How to run an effective Meeting

All about the prep!

 Last week I was in a meeting with two senior colleagues discussing a straight forward topic which should be a quick, comfortable meeting. However, after providing an introduction of the purpose of the meeting and providing context, it was clear the meeting wasn’t going to go well. The first speaker essentially re-iterated what I just communicated using slightly different language. The next speaker repeated the process but offered a somewhat different conclusion. The meeting loped around a few times, and before we knew it, the meeting was over without achieving the critical decisions needed. We have all been in this situation where a meeting starts to go wrong, but in this case, the fault was with me. I took for granted the amount of prep that should go into a meeting and set myself up for failure. I didn’t follow my standard meeting prep, and I was paying the price by having a meeting that resembled the movie groundhog day continually repeating the same points and accomplishing nothing.

In my career, I have done thousands of meetings, and I typically approach a session using the below approach writing down the information on a new note or piece of paper:

Articulate the purpose of the meeting – if you aren’t able to fully articulate the use of the meeting you shouldn’t have a meeting. The purpose should be glaringly obvious and will act as the meetings True North. Ask your self, what do I want to accomplish?

 Outcomes of the meeting – what do you want to leave with after the meeting is over? You don’t need to be specific at this point as you want to leave room for discussion but will help anchor your action items. Ask yourself, if this meeting goes well what is, our road map moving forward? Every meeting should have an outcome in mind.

 List of attendees – only invites those that need to be at the meeting, keeping the group as small as possible. You can build your list by brainstorming main stakeholders, process/ product owners, people most impacted and other decision makers. After you develop your first list of attendees, pair down further by stating what they can bring to the meeting as a participant. If they can’t bring anything useful, don’t invite them. Set expectation in the invite if members can forward along to other people if appropriate.

 Know your audience – study the list of attendees that you have invited and tailor your meeting to those people. Everybody has a different learning or conversational style which can be a good leverage point for your meeting. Think about what resonates with each person (i.e., metric heavy, non-tech, etc.) and tailor the message to the audience. Knowing the audience is tricky at first, but once you put in some thought it gets much more comfortable, and you will notice a significant change in meeting productivity.

 Build an agenda – the essential item and the one that will ensure that your meeting stays on track is building a progressive agenda in advance. The agenda sets the tone for the meeting and allows you to communicate the road map of the meeting to the attendees. A practical agenda has overall topics, and subtopics when needed. An aside, you should never attend a meeting that doesn’t have an agenda as it will not be a well-run meeting.

 Research the topics and provide a summary – this is the most overlooked step in having a successful meeting and can separate a productive from a time waste. Not everyone will have the proper context to start the meeting so provide it for them in either the meeting invite or a separate email. Include any material that you will discuss or reference. Research before the meeting will significantly speed up the meeting and ensure everyone is on the same page. Ask yourself, what information does the group need to decide on the timeframe of the meeting and what background is essential. Make it as easy as possible for everyone attending. You are the meeting organizer and should know enough of the topic to build yourself but if not, ask someone. The easier it is for people to come to the meeting with all the information the better the meeting will be

 Time management – ensure the meeting is running smoothly and time correctly allocated to the full range of topics. Everyone has a busy day, ensure you start on time and end of time. Try your best not to book meetings over lunch or at the end of the day. Think about those in other timezones as well.

 In addition to managing the flow of meeting to ensure all topics are getting proper attention, you will also need to balance who is speaking. It is typical to find one person dominating the conversation and not allowing others to speak. If you find your self in this situation try using “Thanks for your opinion, does the rest of the group feel this way” or “X idea sounds intriguing, what does the rest of the group think about X.” These give the group a chance to speak and share thoughts.

After the meeting do the following:

Conclude meeting – ensure that you conclude the meeting on time and stating the action items and who will complete them. You don’t need to capture everything that was said, but enough to give an idea of what decision was made, by who and timelines. You should never leave a meeting without having clear action items and owners.

 Follow up – it is widespread that people leave the meeting having different takeaways or lack of clarity of the next steps. Ensure that you send a summary of who is responsible for the future actions, details of steps and review of decisions made. Clarity helps to ensure everyone is on the same page and moving forward as one team.

 Improvements for your next meeting – it is essential that after each meeting to think about what went well and what needs work. As your self – what was right about the meeting? What didn’t go well? How can I improve? Initially, you can write these down and journal, but over time these questions will quickly go through your head, and you will see improvement. Don’t underestimate the exercise, finding and addressing enhancements will be the difference from executing good meetings to achieving great meetings. Challenge yourself to be better for each meeting.

Should attendees bring laptops?

Although it is becoming more common for organizers to ban technology from meetings, I have given up trying to enforce this. We are too dependent on sharing screens, commenting on documents, and grabbing something online that technology is a strong ally to a good meeting. Instead, I embrace technology and attach the necessary documents to my pre-meeting research/ agenda so people can bring up during sessions. If I find others distracted with email or phone, you can bring them back to the meeting by asking them a question, or suggest they focus on the content.

When executed successfully meetings provide clarity for everyone on next steps and a path forward. Meetings are essential, but if not executed well they become a detriment to productivity. The above provides the strategy and actions I have to take over my career to run better meetings and when followed leads to productive meetings. Tailor the tips above to your situation and the importance of the meeting. Good luck! 

About me: Derek Matisz is dedicated to consistently challenging himself with learning new things so that he can inspire and guide others to build a better life. Derek is an experienced executive with over 15 years of business experience. This series of the blog has been created to share the knowledge that Derek has accumulated, but also Derek’s way of improving his communication ability while sharing his success and failures with anyone who wants to read.