How to make meetings not suck

Have you ever noticed that most meetings are a waste of time? Not just idle chatter, or time spent waiting for late-arriving attendees, but the fact that they take 20+ minutes and fill your day with more noise, irrelevant to your approach?

Here’s a helpful guide on how to cure the boardroom blues, especially if you’re the one running the meeting!

The assumptions:

Meetings should not be scheduled for more than 20 minutes.

Meetings should be used for results-promoting conversations, decision-making, and relationship-building.

They should not be used to disseminate information that could easily be disseminated elsewhere.

They should not be used to report information that is not relevant to all parties in the room.

The only people invited to a meeting should be those who have some value to add or something to contribute to the agenda and purpose of the meeting.

What to do before, during and after a meeting

Before the meetingMake sure the topics on the agenda are relevant to everyone in the room. Determine the agenda in advance and send it to everyone. Invite them to add or clarify something on the agenda so that attendees have something to say about what is going to be discussed. They should be part of the decision making.

During the meeting, engage your audience, and steer clear of “death by PowerPoint.” I don’t think it is used effectively in the way that most use it. It needs to engage the right side of the brain to be most effective. You don’t just want to place visual data. Maybe add a picture to back up what you’re saying. The key is to balance the left and right sides of the brain to keep the audience intrigued.

To ensure that there is order in your meeting, you can use a Native American tradition which is a “talking stick”. This is a decorative stick and whoever has the stick speaks. Sometimes extroverts drown out introverts, so a stick helps balance this out. Some of the best ideas come from the calmest person because they integrate everyone’s ideas and make everything fit together. Remember that the basic rule is to respect everyone in a meeting.

After the conference there should be action items and timelines of who is going to do what and when that will help determine the big picture. When a meeting is done really well, there is no need to assign positions. People will start volunteering for jobs as the energy in the room moves in the direction of what the goal is. It is a matter of knowing who is going to do what and when.

Follow-up is key after jobs are assigned. If someone signs up to do something, it’s up to them to do their homework, and if they haven’t completed their homework, what’s your counter offer?

90 percent of meetings don’t have to happen. But engaging your audience is easy if they have a compelling reason to be there and have had a chance to contribute to the agenda ahead of time. It all comes down to respecting your time and making sure everyone understands the focus of the meeting. Your attendees just check to see if they’re used to hour-long meetings and have been trained to hear only what applies to them. Keep meetings short and to the point to make them more effective.

BACK

1. Stick to the agenda, especially if other people have contributed to your agenda

2. Listen to your people, be more of a listener than a speaker

3. Find ways to eliminate unnecessary meetings

4. Check that you can be respectful of other people’s time

5. Be clear in your communication

6. Be determined and thoughtful

7. Recognize and recognize people who are doing a good job

8. Respect the time of the meeting if you come to plan a meeting of 1 hour and it ends in 30 minutes, do not try to fill the time. End the meeting. Don’t expect people to stay late if the meeting is planned for 20 minutes and runs long, honor their time as important.

NOT TO DO

1. Don’t hog all the airtime yourself.

2. Do not scold anyone in front of the group

3. Do not use your blackberry or get on twitter

4. Don’t plan a useless meeting, use an email to get the information out to everyone

5. Do not do the opposite of any of the things mentioned above.