Not every project meeting is going to run smoothly and achieve all of your goals. In fact, some of them can turn into disasters that set back your work enormously.
If people start arguing, you veer wildly off-track or anything else goes wrong then this can have a terrible impact. So, what should you do if you have a poor meeting that threatens to throw your whole piece of work into chaos?
Don’t Try and Ignore It
The worst thing that you can do is try and ignore what has gone wrong. Everyone that is present knows that the meeting has been disastrous, so there is no point in trying to sweep it under the carpet.
Instead, you should look to do something positive about it. Sometimes, the best thing to do is admit there and then that it isn’t going as planned so you are going to re-arrange it after putting some thought into the issues.
The best time to do this is right away. If things don’t work out in this way then look to address the problems in your meeting minutes or in an email to all of the participants. You will start to feel better once you admit that things didn’t go at all smoothly.
Address the Concerns Raised
If it has turned into a heated meeting then you might be tempted to put it all down to raised tempers leading to unwise comments being made. Maybe people were just speaking in the heat of the moment rather than telling you their true feelings about the issues.
Yet, it is vital to address the issues and concerns that have been raised rather than try to battle on without even really thinking about them. In this way, everyone should regain confidence in your ability to get things done. Let them know that you take their comments seriously and that you will aim to follow them up at the next meeting.
If the points raised are valid then looking into them will help your project. If they aren’t then you will have shown that you are willing to consider other people’s opinions.
Understand Your Own Shortcomings
The toughest part of the fallout from any poor meeting is that of looking at your own performance. Did you let it run out of control? Did you explain something poorly? Perhaps you invited the wrong people or got the agenda wrong?
Once the dust has settled you need to see what you can do to improve in whatever area you feel short in. Do you need to refresh your PRINCE2 training glasgow to help you to understand the big picture? Or maybe you have to go on a specific course for learning meeting facilitation skills?
Either way, try to turn this matter on its head in order to look at it as a learning opportunity. You can’t turn back time to make that meeting better but you can get yourself into a better position for your future meetings.
Make Sure It Never Happens Again
As we have seen, one of the key issues is in getting prepared so that future project meetings go a lot more smoothly. The sensation of anger or shame that you feel after a terrible meeting should be enough to give you the desire you need to fix things.
If you make sure that you never again have a poor project meeting like this then some good will have come of it. Anyone can suffer from this problem once, but if it keeps happening then it is a sign that you aren’t learning from your errors.
