Leadership Skills

Effective Discussions

In order to have effective meetings, you must have useful discussions. There are a few things you can do to foster productive discussions in your meetings:

• Listen: By actively exploring each other's ideas the team will expand options and generate new ideas. This is preferable to debating or defending ideas.
• Ask for clarification: If you do not understand the topic or someone's logic, ask him or her. Good communication skills are required, of course, but being able to explain ideas in different ways helps clarify them.
• Manage time: Stay on task and keep the meeting to the scheduled time. Remind team members of time allotments so the other portions of the agenda can be adjusted accordingly.
• End the discussion: When nothing new can be gathered from discussion, end it. Then help the team choose a decision.
• Summarize: Restate what has been said to keep the group on task. Follow a summary with a question to see if that is what everyone else understood.
• Check for consensus: Summarize as above, and then restate the decision to see if the team agrees.
• Be a gatekeeper: Encourage all to participate by toning down the dominating speakers and asking for input from the quieter members.
• Contain digression: Do not let others take the discussion off topic or provide long-winded examples or irrelevant points.
• Be aware of human necessities: Take breaks occasionally, and watch for signs of discomfort.
• Be a role model: Model good behavior to set the tone for expected behavior.