“Meetings,” The very word stirs so many emotions, it may as well be a four-letter word. (It isn’t, I checked.) In the business world there are a lot of meetings conducted every day, maybe too many, maybe too few, maybe not enough of the right meetings, maybe the wrong people are in the meetings, maybe the right people are missing….maybe, all of these.
Nonetheless, they are an essential element in important decision making, establishing action plans and getting everyone on the same page. Whether you are holding the meeting or merely attending, there are actions that both parties can take to make meetings better and more effective. Here are a few thought starters.
For Meeting Initiators
1. Do we really need to have a meeting?
Don’t get caught in the knee jerk reaction that a meeting is the solution to every issue. Taking a couple minutes to have a stand-up conversation with one or two people can result in amazing decisions. Before you send out that next calendar invite, ask yourself if there may be an easier alternative method to make a decision rather than calling another meeting.
2. What is the question that needs to be answered?
Don’t call a meeting unless you can define the question that must be answered by the end of the meeting. If you can’t do this, don’t call the meeting until you can. And if you can define the question, address it in the meeting invite so everyone knows what it is. (This was a tip from LaneTerralever’s content strategy director Libbie Miller, that came up in another, you guessed it, meeting.)
3. Change your email calendar meeting settings.
When the Outlook email was first released, the default meeting time was set to 30 minutes. Several years ago, some programmer, with a sick sense of humor and desire to be wicked, changed the default to 60 minutes. Do yourself and others a favor. Go into your email settings right now and change your default back to 30 minutes. There is even an office organization law about this called Parkinson’s Law: "Work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion." Give it a try.
4. Send an agenda, expectations & attachments with your meeting invite.
In addition to the defined question that must be answered, every meeting invite should include an agenda, expectations of the meeting (“We will come up with a minimum of three ideas for solving world peace", for example), along with any documents that should be reviewed by the attendees prior to the meeting.
5. Invite the right people.
This also came up in a meeting yesterday. It’s a tough one, because sometimes you might not know to know exactly whom to invite. When in doubt, ask the person or people you know need to be in the meeting who else should attend. Or if you think someone should attend, ask her or him if they should, or if they recommend someone else. One rule of thumb is to invite only the people who can legitimately answer the question you identified in your meeting invite and who have the authority to take action on the decisions that will come out of the meeting.
Remember, your meeting must conclude with one or more decisions agreed upon, a timetable for acting on those decisions, and a person identified as responsible for owning each agreement.
For Meeting Attendees
1. Do you need to be there?
Regarding the point about inviting the right people, if you are invited to a meeting and you don’t think you are the right person to attend, talk with the meeting initiator and suggest who would be better. Nobody is getting merit badges for the number of meetings attended in a week. If you end up in a meeting and discover after a few minutes into the meeting that you are not going to be able to contribute, politely excuse yourself and go do something more important that you can impact. No harm, no foul.
2. Come prepared or don’t come.
If the meeting initiator has gone through the effort to define the question, set the agenda, identify the expectations, and provide supporting documents, read them and come to the meeting prepared with ideas. Don’t wait until the meeting to think up something on the spot.
3. Make quality statements.
The measure of our contribution is on quality not quantity. There is no need to restate what others have said unless you have something to add that will make a difference. If you truly agree with something, simply say “I agree”, mean it, and move on. Repetition of thinking is a time killer in meetings.
4. Use your manners.
If you are invited to a meeting, your ideas are valuable. But we hope to hear everyone’s ideas. Be considerate of others, listen, and don’t hijack the meeting by speaking too much or speaking over others.
5. Clean up after yourselves.
We can assume that right when one meeting ends, another begins. Make sure you leave the room better than you found it. It’s everyone’s responsibility to remove trash, food, drinks, and erase whiteboards so the next meeting can start on time.
This is by no means meant to be comprehensive list, just a couple of beneficial tips to take into consideration. Don’t hate meetings. Hate bad meetings, and go make your next meeting a great one. At LaneTerralever we constantly implement new techniques to improve the efficiency of our meetings. What are some creative meeting tips that your department or organization uses? Please share them below.
