Sometimes, the best person to keep a meeting on track is the note-taker.

This may seem counter-intuitive. The leader is supposed to keep the meeting on track. Or at the very least, the person who called the meeting should be in charge of facilitating it. However, often times leaders can get caught up in the discussion and opinions, and people who call meetings might not feel the onus to structure and lead it.

You’re Gonna Need a Note-taker   

This is where setting up a structure to your meetings and assigning a designated note-taker to keep the team on task can help keep a meeting on track, especially when conversations get heated, become venting sessions, or seems to go in circles. Giving someone the group authority to gently interject with “And the decision for that issue is?” can greatly help keep people’s mind focused on deciding, rather than merely airing grievances or getting sidetracked. Usually the best person to be the note-taker is someone who has the smallest stake in the decision, or at the very least can be as impartial as possible.

A note-taker is always needed to record what is being said and decided upon for each agenda point. If there is no agenda, then there will be no structure to the conversation. Not having an agenda and/or not sticking to the agenda is a sure way to make your meeting stretch from 30 minutes to much longer than it needs to be.

Make Your Meeting Structured   

Any time you have a meeting, especially one where you plan to make a decision, there should always be an agenda that follows a trifold structure. First what are you trying to accomplish with this decision? Next you need to decide on what criteria will the decision be based on? Thirdly, your team must figure out what your options are, and then choose one.

1. What are you trying to accomplish?  

This may seem like an obvious question, but if you have gathered to discuss a contractor that is late on a deadline, are you there to decide how to get back on track or if you need to terminate their services? Decision making meetings can easily devolve into venting sessions without a definite purpose and a person designated to keeping everyone on track. If you have a set agenda, you probably won’t have to take much time to figure out what you are trying to accomplish, because whomever called the meeting already had an objective in mind.

2. What criteria will the decision be based on?   

The second part of a decision making meeting is to decide what the priority is for the different criteria for making that decision. Different stakeholders will have different priorities that will influence their promoting of certain options or considerations. At this stage in the meeting, the leader or facilitator should ensure that everyone’s opinion is heard. When people feel  like their concerns have been heard they will be more disposed to adopting a decision even if it’s not what they were pushing for.

3. What are all your options? Choose one.  

After all the options have been laid out, it’s time for the decision to be made. Based on your team dynamic, it may be as simple as a democratic vote between options, or instead, an executive decision by the leader or leaders based on all that was heard.

Some issues have so many dissenting opinions and facets to consider that it can seem overwhelming. Creating a defined structure to your meetings—and clearly communicating that structure to attendees will help drive the meeting to a close, focus participants on the task at hand, and keep the meeting from devolving to tangential asides or a venting session.

CabuzMeetings is an excellent tool for driving meetings to decision and action points. It is designed for transparency and responsibility. If you feel like your meetings are getting out of hand, or could use more structure, employing CabuzMeetings will greatly increase the efficiency and effectiveness of your team’s meetings.