Develop consistent questions to assess meeting effectiveness

The CEO has just led a town hall meeting on the state of the business. She asks you, "How do we know if the meeting was effective?" And then she asks, "Also, how does this town hall compare to the one we did last quarter?"

Ask employees to use their cell phones at your next meeting! Have you heard about the new, quick survey tool delivered by the folks at Poll Everywhere? Meeting attendees can complete a survey by texting their response. Connect to the web site during the meeting and you can display the results in real time. Check it out at polleverywhere.com.

You're ready for the CEO's questions because you have a five-question survey that you use consistently, session after session, to get participants' feedback. By creating questions that relate to the objectives of your face-to-face program, and making sure those questions are used every time, you have a way to report metrics, identify trends and make improvements.

Your questions should address two areas:

1. Objectives. Be clear about what you're trying to achieve and measure against that.

• What do you want employees to know? (knowledge)
• What do you want employees to do? (behavior)
• How do you want employees to feel? (attitude)

2. Satisfaction. Assess how satisfied employees are with the meeting experience. Satisfaction has many drivers, but our favorites are:

• Opportunity to participate
• Information is relevant to my job/role
• Information is useful or valuable