Make meetings work

I have recently been asked to share my views on how you ensure meetings are a success, what structure you create to ensure people can share their own ideas, how you judge the success and how you can be confident that all attendees are engaged when some are working remotely, how do you ensure the ones not in the office are heard and above all ensure the meeting concludes with an over-riding feeling that it was required.

I have spent many a day in the corporate world and the independent environment, and I have attended plenty of meetings, both large and small, I’ve spoken at plenty, personally hosted countless ones, and also been involved in one where no one knew why it was called or what it was for! I will come to this later, but it didn’t last long….

I’ll tackle each point below;

Judging the success of a meeting;

Too often the chair or meeting organiser feels the meeting was a success because they left feeling great, they are really happy with their own performance and felt they delivered it perfectly, as planned, but they didn’t stop to think did it run to time or were my staff ‘in the room’ or off daydreaming? I have made the mistake before of feeling like I’ve nailed my agenda in a meeting, covering each point in the exact detail that I desired but I never stopped to check if my message was actually being received and more importantly was my message then going to be followed, you can probably guess if it was or not….

If you’re going to present in a meeting and not allow questions or participation, you’re also not going to check on engagement level or understanding then I’d refrain from calling this a meeting, perhaps a management presentation is more appropriate, that way you can avoid the confusion of your teams expecting to be able to contribute.

My view is the success is linked to a number of factors, if the answers to most of these is a resounding yes then I would happily say the meeting was successful;

Did the meeting start and end as planned?

I’m big on time keeping as it leads directly into organisation, keep your staff only as long as you need them, remember each 1 hour meeting with 4 people isn’t just a 1 hour meeting, it’s a 4 hour meeting!

Were all delegates present that were expected?

It’s a small one but important to know what level of follow up you or your missing attendees needs to ensure the messages are conveyed to all the required ears.

Was the agenda covered?

So very important, did you cover everything that you set out to cover? If not, what does the follow up look like and how will you get the missing topics into the next one?

Was the outcome met?

It’s important to know the purpose of the meeting at the start, why have you called the meeting in the first place? Getting together once a week because we always have is not a reason to continue, each meeting should have a point, give it a name if you like, but it has to have a purpose otherwise it’s a group chat. Remember when you call a meeting your teams are expecting something.

Was the environment correct?

Could all delegates hear you, was the room the right size, were you close enough to your laptop, were there too many people in the meeting? Simple things to check on, but always worth reflecting on to see if anything needs adjusting before you host another.

How were your attendees feeling post meeting?

I’ve seen some clever ways of managing feedback from attendees at meetings, the best way is to ask them, sounds simple right? But don’t delay, ask them that day, the next and then maybe even the following week (or relevant time period) to see if the message has sunk in and what follow up was expected and if it’s being done.

If you can cover of a portion of the above then you’re on the way to making meetings successful. It’s also key to reflect on how you were during your meeting, schedule some time to contemplate what you did, how you delivered it, would you change anything for your next one, what would you do again?

Meeting structure;

Structuring meetings is so very important, it is key for the meeting to have an agenda, a headline topic if it’s more a think tank/brainstorm meeting, preparing in advance should allow you to ensure not only will all topics be covered but also allow for breaks but more importantly ensure there is a Q&A/ideas section (more on this below).

A number of ways I’ve seen this work well take the form of the chairperson sharing the agenda in advance of the meeting (the time frame you can adjust accordingly, based on the amount of attendees, frequency of meeting and duration of meeting), making it clear that you are giving protected time to cover ideas pertaining to whatever is relevant.

You will find many people prepare in advance, excited to be able to share their own opinion on matters.

To ensure complete engagement you could always state the order in which your attendees will share these ideas, ensuring everyone beings something along.

I have found the best way to use this is advise everyone in advance of the expectation that you’d like to hear from them on the day, but give a very polite reminder at the start of the meeting that you’re excited to hear from everyone in the ‘ideas section’, it’s your call if you advise on the time of this as for some it will make them anxious as it builds up, for others they’ll appreciate the additional heads up.

My advice on how to set up this ideas section is borrowed from my own experience with my son, we were chatting about his favourite day at school and unashamedly he said it is Friday, when asked why he answered with confidence that on Friday we have free hour (come on Dad!), what’s free hour? Well Dad it’s the time where we chat about absolutely anything we want, nothing to do with school, no teacher telling us what to do, so we talk about all sorts of stuff, I love it as I can be creative, tell everyone about what I like doing and I learn from my friends.

This story got me thinking, if I could create a period of time dedicated to ideas, random thoughts, company improvements, staff wish list, things we’d change, stuff we want to stop doing, whatever language you want, but if I could create this imagine the gold I could I get from this post meeting, imagine how many raw ideas might come from this, but more importantly imagine how you would feel if your boss openly encouraged your ideas and then actually went ahead and implemented some?!

So on hearing this story I always left a period of time in my meetings for ‘general stuff and chat’, ensuring I always go in with a few belters to get the ideas flowing, and once you’ve delivered a few you watch how open your teams are. Meetings certainly changed for the better thereafter.

Ensuring staff engagement levels when working remotely;

Many of us are already well versed at both physical and virtual attendees, but how do we ensure engagement from those often at home and alone, how do we ensure confidence to offer up their ideas?

I don’t see a reason to change a huge amount other than ensuring all remote workers stand up at some stage ??

Firstly I’d set some simple housekeeping for how you want microphones to be handled (on at all times would be my view), those in the office need to be close enough to be heard on the screen, office workers should refrain from referring to the recent office discussion that was had, as that will alienate those working remotely and actively encourage feedback from all delegates. You could use my idea above on asking to hear from everyone as the meeting unfolds.

I’ve often like handing over my meeting agenda to another member of the team, a floating chair if you will, it’s a great way to boost confidence in your teams by empowering someone to run the meeting, if you make it apparent that this rotation will continue you might just find overall engagement increases, as a result as your teams will be paying extra attention as it might just be their turn next time around. Perhaps starting this rotation with a remote worker will work towards boosting engagement.

I like closing meetings with a recap as to what was discussed, brief headlines are great here. I also love to run through the to do list that each person is taking away, this would only work with numbers up to say 15 attendees or so.

Finally finish on a high note, “not all meetings are intended to be fun”, nonsense! You can make meetings fun or at least enjoyable with ease, but always finish with something positive (don’t worry about being Steve Jobs and pulling out the latest ground-breaking piece of tech, one more thing….) but save a company announcement for the end, or some really exciting news about someone in the company, or an industry shakeup, there will always be something, but keep it fresh.

Good luck and I feel confident that your meetings will improve as a result of reading this.

?