How to Have Meetings that Don’t Suck

If you are like me, you get invited to a lot of meetings.

Team meetings, kick off meetings, debrief meetings, donor meetings, one on one meetings, staff meetings, planning meetings, senior management meetings, board meetings, committee meetings.

So. Many. Meetings.

Ask colleagues what they think of meeting. Most will say that meetings suck.

I don’t blame the frequency of meetings.

I blame poor meeting planning.

I’m not alone in that sentiment. Steven Rogelberg, an organizational psychologist at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte agrees. He notes that: "Meetings can be incredibly engaging, satisfying sources of inspiration and good decision making when they are conducted effectively," (Source)

What?! It’s true.

Take my colleague Amelda. A few weeks back Amelda hosted a planning session with her team. She wanted to align the department and plan for success for the upcoming fiscal year.

When she told me about the session, my immediate question to her was ‘have you developed a detailed agenda?’. At that point she hadn’t but had identified her desired outcomes for the session.

Which is why Amelda and I got together before her planning session and co-created an agenda that would support her success.

Here’s are the #tinygains we made sure to incorporate:

1. Be clear on your objective
   Without clear objectives, how will you know the purpose of the meeting? Objectives help you define success.
   
   The objectives don’t have to be complex or elaborate. The objective for a team meeting can be as simple as an opportunity for team building and cohesion.
   
   For Amelda, one of her objective was to identify new engagement opportunities and activities that would deepen relationships with donors.
   

2. Ask general but specific questions
   Simply asking ‘What do you think?’ or ‘Any questions?’ is not helpful.
   
   You have to be specific in what feedback you want from participants. A couple of better questions might be ‘What excites you?’ or ‘What concerns do you have?’.
   
   For each of Amelda’s agenda items we came up with specific questions to ask the team, making sure they weren’t yes/no questions.
   

3. Give attendees time to gather their thoughts
   Asking a question and expecting an immediate response is setting yourself up for awkward silence and poor responses.
   
   A better approach is to build in one to five minutes of time for participants to think, reflect and jot down their ideas. Once the time is up, then ask folks to share. The responses will be superior because you gave people thinking time.
   
   Amelda knew she has some quieter folks on her team. Giving them the time and space to formulate a response meant they were able to more confidently share their responses.
   

4. Incorporate movement
   Sitting for two hours staring at a PowerPoint is a recipe for mental and physical exhaustion.
   
   Consider how you can get folks up and moving. This could be as simple as having attendees breakout into small groups around the room; or something more elaborate like a role-playing exercise.
   
   Amelda had the team visually map out a calendar of events using post-it notes posted around the room. This got people up and out of their seats; walking around the room in order to contribute their ideas.
   

5. Give yourself space for deep conversations
   With planning sessions, you are asking people to work through problems, identify opportunities and plan for the future.
   
   That can’t be accomplished in fifteen minutes.
   
   Be sure to give agenda items the time they deserve. This will mean fewer topics will get discussed, but the discussions will be comprehensive.
   
   For Amelda’s two-hour planning session, there was a total of three agenda items. Each item was given 30 minutes of time. The other 30 minutes was dedicated to a mid-point break and opening and closing remarks.
   

6. Include a beginning and closing activity
   Too often these types of sessions will have the leader say a few remarks and then the team dives into the deep end of planning. It can be a bit jarring for folks, especially if you haven’t participated in a planning session before.
   
   Much like a sports activity, meetings should begin with a warmup.
   
   A quick and easy exercise I like to begin with, is by asking the question ‘What is one word to describe how you are feeling.’ You could ask them to share one word about a specific topic or leave it general.
   
   I have participants share their one word; noting they aren’t required to explain it or justify it.
   
   With this exercise, you get an instant pulse on how folks are feeling, and you can easily identify trends in the responses.
   
   I also like to finish planning sessions with this same question. The responses are a great indicator of how the session landed with attendees.
   
   How did Amelda’s planning session turn out? The term ‘jazzed’ was used a lot by the team. What a great outcome!