Easy Prep for Running Better Meetings

A lot of professionals carry a dislike for meetings that can range anywhere from a nuisance to complete and utter disdain.

The primary reason that meetings are disliked comes from how poorly they are so often ran. Most professionals have not been trained on how to run an effective meeting. This leads to meetings that feel unproductive due to lack of agenda and vague takeaways that lead to additional meetings and offline discussions.

The good news is that establishing a framework for better meetings is very simple and will help you stand-out in your organization. Here are several of the ways to make your meetings better and your attendees happier.

Create Ground Rules

While this probably should be done during a meeting, the point is that once they are created they will support all future staff meetings you or your delegates facilitate. A quick Google search will provide plenty of rules but here are some of my favorites…

• Start on time, end on time

• Assume good intent

• Silence devices

• Provide candid feedback

Define Your Objective

Define the purpose of the meeting. Define a specific objective that will help the team make progress towards their goals and priorities. If the objective is not going to help deliver results, you may want to question whether or not you truly need to meet. 

Create an Agenda

This ties nicely with the previous point. If a meeting has no agenda, then there is no roadmap towards achieving the objective. These meetings quickly become office talk and time-wasters. Create an agenda with specific amount of time allotted to each topic.

Deliver the Agenda in Advance

Deliver the agenda 24 hours in advance – This is all about cognitive diversity. Some people need to digest information or topics before opining on them. Providing an agenda 24 hours in advance allows this population to collect their thoughts which makes them more likely to engage in meetings. Of course, some will always remain silent, but this at least opens the door.

Finish with action items

Leave enough time to review action items. Who does what by when? Who owns the task? What specifically is the task? When is it due? This should have already been determined throughout the discussion so this is just a brief recap and reminder.

Learn from Observations

Observe the effectiveness of your meetings and make adjustments as necessary. Do you always run short on time? Revisit the number of topics on each agenda and the amount of time afforded to each. Do decision-based conversations swirl? Consider getting more prescriptive with your meeting objective. What feedback are you receiving from attendees and how are you incorporating that into the structure?