How To Hold Effective Meetings - And, Not Screw Up

Looking at the conference room and cubicles, one thing that all offices have in common is that almost everyone is busy attending back-to-back meetings and conference calls. What’s the point?  

Are you suffering from ‘meetingitis’? It is a problem that leads to unhappy employees and miserable culture. For most of us, and certainly, for most of your team, meetings are the least productive part of the day. Adding fun to meetings is only a part of Dilbert cartoons—in reality, it’s soul-sucking and distressing!

No wonder, meetings have earned a terrible reputation. It is a time sucker. While meetings can be important sometimes to share information, in reality, only effective meeting plans can help a team move work forward in a meaningful way.

What Do Inefficient Meetings Look Like?

• Checking phone or laptop throughout
• Wondering when this meeting will end 
• No life-enhancing experiences
• Same things being discussed time and time again
• No decisions are made
• No individual accountability

Now, if you have unproductive meetings in your business, keep reading...

How to Run Better Meetings

Running effective meetings is not only a boon for productivity, but it also inspires greater team collaboration and employee satisfaction. 

What to do?

1. Limit the Number of Meetings

The #1 rule is to hold meetings that actually have a purpose. You probably don’t need to waste your time scheduling meetings every now and then to discuss every little information. Too many meetings are a sign of bad organization.

Keep in mind:

The meeting is not the right way to discuss the issues that can be discussed in a group chat message or something else. Whenever we have little issues to discuss, we add a topic on ProofHub discussions to have everyone’s opinion and discuss things to avoid spontaneous meetings that break the flow of work.  

That’s how we save extra meetings, and you can too! 

2. Draft a Meeting Agenda

Meetings are not just for discussing reports, deadlines, and changes, rather, have an agenda that connects to the mission and vision of your company. You should prepare well for what your meeting should be all about. Distribute the agenda before the meeting to the entire staff that outlines exactly what you’ll discuss and allow the entire team to contribute to it. 

Collaborate with your team without meetings. Try ProofHub. 

 3. Make Meetings Inclusive

It’s not about adding too many people in the meeting but making sure you create a free space for people to express opinions. Don’t allow them to talk according to their power (titles), instead, let them all say what they have to say. 

4. Conclude With Clear Next Steps

Your meeting can be efficient only when you have a clear follow-up system. Make sure people leave with clarity and have more insights about the next step to reach up the ladder.  

Weekly meetings. Stand-up meetings. Monday morning meetings. Do you love them? Well, you definitely not love them. Right? 

Let us know: What do you do to make your meetings more efficient? 

Author Bio:

Sandeep Kashyap is the Founder and CEO of ProofHub — a leading project management and collaboration software. He’s one person always on a lookout for innovative ideas about filling the communication gap between groups, teams, and organisations. You’ll find him saying, “Let’s go!” instead of “Go!” many times a day. That’s what makes him write about leadership in a way people are inspired to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more. For more inspirational articles follow him on Linkedin.