It’s not uncommon for people to sigh with some degree of exasperation when they see they have another meeting on their calendar. “Do we have to meet? Grr!” Why do we often respond like that? It’s not that meetings aren’t necessary, beneficial and in fact, awesome opportunities to propel your organization to your next level of success. It’s because we too often haven’t harnessed the right tools to design and facilitate meetings with aligned outcomes and responsible next steps. In those cases, meetings too often feel like a waste of what we all have too little - TIME. We value our hours in the day and hopefully love our jobs. We truly want to use our gifts to help our organizations thrive. It makes sense we want - we need - our meetings to be effective. Here are some vetted tools to help your next meetings elicit sighs of delight; “Yes! We get to meet today!”
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Effective Meetings Determine:
1. The purpose(s) of the meeting
- What action is needed for the betterment of the organization? Make sure that your meeting is primarily focused on receiving feedback towards a needed decision.
- Information shared from the leader or updates from team members should take no more than 10-15% total meeting length. Information can be shared digitally with questions or clarification time allotted minimally in meetings.
2. Who and how many should be in the meeting
- Following the purpose of the meeting determine the relevant meeting attendees who:
- Have the info and knowledge about topic
- Are decision makers relevant to the topic and important stakeholders or those who will be affected
- Will need the information
- Will implement the decision
One fatiguing aspect of meetings is being in one where we aren’t needed.
- The financial cost of each meeting attendee is one more important factor that should motivate each leader to consider who is where when to best advance their organizational effectiveness.
- Seven is the recommended number for an effective meeting. An effective facilitator and use of smaller in-meeting sub groups can support a larger meeting number.
3. The time frame
- The less-than-one-hour meeting is promoted among many top tier businesses today for the greatest effectiveness.
- Try 48 minutes to add a level of urgency and stress to get the purpose(s) fulfilled.
- Leaders often have back-to-back meetings on the hour. Leaving a full 10 minutes will provide the necessary time to get to the next meeting on time and provide for device updates and comfort station needs.
- Shorter meetings allow for multiple and different focused meetings to take place that may include different attendees.
- A morning meeting should always be standing and no longer than 15 minutes on a focused question of the day or week. Any items that surface during a morning meeting that require decision-making and a longer discussion should be take place outside of this check-in meeting.
4. To use formal meeting invitations
- Meetings are important opportunities for organizations to advance their purpose and should be taken seriously. Surprise meetings when employees have their day planned should be avoided. Digital calendar invites are best viewed with an easy response option to confirm your ability to participate. A digital invitation and expected rsvp will serve as a handy reminder with notifications set in order to get the right people to the directed location at the right time for the agreed upon meeting.
5. The design of the meeting
- Determining how your meeting attendees will most eagerly and uniformly participate is a vital aspect so that the purpose of your meeting can be achieved.
- Is this a seated meeting with assigned positions to aide in new conversations?
- Is this a standing meeting for no longer than 15 minutes?
- Is this a walking meeting for 2-4 to problem solve with increased creativity?
- Will attendees role-play different views or individually write responses to assure multiple diverse voices to assure a strengthened end-result?
- Is there material that needs to be individually read during the meeting to assure everyone has equal background prep? (Reading to self is quicker and allows annotation more so than listening and remaining quiet during another’s presentation.)
- Do you have partner discussion questions and other practices planned to prevent a few persons from dominating the conversation?
- What will be your strategies to gather your attendees top feedback selections for the decisions at hand?
- Who will take meeting minutes according to a vetted template with action notes included and shared with attendees and other interested persons ASAP as indicated by leader?
6. A shared unique agenda
- Share digitally ahead of time with prep work assigned, if relevant.
- Clearly state which agenda items will require attendee decision making input or attendee facilitation or their unique input on which items.
- Do not have the same agenda order for repetitive meetings. Change it up to help with attendee engagement.
- Make sure that the most important agenda item is placed at the beginning of the meeting since attendee energy will be most productive nearer the beginning.
7. To bring positive energy and an authentic welcome
- Leaders will set the temperature and expectation of the meeting based on the “We can do this!” and “Let’s do this!” attitude they model. Creating a safe environment is vital to meeting goals where each attendee feels valued for the unique insight they are invited to share.
Some ideas distilled from the work of Rogelberg, Steven Gl, The Surprising Science of Meetings. Oxford University Press, New York, NY. 2019
Watch Dr. Rogelberg’s TEDx talk summarizing how to have an effective meeting.
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