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• Building Trust: For example to build trust with the Product Development Manager, I made sure to read up on issues surrounding software development such as project management methodologies (Waterfall or Agile) and best source codes to use (.Net or Java). I would solicit his opinions on these topics. Our conversation demonstrated that I had taken the time to understand his perspective and strengthened our trust.
• Aligning Goals: It is less important for people to see why you think your project is important than it is for them to recognize why it is important to them! I often spend my most of my time in new places or groups talking to people to better understand their goals. Don't be afraid to dig into their initial responses to try and discover what are their key drivers. Once you understand what motivates them, try to present your projects in ways that highlight how they align with theirs. 
• Tailoring Communications: It is not only languages that create communication barriers between people. Personality types, education, job titles, and work cultures are other barriers that effective communication must navigate. Always modify your communication style in a way that best resonates with your audience.
• Let Others Lead: In meetings, I let team members shape the agenda and drive the meeting. Their ownership builds their commitment to the project. I try to operate as a person who documents the meeting - trying to highlight consensus or interesting ideas - adding my insight where appropriate and driving the discussion forward.
• Note Actionables of Team Members: When a team member undertakes to perform a deliverable for the team, I try to clarify the "what" and "when" during the meeting. That way the member has committed to the team to perform the deliverable; not to me individually.
• Follow Up: In addition to sending out a recap of the meeting and actionables,it is critical to meet with key individuals before and after important meetings to get their feedback on how they see the project is progressing. The act reinforces your interest in their input, helps you gather important information, and, most importantly, ensures that they are never surprised by something in a meeting (the one thing that can seriously derail any meeting).

As a devout planner, I benefit from the fact that my projects generally stay on track and deliver solid results. However, the risk of a planner is that it fosters an environment that misses out on those creative moments of innovation that arise through spontaneity, improvisation and free thinking.

A planner can always "schedule" time for steps, but these activities may not come naturally to me. That's why I am always on the lookout for good frameworks to ensure that creativity can bubble up to the surface of my groups. Presentation Zen just posted a video about Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats. I have heard about the method before, but it never stuck with me. Now that my MBA experiences have helped me recognize my strengths and weaknesses as a group member, this methodology seems like a great tool to help planners move outside of their habitual thinking.

There are great internet resources about the methodology (such as this one at Mind Tools), but I will do a brief review. First here is a video of Edward de Bono discussing the first five hats.

Overview of the Six Hats:

White Hat: The facts and nothing but the facts. Data, information, what questions need to be answered, what are the gaps, what do we have, what do we not have, and how are we going to get it.

Red Hat: Emotions are OK. This is where people talk about feelings and instinct that we can't support with facts. Since in most business environments feelings are not allowed, people rationalize them in a logical argument that can severely bog down a meeting. Red Hat gives team members a way to signal that this comment is a hunch. Red Hat comments can range from personal like or dislike to instincts coming from many years of industry experience. The key point is that anyone expressing a Red Hat thought does not have to justify it.

Black Hat: The logical negative. Essentially, the Black Hat is our critical thinking. Why does something not fit; what are the weaknesses. It is an important function early in innovation to identify weaknesses that will need to be overcome and critical assumptions that will need to be verified before big bets are placed. Black Hat thinking should be used at critical points of innovation, but it should not dominate the process as it will generally lead to risk-adverse projects with relatively low payoffs.

Yellow Hat: The logical positives. What is the logical feasibility, benefits and advantages that would flow from project. Just as critical thinking finds reasonable weaknesses with the plan, we should also think about reasonable strengths inherent in the plan (something we often forget about while focusing on the negatives).

Green Hat: The creative hat. The Green Hat allows the group to put forward new ideas, discuss possibilities of the project (ie, where can it go), and think of alternatives. It is a great tool to reverse dominance of Black Hat thinking. When the Black Hat seems to dominate group discussion ask the group to put on their Green Hats for awhile!

Blue Hat: The one hat to rule them all. This is the hat of the meeting chair who's job is to ensure the discussion covers the other five hats.

Over the past month I have saw a number of posts that dismissed the value of meetings. I first noticed this sentiment with Jason Calacanis post on Start-Up tips. He then elaborated on it during a session of Steve Gilmor's Newsgang. Ever since then I have noticed other posts or comments dismissing the value of meetings. I agree with Jason that most meetings are very unproductive, but in my experience the problem is not the concept of a meeting, it is our management of the meeting process.

Let me explain. We have all been there. The dread that we are going to waste another hour in a meeting and accomplish nothing. During my time as a management consultant and in numerous group meetings in my MBA program, I quickly discovered that meeting management was one of my strengths (a benefit of a personality dedicated to efficiency). I think people who participated in meetings that I managed appreciated the efficiency.

I will give some tips below, but first I would like to discuss why I feel (well run) internal meetings are very important. Internal meetings have very obvious strengths and weaknesses that if understood can be a great tool for a company. First, they serve as a great platform to generate or discuss ideas. Forget about advances in communication technology, no platform is more efficient at sharing multiple perspectives than in-person communication. Second, meetings are an efficient way to set expectations among different functional areas (painting a picture better than any text communication). These are the strengths of meetings, but there are some weaknesses. First, without structure, people can talk endlessly causing the meeting to run on forever. Second, without discipline, a meeting can easily fail to resolve anything. Third, the immediacy of the communication can create situations of conflict when parties fail to keep communication professional. Hopefully, proper meeting management leverages a meetings strengths and minimizes its weaknesses. Now, here are my meeting management tips:

1. Focused Goals - Before the meeting, know what you want to accomplish and communicate it to meeting participants. Don't try to accomplish everything in one meeting - make sure your goals are targeted. On your invite communicate that goal and a proposed agenda.
2. Exclusive - Only invite people who are necessary to resolve the issue. For matters that touch outside your functional area, try to get as much cross functional representation as possible (preferably limiting it to one person from each area).
3. Introduce - Start your meeting off right by setting the tone. Tell people why they are here and what you want to accomplish. State any key background details to frame the discussion for the participants. Remember they should already know most of this from your meeting invite, so keep it succinct.
4. Discipline - Set an agenda and time frames in advance of the meeting and stick to them. Have some flexibility for productive discussions, but try to adhere to the schedule. As manager do not let one person dominate the discussion. If you catch people who continually repeat the same point, acknowledge the point and state that you want to hear other peoples thoughts.
5. Visualize - People learn aurally, visually, and through touch. Obviously, meetings facilitate an environment for aural discussion, but a good manager will leverage the ability to visually communicate. Either you or another participant should use a white board to list ideas, diagram processes, or whatever else visually communicates the discussion. An efficiently run meeting that facilitates aural and visual learning will deliver extraordinary results.
6. Action - Wherever someone agrees to do something, take a moment to clarify the deliverable. Clarify the 3W's - who is to responsible, what they are to deliver, and when the deliverable is due. These simple steps clarify what is to be done and sets accountability.
7. Summarize - At the end of the meeting summarize the key learnings and next actions that flowed from the meeting. State how you will follow up on this meeting. This will ensure everyone is on the same page and reinforce the accomplishments to the participants.
8. Follow-Up - Send out a follow-up email thanking everyone for a productive meeting. The follow-up should include your summary and all actions that were assigned. Afterwards, as meeting leader, you should track that everyone delivers their actions. It is amazing how much gets accomplished when people recognize that you hold them accountable.

I hope these ideas help you organize great meetings. I am sure some of you are saying that my ideas are pretty obvious - they are. It is not the ideas that are difficult, it is the discipline and confidence needed to execute them. Practice makes perfect. If make a conscious effort to use these ideas, you will see improvement in your meeting management skills. I am sure there are many other tips on how to run great meetings. I would love to hear about other peoples ideas. Also, I recognize the simplicity of these ideas, so chime in if you want to talk about more complex situations.