How often do you attend “useless” or “boring” meetings?
You probably have been in a few of these meetings
✓ with > 20 (or even more) attendees that are taking place every week
✓ where everyone attends because they’re supposed to, but no one gets much value out of it
✓ where everyone multitasks or wishes they were somewhere else (or both).
The amount of time invested in these low-value adding meetings is costly and may slow down progress on other work that has to wait while you are attending this meeting. So how do you fix it?
Here are a few tips you can apply as a team leader to increase the effectiveness of your meetings and boost morale in your team:
– Make an agenda with clear goals and objectives for each meeting topic. The most common categories are: 1) Information sharing, 2) discussion or brainstorming and 3) decision-making
– Distribute materials at least one day prior to the meeting. This allows attendees to prepare for the meeting, get input from peers or managers and keeps the meeting laser focused on answering questions or addressing concerns.
– Cancel the meeting if there are only “information sharing” topics. Instead, share the information by e-mail so people can read when they have time. Cancelling meetings shows respect to heavy workload and reduces meeting overload.
– Apply a crystal clear decision-making methodology to ensure everyone understands how decisions are made and adhere to the outcome. If you are interested to learn more about this topic, I will soon organize another workshop on decision-making. Stay tuned!
These meeting rules all look simple and clear. You have probably seen those before….so what is stopping you to have more efficient team meetings?
