Meetings don't have to suck

“That could have been an email!”

“The only good meetings are canceled meetings”

Hey… meetings don’t have to be awful!

As a long-time program manager who has led effective, even fun meetings (and earlier on, admittedly some not-so-great ones), I’d love to share a few tips to spread meeting-happiness!

Meeting organizers and hosts:

Consider limiting meetings to those with clearly defined purposes:

• Brainstorming: What could we build? How could we work together better? This is open-ended idea-storming, and not to be confused with planning or deciding!
• Decision-making: Should we delay the launch to incorporate [feature]? Should we outsource our customer support? Review/approval meetings also fall under this category. Note that all this is different than planning, which is usually best tackled right after brainstorming... but in writing.
• Sensitive conversations: This includes topics like re-orgs, key team departures, and so on, where a personal touch and live Q&A is the right thing to do.
• Interactive learning: This is also where live Q&A shines, whether it's engaging with an expert guest or walking through a prototype.

Announcements and mostly-one-way updates? Usually better over email and/or email linking to a doc or deck. "But...but... many people don't read their email!" That may be true, but if the announcements are truly relevant, important, and impactful to the recipients, the word will spread.

Weekly syncs? Consider eliminating them or centering them around one of the purposes above vs. just "updates".

And oh, about agendas. Yes, you must have them, and -- of equal importance -- you must share them at least a few hours (ideally a day) ahead of time so folks can suggest refinements or even decide to pass on attending.

Give your meetings some breathing room

Calendar-schedule and precisely start each meeting 'on the 5'

[hat-tip to my insightful former teammate, Benjamin Carlin ].

This offers three great benefits:

• It enables people rushing in from the typical meeting ending on the 0:00 or :30 to actually be on time to your meeting and maybe even get a quick bathroom or snack break in!
• By starting exactly at the 0:05 or 0:35, you establish a clear & firm precedent of respecting your attendees' time, because -- in contrast -- it's really frustrating racing to be on time to a meeting only to hear "Uh, yeah, let's let some more folks trickle in. We'll get started in a few minutes..."
• Many folks will still, out of habit, wander in at the 0:00 or 0:30 mark and -- coolness! -- this makes for a care-free chitchat time without any uh, are we supposed to start or not vibes. It's the best of all worlds! :)

Well, except for one part; at least with Google Calendar, it's a pain to override the default time settings for every meeting. But it's a small price to pay.

Consider changing hour-long meetings to 42-52 minutes

I've found that a lot of meetings require more than 25 minutes... but -- with discipline -- can be tackled in under 60. Setting your meeting to be, say, 1:05-1:47pm offers breathing room on both ends and also highlights your intentionality... that you're not just defaulting to hour-long meetings, because we all know that meetings will take all available time. Also, 42 is just cool.

Foster inclusivity!

We've all experienced that one guy who dominates meetings. First, don't be that guy. But more importantly, when you're the meeting host you need to be assertive in balancing conversations. Example:

[Loudmouth]: "And so also let me describe in depth..."

Host: "Excuse me, [loudmouth]. Appreciate your passion. Let's hear from others. Thoughts on [option A] vs [option B]?" <--should be reasonably scoped; the open-ended "what do others think?" can be a bit daunting!

[Pause]

[No, I mean a painfully long pause. Because often that's what it takes for more-reserved people to come out of the woodwork... a bit of uncomfortable silence!]

9 times out of 10, this seems to work, though sometimes it requires the host to ask a followup question or even playfully goad "Okay, so if no one else has thoughts on this, I can just assume [option b] and start assigning tasks?" And even when others still decline to chime in, you've made it clear that you genuinely care about having an open, balanced conversation... which'll pay dividends over time.

Oh, and one more bit about being inclusive: make sure the note-taking responsibility is also spread around! Having the one female program manager always be the note-taker, even when she's "glad" to do it... not a good look and not fair. Solicit a (different-each-time) note-taker up front, or even just flat out ask "Hey, [name], mind taking notes today? Thanks!"

And a side-note about notes: "detailed" is great, but at the end of the day, the by-far-most-important three bits:

• The thing to be decided (main options, pros/cons)
• The final decision (we will do [x] by [y] pending approval from [z])
• The specific tasks to be done (including the who and when)

All the other details are gravy and might even be unnecessary.

Meeting attendees / prospective attendees

Decide wisely!

You should ideally only attend a meeting if...

• You expect to learn important or at least very interesting things and/or
• You're confident you can contribute useful info or help make decisions

If an agenda hasn't yet been shared, then you should politely but firmly request one and make your decision based upon what you do or don't subsequently receive.

It's often initially tough, but -- at least in a healthy team -- you should be direct in why you're choosing not to attend a meeting, e.g., "Hey, appreciate being invited, but I'm not confident that I have much to contribute or glean from this one. Am I missing something, or is it okay if I bow out?"

Interestingly, sometimes the manager and/or meeting host will be grateful to have a smaller, more tightly-focused set of attendees and may have been shy about culling the list earlier.

Show up on time and be fully present

This is in contrast with the "eh, I'll just go and bring my laptop and half pay attention." That approach is bad for a bunch of reasons:

• Your half-hearted / fractured attention probably sends one of many suboptimal messages to the host and possibly to the other attendees.
• We're nearly all worse at multitasking than we think we are. You'll probably miss important bits from the meeting while still not efficiently getting real work done in the background.
• People who might have felt more comfortable expressing opinions on sensitive matters may feel less so when there are lurkers.

Some hosts have tried to address this with in-person meetings by saying "laptops closed, please", and I understand that approach. But -- given that individuals may justifiably want to take personal notes re info or tasks -- a better approach is probably just urging people, "Please be present. No shame in quietly bowing out of this meeting, even half-way through, if you find this meeting isn't useful for you."

For remote meetings, some ways in which you can be present include...

• Keep your camera on: I realize this is controversial, but -- outside of mass "all-hands" meetings -- your facial language can be a helpful guide for the host and it can also signal interest, appreciation, or 'hmm, what was that again?' to others in useful ways.
• Positively engage: Give visual or emoji thumbs up. Send supportive notes privately or to the group ("That was an awesome explanation, THANK YOU!" and afterwards "Hey, appreciate your hosting, especially how you...")

Give kind and timely feedback

One of the things that absolutely made my day when hosting meetings was when attendees -- or even non-attendees -- gave me direct-but-respectful feedback!

Some examples of feedback you can share (ideally immediately after the meeting so it's fresh on everyone's mind)

• Timing and length: "Hey, this meeting time is tough for J because she's getting her kid to school then" or "It feels a bit rushed; maybe have this be longer but less often so we can dive deeper each time?"
• Focus: "I find the discussions about [x] really useful, but wouldn't [y] be better with a smaller group?" or "I feel like we're rehashing and ranting too much; could you help us be more focused on decision-making, please?"
• Inclusivity: "I felt uncomfortable how D is often interrupting, sometimes dismissing ideas."

I once had a software engineer give me so much outstanding feedback that I enthused "You should run this meeting sometime!" He was taken aback, but when I expressed my sincere appreciation and admiration for his insights, he agreed to take the helm for a couple weeks... and man, this turned out to be outstanding for everyone! I got a bit of a break and some awesome meeting-hosting ideas, the engineer got some additional much-deserved visibility, and the meeting attendees got a break from me. Seriously, sometimes it's cool to vary up more than just the note-taker! :-)

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk, er, reading my first-ever LinkedIn article!

I have so many other thoughts I'm eager to share about team communications and knowledge sharing, but this is already a bit long, so I'll end here.

But -- in the spirit of aforementioned feedback -- I am genuinely excited to hear from y'all! What have you found to be attributes of outstanding meetings that you ran or attended?