Queen Margrethe II of Denmark was once warned by her father, King Frederick IX, that she was going to attend a lot of meetings during her life. He told her she could either sit back and be bored, or lean forward and be interested. The English broadcaster Gyles Brandreth, to whom Queen Margarethe once passed this advice, claims that as a result, he has never had a boring meeting.
But it’s not always so simple. Public servants have a lot of meetings, and leaning forward and being interested can only get you so far.
Canada’s Sean Boots has even created a Meeting Cost Calculator, which combines the number of people in the room (or conference call) with their seniority, for the duration of the meeting, and calculates the cost of their collective time.
This guide offers top tips for how to have better meetings in the public service, based on interviews with Apolitical members. Our findings from our global network of public servants show how to run meetings differently.
In this guide you’ll find:
- Seven top tips from rockstar public servants.
- A set of questions that can be used to reboot your meeting.
- A before, during and after checklist to help keep your meeting focused.
- A meeting prep worksheet to prepare for and reflect on your meetings.
MEETING TIPS FROM 7 ROCKSTAR PUBLIC SERVANTS
From action learning to red-teaming, here are our top tips for better meetings
ASKING STRATEGIC QUESTIONS IN MEETINGS
Pause and refocus your meeting with one of these killer questions
GENERAL MEETING CHECKLIST
Make sure your meeting runs smoothly with this checklist to be used throughout the whole process
MEETING PREP SHEET
Prepare for and reflect on your meetings with our worksheet
MEETING TIPS FROM 7 ROCKSTAR PUBLIC SERVANTS
CONSIDER THE PURPOSE
Alexis Palá, Research Associate at Y Lab (the Public Services Innovation Lab for Wales) and advocate for Liberating Structures, said not coming through the door with a purpose is the biggest mistake preceding a meeting.
“If people don’t come prepared, or the facilitator hasn’t thought through the experience, nobody should stay,” she asserted. At their worst, she said, meetings become “a safety blanket, to make people feel like they are getting something done or making progress.”
To part participants from their safety blankets, she asks facilitators to reflect on why meetings are being held: “What will enable you to do what you couldn’t do before, and is it worth the energy?”
Record your thoughts both before the meeting takes place and after its complete. You can use Apolitical’s meeting worksheet to reflect on your meeting and its outcomes, prior to, and following, your meetings.
THINK ABOUT USING TECHNOLOGY
Often the toughest meetings to hold can be virtual or telephone meetings. With participants on mute to avoid interference, it’s difficult to build a rapport or analyse tone.
Abe Greenspoon, programme lead at Canada’s Free Agents programme, which creates a pool of freelance civil servants to drop into government projects, suggested using a virtual chat like Slack while the call is running — so that participants can weigh in without disrupting the flow of conversation.
Otherwise, consider having the agenda on a collaborative Google Doc or OneNote page where members can comment in real-time.
Robbie Tilleard, senior advisor on productivity and economic growth at the UK’s BIT, told Apolitical last year that his organisation runs “think groups” during meetings. Instead of traditional brainstorming, team members join an anonymous Google Doc and fill the sheet with ideas, allowing junior members to participate better.
“The further you move up the hierarchy, the broader and smaller your knowledge becomes”
ASK QUESTIONS INSTEAD OF MAKING COMMENTS
Several UK government departments including the Cabinet Office and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) use action learning sets.
Designed to solve problems via interrogation rather than discussion, lead participants identify a key issue in their workplace environment. Other members of the meeting then question the lead, prompting them to consider other perspectives. The lead member then reaches their own conclusion on the problem: influenced, but not specifically directed.
Action learning sets take time to establish. If you want a quicker fix, you could use one of Apolitical’s strategic questions to revive a stalling meeting.
ENGAGE YOUR JUNIOR STAFF
Team leaders have a responsibility to create an inclusive culture that gives junior members the confidence to share their perspectives.
When speaking to Apolitical last year, Kate Phillips, behavioural insights principal at the Department of Premier and Cabinet in Victoria, Australia, suggested having participants speak in reverse order of seniority.
“The further you move up the hierarchy, the broader and smaller your knowledge becomes, so this approach provides the best-quality information to consider,” said Phillips. This negates the natural dominance of senior staff over meetings — and shifts the relationship with their more junior colleagues.
“Imagine that a project hasfailed, and interrogate how this could have been prevented”
REVIEW AND INTERVIEW
As Pala pointed out, the meetings you’re already holding won’t be all bad. You’ll be able to dig out, appreciate and preserve their best elements.
Pala advocated finding the nuggets of gold by using a Liberating Structure, disguised as a game, like TRIZ. To find the gold, TRIZ asks participants to start from imagining the worst case scenario in order to eventually find the opposite — the best result.
The game gives people a safe space to reflect in a non-confrontational and often fun atmosphere on what your team already knows isn’t working.
She also suggested holding interviews with your team members. In asking colleagues what successful engagement in the workplace looks like, then looking for patterns, you should find what’s working for them — and what isn’t.
CONSTRUCTIVELY CRITICISE YOUR WORK
After working with your head down on a policy for months, it can be difficult to see how it might fail. Policies are often only retrospectively analysed rather than picked apart at the beginning.
Australia’s Behavioural Insights Unit (BIU) fights confirmation bias in policies by holding “pre-mortem” meetings — discussions where the team imagines that a project has failed, and interrogates how this could have been prevented. “This normalises sharing information that wouldn’t normally be aired, because people don’t like to deviate from the group,” Philips said.
To rectify this, the UK’s Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) uses meetings for “collaborative red-teaming”. The strategy, taken from the armed forces, examines all possibilities when designing policy. The red-team then finds weaknesses in the policy and examines worst-case scenarios.
“It’s a weird assumption that if people want to be heard, they’re going to naturally speak up”
RIP UP THE RULE BOOK
Greenspoon, inspired by Chelsea Troy’s blog on the poor quality of remote meetings, decided to completely alter the way he moderates meetings. Troy argued for replacing “caucus meetings” with “moderated meetings”.
A caucus meeting is a traditional meeting. Participants present ideas in a free-flow style, interjecting when they have something to say. This favours people who are comfortable with rejection and confrontation as well as quick to process information.
However, not everyone is comfortable in the caucus format. So Greenspoon changed his meetings to reflect a moderated style.
Each participant takes their turn moderating, meeting by meeting. After an initial check-in, asking in turn how each person is doing, an agenda is established with specific time limits.
Each member then goes in order to give their feedback to each item — in the same order, every time.
Greenspoon acknowledged that at first, the laboured procedure can be awkward, but said that after six months, participants were bought in, having worked through the awkwardness. “Inclusivity requires you to be very deliberate — it’s not easy,” Greenspoon reflected.
The deliberate, timed process allows an equal opportunity to speak for all participants. “It’s a weird assumption that if people want to be heard, they’re going to naturally speak up,” Greenspoon said. “There are lots of reasons to deter participation.”
ASKING STRATEGIC QUESTIONS IN MEETINGS
"It’s more of a question than a comment"
Following discussions with members, we realised that sometimes your meetings need big changes and deep reflections. But sometimes there isn’t always time for this.
If you’re stuck for something to add to a meeting — or just want to move the discussion along — questions are a useful device to pause and refocus the conversation.
Use one of these questions the next time you feel the room needs an energy shift, or when you simply don’t know what to say next.
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Measuring progress
Can we recap the programme’s aims?
How are we measuring progress on this project?
How will we know this project has achieved the right result
Linking up with others
Are there any people in other Departments or agencies that we could link up with?
Have we linked up with anyone in a local municipality or authority who could be doing something similar?
Is anyone internationally doing something interesting in this space?
Wider questions
Are there any recurring themes coming out in this work?
How would we scale this?
Who are we specifically targeting with this approach?
Shall we explore how theme relates to this piece of work?
BEFORE MEETING
❏ Identify the purpose and set goals
❏ Send invites with location, date & time
❏ Create and distribute agenda
❏ On the day verify who is attending
❏ Check meeting room & tech
DURING MEETING
❏ Make sure notes capture is in place
❏ Re-establish purpose of the meeting
❏ Avoid sidetracking
❏ Give everyone the chance to contribute
❏ Create an action plan by the end time
AFTER MEETING
❏ Distribute meeting notes
❏ Assign follow-up actions in written form
❏ Ask attendees for feedback
❏ Check-in on follow up actions
❏ Act on feedback for next meeting
MEETING PREP SHEET
USE THIS TO PREPARE FOR AND REFLECT ON YOUR MEETINGS
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