A Guide to Running Meetings

Written: February 12, 2025

Note: Japanese quotations are translated into English.

Introduction

The following conversation appears in SPY✖️FAMILY.

Loid: "Of course, I'm responsible for my child's behavior, but I've really come to realize that it is impossible to control a child completely. We shouldn't assume we can control children just because they're our own. It isn't right to keep imposing our own expectations on them and then feeling disappointed. Parenting really is difficult, isn't it?"
Desmond: "You are right. Even a child who shares your blood is ultimately someone else. It is impossible to truly understand another person. In the end, people will never understand one another."
Loid: "(Is that why you force other countries into submission? Is that who you really are, Desmond?) You're absolutely right. I'm a psychiatrist, but I sometimes wonder whether I understand even a tenth of what goes on in my patients' minds. (Yes, 'We can understand each other if we just talk' is an idealistic notion.) Perhaps it is arrogant to think we can understand another person. (But...) What matters is making the effort to meet each other halfway anyway."

SPY✖️FAMILY, Season 1, Episode 25 — MISSION: 25, "First Contact"

I believe this exchange captures the essence of meetings. Couples break up, parents and children argue, and people sometimes cut ties with their own relatives. Everyday life reminds us just how seemingly impossible it is for people to understand one another. Yet doesn't even an impossible task seem a little easier when we place some limits on it? What if, for example, we shared a single goal and talked only about how to achieve it? What seemed impossible might become merely difficult. A meeting is, in essence, a way of bringing other people's values into what we create, and thereby making something better. That is precisely why "the effort to meet each other halfway" is essential whenever we try to give something back to others and society. Even knowing that we cannot fully understand one another, we still manage, however clumsily, to build a society on rules and manners, giving back to one another and supporting each other. Perhaps a meeting is a miniature version of that society. In this article, I will share my own strategies for running meetings.

All that said, I am just a student who has never raised a child or held a job, writing down what I have learned from my limited experience. I am keeping this as a record for myself, too.

Is This Meeting Really Necessary?

The value of a meeting lies in allowing participants' views and intentions, including those that are difficult to put into words, to shape decisions. In research meetings, the opinions of supervisors and colleagues (the participants) should be reflected in revisions to presentation slides or changes in research direction (the decisions). Likewise, in project-based learning (PBL), teammates' views and intentions should inform decisions such as setting the project's goals and assigning roles. In other words, there is no need for a meeting about an issue when other people's input cannot change the decision. I also think there is no need to hold a meeting if doing so makes the process less efficient. If the effort of scheduling and preparing for the meeting, together with the cost of everyone's time, clearly outweighs its expected benefits, the meeting is not worth holding. Here are some examples.

Meetings that are not worth holding

Meetings where there are no plans to make any decisions.
Meetings where a decision has already been finalized, regardless of participants' views or wishes.

Meetings that make things less efficient

Meetings about matters that could be resolved with a few emails.
Meetings where no one has decided what needs to be decided.
Meetings held solely to coordinate participants' schedules.

At the same time, the very fact that a meeting's outcomes are difficult to predict is sometimes a reason to hold one. A meeting may therefore be the right choice even when estimates of its benefits or efficiency suggest otherwise. In particular, a meeting is preferable when you want to draw out views someone has not yet expressed, when you need to reject someone's suggestion, or when you need to propose a compromise. In these situations, simply passing messages back and forth may not adequately convey people's views and intentions, making direct dialogue more effective.

The Case for "Small" Facilitation

When I was studying politics and economics, I came across the concepts of "big government" and "small government." Big government refers to a government that intervenes extensively in economic activity, as epitomized by the phrase "from the cradle to the grave." Small government is the opposite: it keeps economic intervention to a minimum. Borrowing this distinction, I will use "big facilitation" to describe an approach that involves frequent intervention in both the discussion and the way a meeting proceeds, and "small facilitation" to describe one that keeps intervention to a minimum.

The better the facilitator, the less they seem to be facilitating. I think many of us have noticed this, at least intuitively. The more successful a meeting is, the harder it is to pick an MVP, isn't it? That is because everyone has made "the effort to meet each other halfway," and everyone's views have helped shape the decision. (Even when someone's idea is rejected, that rejection itself contributes something of value.) This is why I favor unobtrusive, "small" facilitation. "Big" facilitation has the following drawbacks.

With "big" facilitation, the facilitator takes on responsibility precisely because they intervene so much. Participants can then shift the blame onto the facilitator when things go wrong. A highly involved facilitator can also be a source of reassurance for members who would rather slack off.
"Big" facilitation can make participants feel intimidated. Too much intervention may leave them feeling controlled.

"Big" facilitation often puts participants under some kind of pressure when they speak. To encourage people to contribute, the facilitator should keep intervention to a minimum. In my view, that intervention should be limited to "managing time and keeping the meeting focused on its goal." The aim is to achieve the goal within the allotted time. When necessary, the facilitator should step in to "remind everyone of the goal," "defer a discussion," or "bring a discussion to a close." Those are the interventions I think a facilitator should make. It is not such a grand role that someone needs to announce, "I want to be the facilitator!" A simple "I'll keep an eye on the time, then" should be enough. In other words, my view is that if everyone speaks with a clear awareness of the time and the goal, there is nothing left for a facilitator to do.

Make the Goal Clear

I often see people sitting in meetings without really understanding what is going on. Because they do not know what is being done, or why, they tend not to speak up. In that situation, the meeting cannot achieve its purpose. Make sure everyone understands the goal at the outset. It is also worth restating it whenever the discussion strays too far from it. Doing so makes it easier to achieve the goal within the available time.

Specifically, I think it helps to open with something like this. Making the goal and time frame this explicit discourages unnecessary digressions: "Our goal for this meeting is to reach a decision on [X] within [Y] minutes. To do that, we will spend 15 minutes discussing [A] and 15 minutes discussing [B]."

Set a Time Limit

I think setting a time limit is necessary not only to finish on time, but also to achieve the goal. In my experience, meetings that began without a time limit often ended with nothing decided. They also often took several times longer than necessary because of completely unrelated chatter. It feels easier to put in the effort when you know when a meeting will end than when there is no clear end in sight, doesn't it?

Keep a Record

"Most of what we want to communicate never gets across. And on top of that, we soon forget most things."

These human tendencies are troublesome in meetings. Keep meeting minutes. Communicating through both speech and writing helps reduce misunderstandings. It also helps prevent the all-too-common disputes over whether something was said or not. A written record makes it easier to pick up where a discussion left off, too, allowing weekly and monthly meetings to build on previous discussions.

Keep Everyone Focused

This is about an atmosphere that all participants create together. Just as in ordinary classes, it is difficult to concentrate for 60 or 90 minutes at a time. In meetings that long, some people start putting their energy into looking as though they are listening. Personally, I think the ideal for any meeting is to set a goal that can be achieved within 45 minutes and finish within that time.

When you know before the meeting begins that 45 minutes will not be enough, schedule a break, however short, and tell everyone in advance both that there will be a break and when the meeting will end. We generally cannot keep thinking intently about the same topic for more than 15 minutes at a stretch, so I think it is important to give everyone a brief breather every 15 minutes or so. You might say something that makes people laugh, have a little casual conversation without derailing the discussion, or even have a snack.

It is also usually easy to tell when someone has lost focus. Check now and then that everyone is still engaged, take breaks as needed, try to create an environment where people feel comfortable speaking up, and ask yourself whether you might be doing something wrong.

Do Not Make People Feel Intimidated

This is a mindset for every participant, not just the facilitator. You cannot hold a meeting alone, and often you cannot limit it to your own circle. Meetings will often involve all kinds of people, and I think that diversity is one of their strengths. You may—and should—meet with senior students, junior students, peers, and teachers: people of different positions, roles, and ages. In those situations, it is almost inevitable that some participants will feel intimidated.

To keep participants from feeling intimidated, help them relax and keep showing that you are not an adversary who decides which opinions are acceptable. Be informal and approachable so that people feel comfortable speaking up. Keep paying attention to everyone's opportunities to contribute. Do not let the discussion become a conversation with only a select few. I often see meetings with six participants in which two people do all the talking. If that is what you are going to do, do not take up everyone else's time. Carrying on a discussion while leaving others that far behind makes them feel intimidated and makes it harder for them to contribute. You are taking up everyone's time, so make an effort to involve everyone. Do not let a few people talk among themselves while the rest are left behind.

When someone still does not speak up... respect their freedom to choose nonetheless. Few things are more unpleasant than being forced to speak in a meeting. Do your best to understand their wishes and respond flexibly. Participants who are forced to speak tend to offer opinions that fit in with everyone else's, cause no trouble, or invite no disagreement, rather than express what they actually think.

Help Everyone Grow Through Meetings

You might think that moving the project forward is the best possible outcome of a meeting. But learning how to work as a team is also an important outcome. The meetings we hold often involve students, and in PBL in particular, I think learning teamwork is a more important goal than the project content itself—at least judging by Professor Taenaka's approach to teaching. Here are a few things we can do to support that goal.

In Q&A sessions and feedback discussions, let junior students speak first. If faculty members and senior students say everything first, junior students have fewer opportunities to contribute.
Pay attention to how often junior students speak. This can be an indicator of whether you managed to run the meeting without making them feel intimidated.
Hold a debrief on how the meeting was run. Did you facilitate it well? If an argument broke out, identify what caused it. If time management did not go well, ask everyone why.
If you are on friendly enough terms, going for coffee or a meal together afterward can be a chance to get feedback. Sometimes a more informal, personal continuation of the meeting begins there, too.

Conclusion

Getting participants to share their honest views in line with the meeting's goal—how difficult that is. More often than not, I struggle to make it work, but I try not to get too discouraged. Do not be too hard on yourself when a meeting does not go well. After all, we are attempting something close to a miracle: using natural language to exchange ideas and bring them together into a shared conclusion without anyone getting hurt. There is something strangely enjoyable about taking on such a difficult challenge. I hope this article proves useful to you, even in some small way.