Mining Meeting Gold
Managing Resources To Get More Done
“There is gold in them there (hills)
meetings”
In your meetings do you want to:
Then look at meetings as mines and
each person as a vein of gold. If there are seven people in the meeting then
there are seven sources of gold. Finding the gold in everyone makes
your job easier and makes meetings run smoother. How do you prepare
the ground for mining the gold in meetings? Here are four steps
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Have an agenda
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Set up guidelines
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Use a ore holding car (parking lot)
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Follow through, process the gold
Have an agenda. Miners know
what they are digging for. Agenda’s establish common ground and honor
meeting attendees. Tell participants what you are looking for. If you want
silver and don’t tell people, they‘ll bring things they think are gold and
waste resources and be frustrated. Let people know how the meeting will run.
Example; I will ask each person to share two positives and one concern about
our project.
Set up guidelines. Miners use
guidelines going in and out of the mine. Use guidelines that have worked
and have members add to the agreed on list of best practices to be
used. Guidelines are added as needed. Example: When brainstorming say,
please listen to what others say and support their ideas. Later we can edit.
Example: When a directive person tries to take over or a contemplative
person does not automatically share their great ideas say, I want to get
everyone’s great ideas who’s first? Then later ask, who has not
spoken yet? If someone interrupts or speaks again say, please make a
note of your idea and we’ll get back to it after others have a chance.
Guidelines do not create safety;
the facilitator reinforcing the guidelines creates safety.
Use a ore holding car. Miners
place ore in holding cars and process it later. Certain things need to be
put aside and returned to later. There is gold in some ideas yet everyone is
better served by coming back to it later. It may be off topic or need more
research or time. Before the meeting ends resolve each issue or make a plan
to handle it.
Follow through, process the ore.
Miners process what they have mined and create supportive structures that
allow them to dig deeper. Follow through with guidelines during the meeting.
After the meeting refine the raw ore by following up on everything that was
not completed in the meeting. Support everyone by sending the meetings
minutes and reminders. Good follow through creates safety and trust for
future meetings and helps you to mine more gold.
How people regard
meetings is greatly influenced by what happens when the meeting is over
How do you get the Gold? It’s
simple:
Then your projects are more
successful and everyone is richer.
Ramone Yaciuk is a Senior
Facilitator for Tough Teams, he helps project leaders and teams work
together better in the courses Creating High Performance Project Teams
and Thriving on Conflict.
Copyright © 2007, Ramone
Yaciuk
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