Lesson 2 | What is the Structure of the Meeting? (2:38 minutes)
The Structure of the Meeting
So, let's talk for a minute about the structure of the meeting. How do you want to start the meeting, run through the meeting, and end the meeting? Well, first, of course, like any meeting, you want to set expectations so that the clients' comfortable. They know what is going to be happening during the meeting.
You might want to talk about timing. "So, we have blocked out two hours for this meeting. Does that sound good to you?" That kind of thing. "What we want to do by the end of the meeting is to accomplish the following." Just make sure everybody's on board with what we're meeting for and what to expect as a result of the meeting. And then, I would turn to the client and say, "How does that sound?" and let the client say, and they're probably going to say, "Yeah, that sounds good," but, nonetheless, I think it's important to kind of frame up what's going to happen during this meeting.
Now, if you're using the four-phase model, then just keep in mind that what we're about to talk about is the end of phase two, the planning phase, the solution phase. The client recommendation meeting comes at end of phase two, the solution phase.
I think also it would be useful to make a comment about how you all work together, how did you come up with these ideas, how did you meet, how did you collaborate? I think clients are interested. Remember, the client kind of bought into your idea of collaboration from the beginning and might be interested to offer a report about how that collaboration effort is actually working out.
You know, of course, and what you want to say is, "We really got some great ideas. We reached consensus. We really enjoyed working with one another." But the main thing is I think, "You're going to get better outcome as a result of our working together as collaborators."
As I mentioned before, you're going to work through your deliverable, probably page-by-page. That's a great outline, not just for the client but also for your collaborative team members, so that they can anticipate what their roles are going to be, when they're going to be doing speaking again that's going to require you to meet in advance and kind of work all that...open those issues out.
Ultimately, you're going to share the recommendations. They may come throughout the report. Might be a nice idea to have a summary of recommendations at the end of the report and you're going to determine which advisor leads the discussion on each one of those recommendations.
Finally, at the end of the meeting, you're going to discuss next steps. The client may be willing to go forward with all the recommendations, or the client may say, "Let's do these but not those." But at any rate, you're going to discuss with the client and ask the team who's going to do what, so that the client knows what's going to happen next and so that each of the team members knows what they need to do next. And that would be the end of the meeting, and then you move on to the next step in the process.