You want to keep your team engaged. How can you make your meetings more productive?

To keep your engineering team engaged in meetings, prioritize clear goals and active participation. Start with a concise agenda outlining objectives and expected outcomes. Encourage pre-meeting review to ensure everyone arrives prepared to contribute. Instead of lectures, use interactive formats like polls or whiteboarding to spark discussion. Actively solicit ideas from all team members, fostering a sense of ownership. Finally, summarize key decisions and assign clear action items with deadlines to maintain momentum. By fostering a collaborative environment that values everyone's voice, you'll keep your team invested and productive.

It's important to define clear purposes and agendas beforehand. Begin each meeting by outlining specific objectives and desired outcomes. Distribute the agenda to all participants in advance, allowing them to prepare and contribute effectively. By setting clear expectations and focusing on actionable items, meetings become more purposeful, engaging, and ultimately productive, creating a collaborative environment where team members feel valued and motivated to actively participate.

Clearly define the purpose and goals of the meeting. Ensure that every participant knows what is expected to be achieved. I try to go so far to include expected outcomes, or "what success would be" from the session.

To make meetings more productive: ?? Define purpose & agenda: clear objectives ? Respect time: start/end on schedule ?? Invite only necessary participants ?? Encourage participation: share ideas, feedback ?? Assign roles: note-taker, timekeeper ?? Use action items: clear tasks & deadlines ?? Visual aids: slides, charts for clarity ?? Follow-up: summaries, progress on action items ?? Highlight achievements: motivate team ?? Utilize tools: collaboration software for efficiency

Utilize Technology Wisely: Leverage collaboration tools and technology to enhance engagement. Interactive tools, virtual whiteboards, or online polls can make the meeting more dynamic. Be mindful of your participants though. If you have some less-than-tech-savy users, consider avoiding tools that could be cumbersome or complicated as they will just end up frustrated and may not participate. If you 'must' use those tools, take 5-10 minutes in advance to assist anyone with the tools so they are comfortable ahead of time rather than needing to train them in the moment. Any level of comfort you provide them ahead of the meeting will pay off in the long run.

These two are crucial not just for engagement, but to help in reaching consensus which in turn increases ownership across the team. - asking open-ended questions - soliciting opinions or ideas One of the biggest things I learned over my years as a tech lead is that instead of sharing a different approach or pointing out what may be wrong with a presented idea, it is ALWAYS best to ask leading questions and have your team reach the conclusion on their own. One Team One Goal

As a general rule of thumb, if you don't have a reason to speak, and you are not a decision maker, you probably could have replaced your involvement with a Slack/Teams message.

Limit Meeting Duration: It is important to keep meetings concise and focused. Set a specific time limit and stick to it. Shorter, well-structured meetings tend to be more engaging and productive. Avoid scheduling an hour meeting "because we may need more time". Instead, allocate the time you expect to need only up front. This will help everyone stay focused and on task and you will get through things more rapidly. If extra time is needed, you can always schedule a followup meeting, or ask participants if you can extend in the moment.