Meetings. When you read that word, I am sure divisive images come to mind.
Some of you might love meetings. They're an opportunity for everybody to get together and talk through a certain topic. It's a real time interface that doesn't get lost in a plethora of emails, IMs, and other communication channels.
Some of you may think differently of meetings. You may think they are the biggest waste of time on the planet. It's just a way for Person A to talk out loud but not add any real value to anybody's work. Perhaps an email would have sufficed instead of full meeting.
Where do I land? I do find meetings valuable, but I can empathize with the groups that don't like meetings. I've been in well run meetings, and I've been in meetings that were, well, awful. The interesting thing is that, regardless of the topic, poor meetings and effective meetings generally share certain attributes applicable to all types of meetings.
Instead of focusing on the bad, let's focus on some things that may help you to run a more effective meeting. Because I wanted to make sure I didn't leave anything out, I'm splitting this post into two. We'll cover five tips here, and next week, I'll post another set of five tips.
Let's get into it!
1. Track and share agenda Items for recurring meetings. It is not uncommon for a team to block off a consistent recurring daily / weekly / monthly meeting so that people can use that time to cover pertinent items. In these instances, it is good to gather agenda items close to the time of the meeting and sharing those with folks invited. This will give people a good idea what to expect to talk about in the meeting and also gives them the opportunity to prepare for a certain topic they know will be touched on.
2. Only include necessary people in your meeting. It seems like a no-brainer, but this concept can get lost very easily, especially with recurring meetings. Gathering agenda items as suggested in the first tip will help you to understand who absolutely needs to be at that meeting and who doesn't need to be in there. Time is a valuable asset that you can't buy any more of, so don't waste people's time in dragging them into an unnecessary meeting.
3. Ensure the meeting holds its primary objective. When conversations between people get going, it's pretty much inevitable that the meeting will veer off topic at some point. It may be that it veers off into something as equally important as the prime objective, but if you let anything stray away from the main objective, it'll never get done. In those instances where other important topics come up, encourage that folks either take it offline amongst themselves or set up a new meeting just for that topic. In the agile world, it's not uncommon to have a "Parking Lot", which is a physical board to put important topics on sticky notes to ensure they are covered in the future.
4. Keep the time allotted for the meeting as tight as possible. Unless you have a really long topic to discuss, there shouldn't be a need for a meeting to go longer than an hour. If there's a quick topic you want to meet about that you know can get done quickly, don't be afraid to just schedule the meeting as short as 15 minutes. To go alongside this tip, feel free to end meetings early. If you scheduled an hour and the meeting only runs 10 minutes, don't feel like you have to occupy that time. Go ahead and let your coworkers go.
5. Do your best to meet in person. This one, admittedly, is more of a "nice to have" and not particularly possible given your work environment. If you work with remote employees, this tip unfortunately is not for you. Meeting in person almost forces people to interact more since virtual workers may be distracted by other things. Granted, people still may be distracted by their laptops in a physical space, but I still think it is tamped down quite a bit.
That's it for this week! We'll cover five more tips in another upcoming post.
Some of you might love meetings. They're an opportunity for everybody to get together and talk through a certain topic. It's a real time interface that doesn't get lost in a plethora of emails, IMs, and other communication channels.
Some of you may think differently of meetings. You may think they are the biggest waste of time on the planet. It's just a way for Person A to talk out loud but not add any real value to anybody's work. Perhaps an email would have sufficed instead of full meeting.
Where do I land? I do find meetings valuable, but I can empathize with the groups that don't like meetings. I've been in well run meetings, and I've been in meetings that were, well, awful. The interesting thing is that, regardless of the topic, poor meetings and effective meetings generally share certain attributes applicable to all types of meetings.
Instead of focusing on the bad, let's focus on some things that may help you to run a more effective meeting. Because I wanted to make sure I didn't leave anything out, I'm splitting this post into two. We'll cover five tips here, and next week, I'll post another set of five tips.
Let's get into it!
1. Track and share agenda Items for recurring meetings. It is not uncommon for a team to block off a consistent recurring daily / weekly / monthly meeting so that people can use that time to cover pertinent items. In these instances, it is good to gather agenda items close to the time of the meeting and sharing those with folks invited. This will give people a good idea what to expect to talk about in the meeting and also gives them the opportunity to prepare for a certain topic they know will be touched on.
2. Only include necessary people in your meeting. It seems like a no-brainer, but this concept can get lost very easily, especially with recurring meetings. Gathering agenda items as suggested in the first tip will help you to understand who absolutely needs to be at that meeting and who doesn't need to be in there. Time is a valuable asset that you can't buy any more of, so don't waste people's time in dragging them into an unnecessary meeting.
3. Ensure the meeting holds its primary objective. When conversations between people get going, it's pretty much inevitable that the meeting will veer off topic at some point. It may be that it veers off into something as equally important as the prime objective, but if you let anything stray away from the main objective, it'll never get done. In those instances where other important topics come up, encourage that folks either take it offline amongst themselves or set up a new meeting just for that topic. In the agile world, it's not uncommon to have a "Parking Lot", which is a physical board to put important topics on sticky notes to ensure they are covered in the future.
4. Keep the time allotted for the meeting as tight as possible. Unless you have a really long topic to discuss, there shouldn't be a need for a meeting to go longer than an hour. If there's a quick topic you want to meet about that you know can get done quickly, don't be afraid to just schedule the meeting as short as 15 minutes. To go alongside this tip, feel free to end meetings early. If you scheduled an hour and the meeting only runs 10 minutes, don't feel like you have to occupy that time. Go ahead and let your coworkers go.
5. Do your best to meet in person. This one, admittedly, is more of a "nice to have" and not particularly possible given your work environment. If you work with remote employees, this tip unfortunately is not for you. Meeting in person almost forces people to interact more since virtual workers may be distracted by other things. Granted, people still may be distracted by their laptops in a physical space, but I still think it is tamped down quite a bit.
That's it for this week! We'll cover five more tips in another upcoming post.
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