In a previous blog, we discussed the value of meeting preparation. There’s something magical about everyone ready to contribute to the meeting before it starts. Now, let’s talk about the different roles that meetings can have. This blog examines the roles and responsibilities that make a meeting effective. Practically, one or more people will take on multiple roles. Let’s go over them here.

The meeting organizer

The meeting’s success ultimately depends on the organizer, who has the most context on the vision. It is of great importance for the organizer to invest in meeting preparation to achieve its desired outcomes, which includes composing an effective agenda, scheduling an appropriate block for participants to comfortably attend, and curating the notes doc or artifact that will be the meeting’s centerpiece.

However, they must also enable the meeting attendees to participate effectively. They must recruit the right individuals (both required and optional), assign roles and responsibilities, set clear expectations for success, and give participants sufficient time to prepare contributions.

In essence before the meeting starts (perhaps even 24 hours before the meeting starts), the organizer should have confidence the meeting will go very well.

In every case, they have to exercise judgment about who should attend while still being inclusive. They have to strike a balance between bringing every voice to the meeting and making sure folks are effective. So how many people are usually in an effective meeting? Bob Sutton, a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford University cited work by famed psychologist George Miller that seven plus or minus two is a “magical number” because humans can only hold that number in their short-term memory. Consequently, Harvard Business Review proposed that less than 8 participants is the maximum number of participants for maximum productivity. This makes sense as when there are too many people in the meeting, there's not enough room for everyone to contribute and the meeting might be a waste of people's time

Finally, an often overlooked role of the meeting organizer is to follow up on all actions identified in the meeting and making sure owners report back on progress and resolution of these items.

The facilitator

This person makes sure that the agenda is clear to and approved by all attendees at the beginning of the meeting or last-minute changes are made to it, not an ideal situation, but critical nonetheless. They also make sure that folks cover the agenda items in a timely manner, call for specific folks that are digressing into minutes details to to sidebar that conversation or “take it offline” and that if folks discover an important problem, wrinkle of major update, that they exercise judgment about the value of continuing the meeting. They finally make the decision to adjourn the meeting, but not before summarizing the meeting conversations, outcomes, and next steps to be taken. Great facilitators keep the conversation flowing smoothly and transition effortlessly between one topic and another.

The decision maker

This role is critical as meetings where no decisions are taken lead to disappointment, frustration and a low satisfaction from meeting attendees. In some cases, it is about deciding to take an action, in other cases, it’s about breaking the tie, and on some occasions, it’s about reaching consensus on an outcome. The decision maker’s job is to be decisive in order for the team to have direction. Sometimes, there’s not enough information to decide on a course of action and the meeting organizer has to bring additional data back to the decision maker either asynchronously or in a subsequent meeting. Then, the decision maker can make the appropriate decision. Note that for different agenda items, there can be different decision makers.

The note taker

The note taker’s role is crucial to make sure that proper minutes have been taken, and that actions and deadlines assigned to individuals by the decision maker are clear and clearly communicated during and post-meeting. Communication of the notes is about informing the larger organization of the decisions made, the actions taken, and the further actions assigned to individuals, some of them present in the meeting and others who get the notes outside of the meeting. Clarity and brevity are clear strengths that a note taker can display. Otherwise, folks end up reading “he said/she said” dialogues that are literal transcripts of the meetings.

For all these personas, clear roles and responsibilities help deliver on a great meeting. It is insufficient to assume that just making these roles and responsibilities clear and assigning people to them will lead to a successful meeting, but their absence almost guarantees disappointing results. The objective of the meeting was never about the meeting itself, but actions taken on a project, resolution of a problem and direction to a team. Lighty is building upon the understanding of these roles to ensure great meetings that drive better collaboration, more clarity and further success at the company. Tell us what works for you in assigning roles and responsibilities to different team members and what you would love AI to help with.

- Richard, with many edits from Max

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