Meetings are an important part of any operation but often they’re seen as unnecessary and annoying. They can eat up a lot of precious time, especially if there is no clear and coherent agenda. When you need to get stuff done at work, you may be tempted to avoid meetings altogether.
However, such an extreme solution may prove to be detrimental for team communication and alignment — which ultimately has an impact on the overall quality of work.
Meetings are here to stay. You just have to find a way to do them the right way, but how?
Be clear about agenda right from the get-go
A big reason why workers try to avoid meetings is that a specific agenda is lacking. This leaves people in the dark as to the specific issues that will be discussed and allows the meeting conversation to extend for longer than it should.
Have a specific agenda in mind and communicate that in the meeting invite right away. Craft talking points to guide everyone throughout the meeting. This helps prevent the conversation from needlessly expanding to other topics or areas.
Be selective about who should be present
A meeting is shared time between a certain number of people to discuss specific matters. As such, it’s important to maximize this time by making sure that invites are extended to only team members that need to be involved.
If anyone is working directly on a particular project and you need to brainstorm for ideas, then those relevant team members need to be looped into the meeting.
Except for special circumstances, inviting people from other teams or departments who are not direct contributors will serve little to no purpose.
Everyone has to speak up
Since everyone who is directly involved in a project or a specific issue needs to be in the meeting, they need to contribute to the conversation. This is key to ensuring a successful or productive meeting. By practising this, teams avoid having the meeting organizer do all the talking.
Are there any deliverables that are running late, and if so, how can contributors fast track the process? Is there any relevant client feedback that can help the team improve products? Important conversations around these outcomes need to be driven by people who are directly responsible for them.
Foster a conducive environment
Aside from choosing an appropriate meeting space, meeting organizers need to effectively facilitate the discussion. How can you pull this off?
Organizers can encourage and remind attendees that new ideas and inputs are welcome. The last thing anyone wants is for their thoughts to not be welcomed.
When someone is struggling to articulate a solution to a problem, a facilitator can help break it down into digestible pieces by asking guide questions and politely clarifying each point.
In summary
While there are many more ways to conduct productive meetings, the key is to understand that nobody wants to waste time on meandering discussions when they have other pressing matters to deal with.
Recognizing that will allow you to make the most of the meetings you need to schedule.