A Deep Dive—How to Reach the 7 Types of Meeting Outcomes
According to Sam Kaner in Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision Making, there are 7 common outcomes for a meeting or portion of a meeting. Much of what you’ll read below comes from his book. These outcomes fall into two categories: missional (those that overtly move you toward your team's mission) and developmental (those that work on the team dynamic so you can more effectively accomplish your team mission).
Sharing your desired outcome for your meeting, or sections of your meeting, helps your team to frame their interactions. It gives members’ minds the “why” they need to join wholeheartedly into the process.
Let's dive deeper into how to achieve your meeting's outcomes. We’ll start with the missional outcomes.
1. Share Information. This includes giving reports, updates, or presentations. When the outcome is sharing information as opposed to “Advancing the Thinking” (below), the discussion will generally be limited to clarification questions or brief comments to aid the next steps. However, when this outcome isn’t voiced or clear, participants tend to add more content, thinking that may be desired.
Tip: Try starting these sections of your meetings with something like “We’re going to take X minutes just to share some updates. Because the main body of our meeting is going to be about Y, we’re not planning on much discussion on these. If you feel we need to talk about them more, let me know so I can get them on our next meeting’s agenda.”
Check out our article “9 Dynamic Methods to Make Your Meetings More Fun and Useful” for 3 specific ideas on methods for sharing information.
2. Obtain Input. This discussion outcome is frequently used when the “leader with input” decision-making method is used, where the leader wants information and feedback, but the goal is not for the group to make the decision. It can also be used for more significant decisions where sections of a meeting, or whole meetings, are needed just for input as part of a larger decision-making process.
“Obtaining Input” is about getting feedback, opinions, or suggestions around a topic. This could happen before a decision is made or as part of an evaluation process after a decision or event.
If the group knows the goal is just giving input, then they likely spend less time trying to influence the whole group. The common complaint, “Why ask for my input if you don’t want to use it?” typically comes out of a misunderstanding of the desired outcome.
Tip: If a topic will culminate in a decision, share up front what decision-making style you’ll use for this topic. Then share that the desired outcome of this portion of the meeting (or the next X minutes) is just to share input, feedback, opinions, or suggestions.
3. Advance the Thinking. Many larger team goals include projects that necessitate a several-step process and may need weeks, months, or sometimes years to come to fruition. “Advancing the Thinking” moves a group forward toward a larger goal. Kaner shares that it includes elements like:
Define a problem
Analyze a problem
Sort or rearrange lists
Draw a flowchart
Identify core values
Create a work breakdown structure
Conduct a resource analysis
Conduct a risk assessment
Evaluate options
Identify selection criteria
Edit and/or wordsmith a statement
Tip: The techniques possible for “Advance the Thinking” are just about limitless. Be sure to add the 3 special ingredients to make your meeting meaningful.
You can find 3 specific ideas to “Advance the Thinking” in this article: “9 Dynamic Methods to Make Your Meetings More Fun and Useful”
4. Make Decisions. It’s easy to group “Share Information,” “Advance the Thinking,” and “Obtain Input” into a category called “Make Decisions.” Don’t!
When you do that, it confuses your team members about what input is most helpful and when. Sharing a specific, desired outcome for the various sections of your meeting will help you develop a more robust process for making decisions and help team members’ mindsets to be on track with what’s needed during each section. Your analytical members can usually hold off their critiques if they know that for the next short amount of time, we will just “Share Information,” for example.
When you share that the outcome of this specific time is to make decisions, it helps the group get into a convergent mindset and be ready to move to closure (especially if the preliminary steps have been adequately covered).
Tip: Consider the stakes, the importance, and the longevity of the decision you need to make and then choose the appropriate decision-making style to use in advance. Create a process that happens before actually making a decision that takes into account the complexity of the decision and includes a scaffolded, bite-size process that asks your team members to do one thing at a time.
Don’t ask them to brainstorm, evaluate, and decide in one fell swoop by asking, for example, “Considering all the options out there, which one should we go with?” Instead, devote one section of your meeting to brainstorming, a subsequent section to evaluating or prioritizing the list based on criteria, then one to deciding with the predetermined decision-making style.
While outcomes 1 through 4 cover missional objectives that outwardly advance your team's goals, the following developmental outcomes are just as critical.
5. Build Capacity. Moving into our developmental outcomes, we look at building capacity. This outcome is so important because it expands our potential reach, impact, and/or quality. This is not secondary to our team’s or organization’s main mission. It is vital.
Sometimes “Build Capacity” is about outward areas like expanding the number of staff or the infrastructure needed to accomplish the mission. Typically, however, “Build Capacity” means skills building. Sometimes this outcome is best done by an external provider and/or during an offsite event. Having said that, lots of smaller training pieces can be done during a meeting.
Interpersonal skills training is just one of many potential training components that might benefit your team. Small teams or teams in small organizations often need training in many areas. For example, See Beyond debriefers need training not only in debriefing, but in how to use our software system to report their hours for invoicing and payment, how to evaluate past performance, how to encourage future debriefs, and how to make referrals.
Tips: Survey your team members to ask what kind of training might benefit the group (or them as individuals) and what ideas they have for gaining those professional skills.
6. Improve Communication. Lack of good communication is probably the number one complaint heard across organizations. But how often is improving our communication an express outcome in our meetings? Very seldom.
A meeting or section of a meeting with this outcome in mind could include working through tension, expressing emotions around a topic, or receiving some training on interpersonal skills.
We often try to ignore emotions or tensions, but those very emotions or tensions typically point to an important emerging or developmental agenda that needs to be addressed. If it’s ignored, it’s like the elephant in the room that will have its way in one form or another if not addressed. When these “elephants” go unaddressed, team members eventually shut down, blow up, quit the team, or leave the organization or the country they are working in.
Speaking of interpersonal tensions, Kanar says, “People normally do not engage in discussing this type of material unless they are given explicit permission to do so. And even then, it usually takes well-planned, well-structured activity to create the safe, supportive foundation this type of work requires.”
Tip: Since interpersonal communication is one of the main reasons people leave teams and their cross-cultural work locations, consider devoting portions of your regular meetings to improving communication. You might read and discuss some of See Beyond’s articles around this topic, consider joining one of our training events, or schedule a private training event for your team during one of your regular meetings. You might also want to consider having a professional outside facilitator join you virtually or in-person to support your group to have what is sometimes a more difficult discussion around communication and emotions.
Healthy communication is not something you can just work on in one section of a meeting or in offsite training. Strong interpersonal communication must be integrated into and worked on in all types of meetings. The same goes for our next outcome.
7. Build Community. As Kaner says “When a meeting planner wants to promote camaraderie, strengthen the bonds among people who work together, and generally boost morale, the meeting goal is to build community.”
Making a team into a group that wants to work together, feels the importance of being together, and actually enjoys being together, surely improves satisfaction, enjoyment, and longevity.
Tips: Intentionally plan times that are just fun. (If you do it in a regular meeting, be sure to let people know in advance so they don’t become confused or irritated.) Share with your team that you’d like to build more community and find out what would be meaningful to them. A team camping trip or movie night? Sharing something about their personal lives at the beginning of your meeting? Common break times so they get more bump-into-each-other time? Reimbursable lunches with a random member of the team once a month?
You can find 3 specific ideas to Build Community in this article: “9 Dynamic Methods to Make Your Meetings More Fun and Useful”
Wrapping it up
What would it do for you as a leader to have clearer outcomes for the sections of your meetings? What would it mean for your team?
For me, the greatest advantage of knowing and communicating the planned outcome is that I don’t have a room full of team members gathered around a topic, each one with competing mindsets, because one thinks we’re just sharing information while another thinks we’re making a decision.
Knowing and communicating the desired outcome reduces frustration and conflict and increases cohesiveness as we are all on the same page, our minds attuned to the same desired outcome.