I have talked a lot about meetings in my last couple posts. Why does everyone hate meetings? Too often not enough work has been done before the meeting so everyone sits around getting nothing done. Sometimes the one chairing the meeting has not “rallied up enough support” before the meeting and everyone spends the entire time in conflict over smaller issues. I think people dislike meetings because too often they take too much time. Here are a few ideas you can try:
- Keep meetings as short as possible; unless it is a quarterly or one time meeting an hour and a half is probably too long.
- Start and end your meetings on time, even if everyone is not there. If you make this a habit after a couple meetings people will start to show up on-time.
- If you consistently find you do not have enough content for the meeting – meet less often.
- Make sure your meeting chair is not surprised by what is on the agenda.
- Provide an annotated agenda or short talking points that the key presenters can use, this serves as a reminder of the key items to cover (this works well for volunteers).
Related posts:
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
This was such a helpful post. As someone who has has both led meetings where it seemed impossible to get people engaged and attended meetings where I was couldn’t seem to pay attention either, I think your strategies would prove very effective for both meeting leaders and those in attendance. The worst meetings I’ve been to have been those where the leaders didn’t seem prepared and those that went on way longer than expected even though nothing was being accomplished simply because there was no set ending time to aim for. Both of those problems would be alleviated by your guidelines. Something else I might suggest would be (if the number of people at the meeting is small enough and permits) is to have each member responsible for some part of the agenda. Even if it is something really small, this would: a) require each member to familiarize himself enough with some portion of information so he could engagingly present it, b) help that member, once he’s familiar with that aspect, to make connections between that information and the presentations of others, c) simply know what it’s like to try and get people to pay attention to you!
Great post. My favorite book on the topic is “Death by Meeting” by Patrick Lencioni.