Meeting Management: 5 Tips to Make your Meetings a Success

How to lead engaging and productive meetings

Have you ever attended a meeting where:

• the organizer starts off with, "Does anyone know what this meeting is about?"...Uuuummm, YOU organized it (insert mind blown emoji here!)

• one person overtakes the entire call and no one else's ideas are heard?

• no one knows what the plan is after the meeting ends?

Most likely we've all experienced a poorly organized or poorly led meeting. And if you're reading this, you're hopefully interested in learning how to avoid making those mistakes. Well, I'm here to help you out!

Tip #1 - Vet your crew

By this I mean, thoroughly review your attendee list. Are all of the pertinent people invited? Is anyone missing? Is there anyone extra on the list that doesn't need to be included?

The worst is when the purpose of your meeting is to come to a decision and the lead decision maker wasn't invited.

The CFO (Chief Financial Officer) also may not be happy to know that the whole team is invited to an hour-long daily call that has no relevance to any of them. I'm sure alot of organizations would be shocked if they added up the time and money lost on people attending meetings that they didn't need to be a part of.

Make sure you have all of the key people for the purpose of your meeting and ONLY the key people for the purpose of your meeting.

And that brings me to my next tip...

Tip #2 - Make sure your meeting has a purpose!

There has to be a clear reason why you're calling the group together. If you have no reason to meet - don't meet! Plain and simple.

Defining your purpose not only determines if you need to hold a meeting (versus an email conversation) and guides your agenda, it is also paramount in defining the list of stakeholders to invite.

And if you have a recurrent call on the books, please check your schedule at least the day prior and if you deem it unnecessary for that particular week, please cancel it as soon as possible. Don't wait until 2min prior to the call to send out a cancelation. Give your team the advanced courtesy so they can keep their days flowing with focused work.

Tip #3 - Plan for it

Now that you know you have a clear, defined purpose for holding the meeting and have the list of required attendees based on that information - don't skimp on planning for it!

Planning isn't just the agenda, although please don't forget to build out an agenda. Even if it's something as free flowing as a brainstorming session. A sample agenda could be:

• Brainstorming session

• Q&A as needed

• Next steps review

Planning also includes things like:

• Sending out the agenda ahead of time so those team members that prefer to digest information and need more time to prepare for a group meeting have the time to do so

• Sending out any prework with ample time allotted for the team to complete it (i.e., Please don't send out an in-depth analysis document to the team 5min prior to the call and expect them to have fully digested and be able to discuss it.)

• Thinking about the attendees and arranging activities to best accommodate their needs. Examples:

  • To accommodate those that may not be as comfortable speaking up in a group.

    • arrange breakout sessions into smaller groups to reduce anxiety around speaking in front of the entire group

    • allow the team to write their thoughts down on a card and hand them in for the leader to read aloud

  • For those that need more time to process things, the card example above with a 2-3min timer is another way to make sure their ideas are being expressed and received by the group

  • Arrange a live or virtual whiteboard to accommodate those that best learn visually

It's paramount to keep your audience in mind when planning your meeting!

Tip #4 - Communicate it out

I've already touched on the importance of pre-meeting communication, so just to reiterate, please send out your meeting invitation with a purpose, agenda, and include any pre-work required so the team can prepare for the meeting.

Then at the end of the meeting, communicate out to the team all of the next steps, their owners, and their anticipated due dates. This is valuable to confirm you heard everything correctly and gives the team another chance to hear what they've agreed or been assigned to.

Tip #5 - Follow up

It's always important to send out your notes following the call with an action item summary - including the task, owner, and due date. Then be sure to reconnect as due dates approach to keep your requirements top of mind for the team.

If your meeting recurs, it's valuable to email the team with the action items from the previous meeting, being sure to give them enough time so they're prepared to speak to the statuses. It's also a good tip to get status updates prior to the next call so face to face time (virtual or live) can be used for solving problems, blockers, and mitigating risks.

In Summary....

Meetings don't have to be lame! If you're prepared and thoughtful about what you're presenting and how you're presenting it, keeping your audience in mind, anyone can hold a productive and successful meeting...and dare I even say fun??

To learn more Meeting Management tips & tricks, check out my ever-growing course catalogue here!