When we ask our client collaborators, friends, and family members how much time they spend in meetings, we hear the estimate is upwards of 75% of their total work time. This is consistent across individuals who work in small nonprofits all the way to global IT enterprises. If we spend this much time in meetings – they’d better be worthwhile.
Here are 7 things you can do to improve the effectiveness and impact of your meetings:
1. Start with why
By starting with why we get closer to the value, benefit, and intention of having a meeting in the first place. We can also refocus a meeting series that has gone off the rails and surface opportunities for how we might better use that time together.
Here’s how to get closer to why: consider why would your attendees care about this meeting? Consider each of their unique positions, aspirations, and worries and offer clarity on why they will benefit from attending this meeting. We find using the “5 Why’s” technique in our own thought process helpful to get to the root of “why” for this person or group of individuals. After thinking through the possibilities and pressing to get more concrete about the benefit of this person(s) attending the meeting and it still isn’t clear – maybe they shouldn’t be invited to attend. Perhaps a follow up email, a presentation, a document, or some other format might be just as helpful for this person instead of spending the time in the meeting.
2. Set goals
We’re unlikely to achieve our goals by accident, or so I’ve learned with my long term goal of being able to do a cartwheel compared to my current ability. Meetings are more effective with clear goals that are shared among attendees.
Here are some questions to consider to surface goals: Is there a decision to be made in this meeting? Will we be facing a problem together and collaborating? Do we need to share information and/or gain understanding about a piece of work that impacts us? Are we being asked to change our behaviors, plans, or work in some way as a result of what happens in this meeting? Is there a question to be answered that we need to explore together? Ultimately, the most important question to answer is: What would be a great outcome of this meeting?
3. Curate the list of attendees
Once we have a clearer sense of the why, benefits for attendees, and some goals, this should make it easier to decide who to invite. Based on the why and the goals, consider: Who needs to be at this meeting to achieve these goals? Then, only invite those people.
One dynamic we see pretty regularly, unfortunately, is the ever-expanding meeting invitation list. When we invite every person who might want or need to be there, or extend the invite to individuals out of politeness, we lose the focused power of assembling the right people that need to be at this meeting. It dilutes the value and effectiveness of the meeting for everyone. You’ve been in one of these meetings, I suspect, where everyone is multitasking – responding to emails, working on a PowerPoint, editing a Word doc – not really being present in the meeting, but there just in case, for some reason. My experience in these kinds of meetings is I wonder who, if anyone, is truly gaining benefit from this time together and whether that same benefit for a select few might be better accomplished with an email, a dashboard, or some other form of communication.
4. Start with an agreement from the group
With clarity on the why, the goals, the benefit for the attendees and who should be there, a great way to launch an effective meeting is to gain agreement on the goals. If this is something prepared ahead of time, we might share some goals as an offering to the group; however it’s important to keep an open mind and a willingness to change these goals based on new information from attendees. Maybe something has changed since we wrote out the goals, maybe someone in the room has a goal for attending that we didn’t consider yet. Share the goals, ask if anyone has proposed changes or things to add, and ask for agreement before moving on. When everyone’s needs for the meeting are met, the meeting will go better.
5. Prioritize peoples’ experience for better long-term results
There’s no way of fully predicting how a meeting will go and what each person is bringing with them to that meeting. For consistently effective meetings, practice a willingness to set aside your own expectations and meet people where they’re at in this moment in this meeting. Remember this group can only go as fast as they can go. Something you hoped to get done in an hour may not be enough time for this group to arrive there together. It’s more important that we all arrive there together and that the journey goes well, than it is for only some of us to get there alone. When we prioritize peoples’ experience in the meeting itself, we get better long-term results.
6. Focus on listening, and ask others to do the same
When we focus on listening first, we will understand and be understood more effectively. When everyone in the meeting focuses on listening first and sharing their thoughts second, we can make faster progress together. Listen and check for understanding to surface hidden assumptions and potential misunderstandings as they occur. This reduces the risk that we all leave the meeting thinking we’re on the same page, but may ultimately be misaligned. Focusing on listening also creates healthier communication dynamics which builds a safer meeting environment which is a requirement for collaboration and creative problem solving.
7. Tend to the meeting dynamics and ask for help
This can be a tricky one depending on the already existing patterns of behavior and communication dynamics attendees have with one another. In even the toughest, most tense meeting environments, we’ve found that sharing the intention right at the beginning of the meeting opens the possibility for change.
Here’s one way to introduce the concept with some concrete requests: “I want to look after how we run the meeting together and how we interact with each other. I’d like your help noticing if/when we interrupt each other and making sure that people get to share their full thought before someone else speaks. I’d also like your help in making sure everyone’s voice is heard, so during the meeting today, I’d like each of us to consider whether we might “step up” to contribute our voice more or “step back” to allow space for someone else’s voice.”
Take as much or as little time as needed to prepare. In some cases, it might be helpful to spend time before the meeting and independently work through #1 and #2, in other cases we can work through those items together at the beginning of the meeting. This whole process could take days, or minutes, but it’s the consistent practice that leads to progress.
In closing, I love meetings. I hear a lot of people say they hate meetings, but for me, meetings are where real work happens. It’s where we collaborate, explore, find the best in each other to produce results that would be impossible on our own.