Make your meetings matter

Oct. 24, 2018

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Meetings can be a boost or bane to any organization. Managed properly, they can fuel healthy interaction, collaboration, alignment and unity among team members, and improve your decision-making and communication flow. 

On the flip side, poorly run meetings can be horribly unproductive time-wasters, erode the trust in leadership and lead to frustration and disengagement within your best people. The unfortunate reality is that many of us simply don’t do meetings well. However, we can remedy that and begin to unleash the potential of meetings to deliver all the potential benefits they offer.

Let’s start to address our “bad-meeting dilemma” by looking at a few common examples of when meetings are held but probably shouldn’t:

We want status updates from different departments or groups.If there is critical new information that needs to be shared and discussed among various groups, or if you find a specific person or team needs some focused help or resources, then by all means, hold the meeting. However, if you’re organizing a meeting just to ensure people are “up to speed,” skip it. Share routine updates via email or conference phone calls, but don’t call a meeting for that purpose.

We always have our “Wednesday morning Operations team meeting” every week. This is a variation of the point above. The specific day and topic or group may vary in your workplace, but you know the drill: you meet the same day each week at the same time with the same people. You may have good regular attendance and participation at these meetings, but that doesn’t mean they’re productive or even necessary. In fact, you may be annoying people—especially your high performers—with this waste of time.

Someone or something critical is missing from the meeting. Every key person you need should be at the meeting and everyone who comes should be appropriately prepared with the right information. If information is missing or you need input from a key member who will be absent, then reschedule. Sure, it can be a hassle when you have to do that, but it’s worse to bring everyone together and then find you’re unable to have the conversations and do the work you had planned.

We want an opportunity for people to come together and get to know each other.That’s a noble thought and worthwhile pursuit, but still is not a good reason by itself to hold a meeting. Instead, offer various events and activities to encourage team interaction, build relationships and promote camaraderie.

Here, then, is a good—but not all-inclusive—list of several key reasons and situations for which you may want to hold a meeting:

• To tap into and draw out each other’s distinct perspectives, expertise, experiences, personalities and wisdom.
• For broader discussions and input to help you make joint decisions that can involve everyone’s best thinking.
• To get people working more collaboratively on things that wouldn’t be accomplished as well if everyone worked on them separately.
• To create common, consistent perspective and understanding throughout the team. Everyone in the meeting can hear the same thing at the same time, you can answer questions and respond to comments, and ultimately, you can create shared understanding and meaning.
• To share a broader view beyond each participant’s individual job and area of responsibility.
• To enhance engagement and create organizational alignment. A good, productive meeting can help ensure your team will share in your vision, values, purpose and destination.
• To strengthen relationships and build trust throughout your team. Healthy trust-based relationships can develop and grow as a by-product of the honest dialogue, collaborative effort and personal involvement that occurs when meetings are productive.

Purposeful, well-run meetings offer great opportunities for leaders to demonstrate organizational culture and visibly live their values in areas of priority, such as respect, teamwork, humility, honesty, authenticity, creativity, innovation, collaboration, inclusion, empowerment, etc. And that definitely seems to be worth the investment of everyone’s time and energy.

Photo source: istock 

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