Apply These Pro Tips to Your Next Meeting and Stop Wasting Everyone's Time

Special thanks to?Jennifer McCuen, a modern learning thought leader and team effectiveness expert,?for being our guest writer for Awesome People Leaders!

"This meeting is a like a trip to the grocery store; we all came for milk, but we’re leaving with a random assortment of items."

"This meeting was great – I got so many emails done!"

"Meetings are the in-person communication equivalent to 'reply to all' on an email."

If any of those statements feel familiar, then you’re not alone. For years research has shown that most meetings are a waste of time. We won’t use valuable space here running through the stats. The bottom line is that the bottom line for companies is getting drained by unproductive, ineffective, and irrelevant meetings.

Fact: Meetings have become how work gets done. And based on the numbers, it appears more work and better quality work could get done if:

1. meetings were held to do the right things,
2. the right people attended,
3. people knew ahead of time why they were attending and what they were expected to do,
4. and meetings were facilitated effectively.

Great meetings aren’t magic. Great meetings are a science. With the right formula, your meetings can be great. And by great, we mean meetings that are time well spent for all who participated, where something was accomplished.??

Specifically, what are you trying to DO?

Begin with the end in mind. Before ever scheduling a meeting, you should be able to answer these questions.

• What is the purpose of this meeting?
• What are the outcomes – what will we walk away with?
• Who should be there to achieve those outcomes??
• How much time will we need to get to those outcomes?

Meeting invitation tips:

• Include only those participants who are needed to achieve the outcomes.
• Put the meeting purpose and desired outcomes in the body of the invitation.
• Schedule meetings to start and end at “off times” – start at five minutes past the hour, and end at five minutes before the hour, to allow for transitioning from meeting to meeting.

Pro Tip: Watch out for recurring meetings – particularly team meetings and project meetings. These have a tendency to devolve into report-outs, which sounds like a good use of time, but really isn’t. You ought to bring people together to do something you can’t accomplish through another medium. Moreover, people have a choice nowadays of whether to participate in the meeting or do other things, so stay action-oriented! Put action items or decisions to be made upfront in your agenda. Save updates or housekeeping to the end or move offline in a written format that participants can read at their convenience.

It has been shown in business meetings that once a person has been given the opportunity to speak, that person is more likely to speak up again during the meeting.

Give Advanced Notice

Not everyone works well “off-the-cuff” or in the moment.? In fact, about the half the population needs time to think and process before sharing their ideas or thoughts. So publish your agenda 24 hours in advance which will give people time to come prepared, contribute, and actively engage.

Go Global?

• Consider time zones when scheduling the meeting: www.timeanddate.com has real time for every country.

• Make sure your greeting is relevant for the global audience (e.g. “Good Morning” in your time zone might be a “Good Evening” in another). Try to learn a welcoming phrase in the international participants' language to help everyone feel included.

• Ask participants to pace their speech when talking (native English speakers can talk fast!).

• Meetings with multilingual participants may be more effective with summaries, instructions, questions, etc. provided in writing in addition to verbally.?

The Sacred Six

Reserve the last six minutes of the meeting time to answering: What have we agreed to here today?

Note To Self: If you haven’t agreed to anything, why did you meet?

Send a written follow up after the meeting recapping action items.? This serves as a reminder for those who attended as well as those how did not.??

Just because someone didn’t attend, doesn’t mean they can’t or shouldn’t participate in the action from the meeting.

It has to be an awfully good meeting to beat having no meeting at all.

Let’s start reversing the statistics on meetings. Great meetings aren’t magic – but with a little bit of planning, they can be great. And if we had more great meetings, there would probably be less of them and more time back to, you know, work.

Want More Awesome People Leaders in Your Company?

Awesome People Leaders?(APL) is an online manager development experience designed for anyone in your company who is leading people. That includes managers, directors, floor supervisors, team leads, scrum masters, and project managers. It's designed specifically to build skills that your people leaders need in order to create and nurture high-performing teams. APL's practical strategies and resources for real-life management scenarios help you develop relevant skills, and the online private community gives you a place to collaborate, share, get feedback, and learn from others' experiences.

Awesome People Leaders is taught and led by an experienced team leader;?Heather Polivka?has led a high-performing global team for a Fortune 10 company. Her real-world knowledge, experience, and proven results means you and your team are learning from the best.

Take a Tour of the Program at?awesomepeopleleaders.com.