So, the meetings you regularly conduct aren’t going well, and now you’re wondering how to conduct a meeting effectively. Start by identifying the causes. This will help you develop a strategy to make sure that you are conducting effective meetings every time.
The most common time wasters and disruptive factors in meetings are:
- Lack of punctuality: Although everyone’s already gathered in the meeting room, one participant is still at her desk writing emails and another one’s late because they decided to get coffee and snacks at the last minute. That’s disrespectful to the person hosting the meeting as well as to everyone else who showed up on time even though they too had other important tasks they could be doing.
- Lack of preparation: Everyone’s sitting around the table, but nobody knows what the meeting’s actually about. This happens when there’s no agenda with specific agenda items, or nobody’s taken the time to read the agenda. Having to bring everyone up to speed before you can even have a productive discussion is extremely tedious. Many times you’ll lose the attention of participants who are already very familiar with the agenda item.
- Lack of structure: Without clear organization, things quickly become chaotic. People jump from one topic to the next, talk about items that either aren’t up for debate or topics that won’t be relevant until later in the meeting. Other participants quickly lose focus, switch off, and can’t wait for the meeting to end. People who know how to conduct effective meetings know that an organized structure is a must.
- Going off on tangents: Sometimes certain participants will debate at length about project details that are almost completely irrelevant to the day-to-day business of the others. Other times, topics that have already been thrashed out are brought up over and over again without being resolved. Before you know it, a brief update turns into an out-of-control policy debate with no outcome.
- Unequal opportunity to speak: Some people are reluctant to speak in a large group of people, while others seize the opportunity to engage in endless self-promotion. If nobody ensures that everyone gets roughly the same chance to speak, there’s a risk that notorious self-promoters will take over. Many good ideas are never presented because more reserved participants never get a chance to speak.
- No leader/moderator: The person designated to conduct a meeting is ill-prepared or ineffective and relies on the participants to get the meeting up and running. Without strict leadership, a range of things can happen that are rarely productive, such as endless monologuing, awkward silences, or random jumping around between topics that may or may not be relevant.
- No results: No list of effective meeting tips would be complete without this one: The meeting is over, and as everyone heads back to their desks, they’re already wondering what the point of the meeting was. Without concrete outcomes and action items, a meeting is really just a waste of time.
Anyone who attends meetings regularly is familiar with these problems. Complaining about them is easy, but solving these problems is more difficult. If you are supposed to conduct a meeting, you should let every participant know that they are also responsible for the outcome. Colleagues who come unprepared to a meeting every week only to call it a waste of time afterwards play a big role in making their meetings pointless. It’s better to openly express constructive criticism and to make concrete suggestions for improvement instead of always complaining about meetings. If the criticism is legitimate and well-founded, everyone can join forces to figure out the problem and make sure that running effective meetings becomes the new normal.
If you conduct a meeting that suffers from any of the above problems, don’t be afraid to take action. It might mean reprimanding latecomers or simply calling off the meeting if no one is prepared. That takes a conscious effort and should also fit your leadership style. But as long as you remain professional and objective, there’s nothing wrong with reminding participants that such behavior wastes their own time and that of their co-workers.