights on how boards and staff can effectively work together to make more good things happen.

As a consultant and collaborator, she offers expertise in strategic assessment, board training, communications strategy, fund development, planned giving, meeting facilitation and more.

3 things that need to happen for an effective meeting:

1. The purpose of the meeting is clearly defined, and we achieve that purpose during our time together
2. The meeting time is valuable (and enjoyable/energizing/bonding) for all the participants
3. All the meeting attendees are engaged and contribute to the work and outcomes of the meeting. Researchers have found that the strongest predictor of meeting success is active involvement by the participants!

4 P's:

1. Purpose - Why are we meeting? What problem are we trying to solve and could we accomplish this in another way? (Loom, shared doc, online collab tool like Miro, etc.)
2. Product - What will we produce together? What outcomes will we have from this meeting? Specific decisions, direction, strategy, choice, etc
3. People - Who needs to be present to make this happen? What’s in it for each of them? What is their role and how will they contribute? Do they need to participate, or can we update them in notes or Loom?
4. Process - How will we spend our time to meet our purpose and outcomes? AKA: the agenda. Here’s a mind-blowing tip – challenge yourself to never send out a meeting request without including an agenda – or at a minimum a clear summary of the meeting purpose. Another important part of this step is to think through what tools you are going to need for the meeting – if it is virtual, will you need a whiteboard like Jamboard or Miro, do you need to poll the group, or collect notes in some shared format during the meeting? Make sure you have all of the tools you need to be successful. Add a “purpose” column to your agenda – Time, Agenda Item, Presenter/Lead, PURPOSE, Outcome.

IEEI:

1. Inform – Ensure that everyone in the meeting understands your objectives and purpose. “When we leave this meeting today, we will ___________” 
2. Empower – Describe the role the attendees will play and the power they will have (you will have articulated that in the 4Ps above). Make sure they understand why they are there and what contributions you need from them. 
3. Excite – This is the “What’s in it for them” part.  Share the benefits of the meeting and why it is important to each person – and to the organization as a whole. 
4. Involve – engage attendees early and often with a question or activity that connects them to each other and the meeting purpose.  

Links:

• Compass: Connect with other members of the philanthropic community at Community.foundant.com
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• Website: Foundant.com