Did you know The Muse reports that employees in upper management spend approximately 50% of their time in meetings? And according to the Harvard Business School, for those working from home, there was a 13% increase in virtual meetings taking place.
It’s clear that our calendars are full of meetings, yet typical meetings are unproductive for three common reasons. First, is lack of preparation. Second, poor facilitation and third, lack of actionability. People plan meetings with good intent, and with just a little effort – meetings can become highly effective and LESS FREQUENT. Below are just a few of our top techniques to help leaders and facilitators make the most of the valuable time spent in meetings:
1. Prioritize the Prep
Let’s fess up, leaders at EVERY level typically consider meeting prep as putting a list of topics to discuss. And pre-work might be as deep as a PowerPoint deck. Yet that’s hardly enough preparation for a truly effective meeting.
Before you meet, whether it’s in-person or virtually, it’s important to do quality thinking about what the meeting should produce – not just what should be discussed. If you go in clear on the desired outcome, you can drive toward that goal. Ideally, this is the domain of the meeting organizer or leader, however attendees should also take responsibility to review the agenda and materials well in advance and come up with questions to clarify the goals if they aren’t clearly stated. After all, it’s your time too.
In preparing pre-work, go beyond the traditional PowerPoint deck which rarely provides enough context to truly educate people looking at information for the first time. Take just a few extra minutes and prepare a 1-page summary of the topic, the content, the problem/challenge/decision you want to address and a few questions for the attendees to bring answers to in order to share and discuss. You will be amazed at the superior quality of participation and thinking that this small effort produces.
2. Facilitate Like a Pro
Every meeting needs its leader. If you are the facilitator, do not take this role lightly! You control the tone of the meeting, the environment, and how engaged each participant is. To start the meeting off strong, open up the meeting with introductions and some encouraging words so that others feel comfortable. Then set the context for your time together and clearly outline the goals and objectives, for example, “In the next hour we need to make a decision on whether or not to invest in new technology for the sales team.” This kind of specificity makes your job easier when tangents pop up as you can remind people that’s not pertinent to the goal of the meeting and put it in a parking lot for future discussion.
Pro Tip: If time allows, it is a great idea to start with an icebreaker to engage the brain and get people focused on the type of topic or thinking you want them to do. Click here to access some of our free icebreaker resources and activities.
A key role of the meeting leader is to provide structure. That means sticking to the agenda and starting and ending on time. These activities sound simple, yet for a lot of people it’s challenging because not everyone arrives on time, people bring up really good and important items that the group wants to discuss, and it seems there is NEVER enough time to fully discuss everything.
Facilitating a meeting like a pro takes discipline, confidence and a strong voice. Setting ground rules upfront, letting people know in advance how you’re going to run the meeting and sticking to your plan will help you produce results from the time allotted. And remember, in the end that’s what everyone wants – productivity from the time in the meeting.
Pro Tip: Use a professional agenda planner to help you think through and plan your meeting. It will take the guesswork out of your prep and help you fly through the process.
Setting the stage and providing productive structure are essential, yet the thing many meeting leaders fear is when attendees don’t seem to be engaged, or when one or two people dominate the conversation. As the lead, you must be able to create a safe environment for healthy dialogue. This element is the art of facilitation and it takes some practice to finesse, yet anyone can learn to do it. The five key skills to master are:
- Be completely present at all times.
- Suspend your own position and opinions.
- Interrupt over-talkers gracefully.
- Use the socratic method to draw out under-talkers.
- Summarize and move on.
Pro Tip: You can’t be both the facilitator and note-taker. Delegate notes to an attendee or bring your assistant or junior team member to serve in that role.
3. Mobilize Action
A meeting without a follow-up action somewhat defeats the purpose of having a meeting in the first place. As the leader, your job is to make sure each member of your team commits to clear objectives they can reasonably complete.
Determining what action items each team member should tackle will depend on the outcome of the meeting and the decisions your team collectively makes. At the end of the meeting, be sure to summarize outcomes and commitments, confirm all important details, and define the owners of the various follow-up actions. This allows the group to align expectations, and it enables you to hold people accountable for their commitments.
Mobilizing action isn’t just about what happens in the meeting; it also includes post-meeting accountability and let’s face it…this doesn’t happen often enough. Time and time again, our clients complain that the meetings end up being ideation sessions where good ideas just drift and drift along, never to be realized. As a meeting lead, your responsibilities don’t end when the meeting is over. It’s up to you to make sure action items and owners are materialized and sent to the group. And, it’s also up to you to have a visible way to track and report on what’s moving forward and what’s stalled. With the right tools in place, visibility gently trains people to follow-up on their commitments in a timely fashion.
With the right tools in place, masterful meetings that are time efficient, result-oriented and enjoyable are in fact possible! Leading meetings is an essential skill for every leader and we hope the techniques shared here will help you and your teams transform your overall productivity. If you’re ready for more, click here to subscribe to our newsletter and unlock access to a library of easy-to-use tools to elevate your leadership and improve your results.
