5 Tips For Running Effective Meetings

Research from Microsoft has shown that sitting through inefficient meetings is the number one obstacle to productivity in the workplace.

Let’s face it, we’ve all been there – sitting through pointless meetings that are boring and most of the attendees are doing email or scrolling social media.

But despite their bad reputation, meetings are still one of the best tools for fostering collaboration and communication, especially if you’re a manager. So how do you ensure your meetings are productive?

In this post, we’ll share five tips to help you prepare and run effective meetings. By following these tips, you’ll be able to ensure that people actually want to attend your meetings, even though they’ll probably still hate everyone else’s.

Tip 1: Determine if you really need a meeting

Sometimes a meeting shouldn’t be a meeting.

When considering whether to schedule a meeting, it’s important to assess whether it’s truly necessary. In some cases, an email or a quick chat on Slack or Teams may suffice. Before scheduling a meeting, think about the impact on everyone’s time, and the cost involved.

If it’s possible to achieve your goals without a meeting, then it may be best to avoid scheduling one altogether.

Tip 2: Prepare an agenda and pre-socialise materials

For an effective meeting, it’s important that everyone understands the purpose and is able to contribute.

Socialising the agenda in advance and inviting others to contribute discussion topics can help with this. If there are materials or slides that you’re planning to share at the meeting, it’s good practice to send them out ahead of time so attendees have time to digest and prepare their thoughts. Connecting with key stakeholders beforehand to pre-socialise any important or controversial topics can also be helpful.

Sharing your agenda and ideas beforehand will allow you to get input in advance and avoid any unpleasant surprises in the meeting.

Tip 3: Stick to the agenda

Respecting people’s time is crucial to running an effective meeting, so make sure to start and end the meeting on time, and stick to the agenda.

If a topic is taking too long, schedule a follow-up meeting to address it. If someone brings up a great point but the conversation starts to go off on a tangent, capture the point on a “parking lot” in the meeting notes and bring the meeting back on track. It can be tough to keep everyone on topic, but it’s important to ensure that your meeting achieves its objectives and goals.

Don’t be afraid to table new discussion topics and stick to the original agenda as much as possible.

Tip 4: Ensure that everyone gets to contribute

Research has shown that minority groups, women, and introverted or quieter employees can be less likely to contribute in meetings and are also more likely to be interrupted.

As the meeting host, it is your goal to make sure that everyone feels like they have a voice and that their contributions are valued. One way to achieve this goal is to ask open-ended questions, listen actively to the responses, and specifically ask quieter individuals for their opinions. However, sometimes it’s not appropriate to call on everyone directly. In such cases, a different tactic for including everyone’s input is to use the chat panel in an online meeting, or collaborative tools like Slido or Miro, to capture people’s thoughts in a written format.

By orchestrating the meeting so that a handful of individuals do not dominate the conversation, you can create an environment where everyone feels that their opinion is heard, valued, and respected.

Tip 5: Assign action items and solicit feedback

During your meeting, ask someone to take notes that capture key action items, decisions made, and topics for future discussion.

At the end of the meeting, summarise the agreed upon action items, ensuring that each one is assigned to an individual and has a specific due date. This is critical to ensure that tasks are completed as planned and that all attendees are clear on next steps. Within 24 hours of the meeting, send out your meeting notes and assigned actions. Follow up regularly to get progress updates and keep the momentum going.

Lastly, ask attendees for feedback on your meetings. You can even ask them to provide a rating on a scale of 1 to 10 at the end of each meeting. This will help you to identify areas where you can improve and make your team meetings even more effective in the future.