At Clear Books, we’re determined to avoid unnecessary meetings. Experience has shown that too often they’re easily hijacked by other issues, waste time and are ultimately not productive.
However there are some meetings that can’t be avoided— such as performance reviews, team meetings and senior leadership updates.
With this in mind, we’ve put together a list of tips to keep your meetings on track and avoid wasting valuable time!
- 1. Keep it ad hoc
- It can be helpful for teams and senior leaders to hold regular meetings to make sure the company objectives are being met, but if there’s a regular meeting that’s always cancelled, poorly attended or never seems to yield results, consider freeing up people’s diaries and scrapping it.
- 2. Formulate and send an agenda
- When sending a meeting invitation, make sure you outline what the meeting aims to cover and what its overall objectives are. Indicate clearly how long you expect each item to take.
- 3. Tell people why they should attend
- When sending out an invitation, include a short note at the end informing the recipient why they have been invited — if it might not be immediately obvious to them. A quick line specifying what they will contribute to, or learn from, your meeting will encourage people to attend.
- 4. Invite only who needs to be there
- As a meeting organiser, think carefully about who needs to attend. Particularly if it’s a more formal meeting, it’s can be unhelpful to have lots of non-participating ‘bystanders’. Invite only those whom the meeting’s subject concerns.
- 5. Don’t be afraid to decline meeting invitations
- On the flip side, if someone invites you to a meeting and you sense it’s not relevant to you, don’t be afraid to decline. If you’re not sure, politely double check with the meeting organiser first.
- 6. Mix up the location
- If you do hold an important regular meeting, consider changing the location every so often. Perhaps you could take everyone to the park, a local cafe or an inspiring workspace to stimulate minds and invigorate thought. You could also have one-to-one meetings while taking a walk.
- 7. Choose the right sized meeting room
- If you’re organising a large gathering, think about the size of the room. If a room is too hot or cramped, people might feel uncomfortable and will be focusing on the environment rather than the issues at hand. This can also work the other way. If it’s a small gathering, consider an informal sofa chat rather than commandeering a large room.
- 8. Provide refreshments
- Obviously if it’s a quick 15 minute catch-up there’s no need to fuss over whether everyone has a cup of tea. But if the meeting is likely to take more than an hour make sure there’s at least water available, along with hot drinks if possible. A plate of biscuits can also work wonders on attendees’ enthusiasm.
- 9. Introduce yourself
- When starting the meeting, if you’re with a group of people who don’t know each other and who don’t necessarily know you, make sure you clearly state this at the outset to avoid confusion later. It may also be helpful for everyone to quickly introduce themselves if it doesn’t take up too much time.
- 10. Introduce the meeting’s purpose
- Once everyone knows what role each attendee plays, the meeting leader should clearly state the agenda, helped by slides if necessary. Everyone should already know this from the agenda sent with the invitation but refreshing everyone’s memory will help focus attention.
- 11. Keep it short
- Often people would much rather be doing their ‘real job’ than sitting in a meeting. Show you value their time by keeping the meeting to the point and as short as possible.
- 12. Stick to the time frame
- This also goes for managing people’s expectations for how much time they should allow for your meeting. Just because you might have hours to spare if the meeting overruns, doesn’t mean everyone does. Stick to the time you specified in the initial invite.
- 13. Don’t let one person dominate
- Sometimes there’s one person who can’t help but dominate every meeting they attend, whether the subject is their forte or not. It’s not always easy but, without interrupting a relevant point, if you sense this happening do your best to include others who are more reticent in offering their opinions.
- 14. Be clear throughout
- If the meeting goes off on a tangent and you’re the facilitator, make it your mission to bring everyone back to the matter at hand. If an important issue comes up which doesn’t help to achieve the meeting’s objective, arrange to talk about it another time.
- 15. Adapt the meeting to keep it productive
- Having said that, people aren’t robots, so if a relevant issue is raised which contributes to the meeting’s aims but wasn’t on the original agenda, then go with it. Sometimes the solution to a problem comes from somewhere unexpected.
- 16. Stay neutral if you’re the facilitator
- If you’ve called the meeting and are fulfilling the role of keeping the meeting on track, try not to get too involved on either side of the discussion. Keep a level head and maintain a balance between all sides of the conversation. Make sure everyone gets a fair chance to air their view.
- 17. Let junior people contribute
- Sometimes more senior people dominate the conversation by default, and forget that the junior people present may also have valid and useful opinions to offer. Without putting them on the spot, ask them directly what they think.
- 18. Stay focused on the end result
- You should have ascertained the meeting’s objective before you even invited anyone to it, so keep your goals in mind throughout. You could write it in big letters on a piece of paper beside you to remind you not to let anyone get too sidetracked.
- 19. Avoid back to back meetings
- If you’re using Outlook or Gmail to organise meetings, you can usually see attendees’ diaries. If someone’s day looks frantic, consider choosing a different day to hold your meeting. Attendees will be fresher and more likely to come along if they aren’t rushed off their feet in other meetings all day.
- 20. Give people a break
- If possible, time your meeting to finish five minutes or so before the hour so that if attendees do have somewhere else to get to, they can quickly use the bathroom, get some water or a snack, or some fresh air.
- 21. Don’t let the conclusion be another meeting
- At the end of your meeting, make sure that the end result is an action rather than another hour long discussion. You should have already identified what direction this should take in the initial agenda.
Do you have any useful tips for keeping meetings under control? Let us know in the comments!
