No More Bad Meetings — 7 Steps for Becoming a Meeting Ninja

Meeting, meetings, meetings… Whether a business, volunteer, or personal setting, I’ve heard so many people complain about how unproductive and aimless meetings can be. It doesn’t have to be like this. In this article I will explain how I structure meetings so that everyone walks away feeling like things got accomplished and their time wasn’t wasted.
A senior sales guy once told me that getting a first meeting with a new lead wasn’t the hardest part of his job. The hardest part of his job was getting the second, third, and fourth meetings. Why? Because if the lead feels like you wasted their time, they’ll avoid you at all costs. In the business world, if you waste someone else’s time you become poison — time is money right.
How do you avoid becoming poisonous and wasting someone else’s time? Follow these simple steps and become a meeting ninja!
Step 1 — Ask for a Meeting
- Send a short email to the relevant parties clearly articulating your purpose for the meeting and the goals you’d like to achieve.
- Ask your attendees what they’d like to discuss in the meeting. This way you can understand what’s on their mind.
- Not everything that is suggested to you can or should be discussed at this meeting.
Step 2 — Create a Meeting Agenda
- With the input from Step 1, create a meeting agenda that lists all the items that will be discussed.
- Allocate a reasonable number of minutes to each item on the meeting agenda.
- Remember to keep the meeting as short as possible. Meetings longer than 1 hour should have a few scheduled breaks.
Step 3 — Send a Meeting Invite
- Send out a meeting invite and attach the meeting agenda.
- Indicate how long the meeting will be (based on the agenda).
- Indicate time, place, dial-in details (if applicable) etc.
Step 4 — Start your Meeting
- Start on time.
- Go over the agenda and provide clarification as necessary.
Step 5 — Lead your Meeting
- Keep your meeting on topic. If you feel the conversation is getting off-topic, it’s your job to bring it back on-topic. One way to do this is to remind the attendees of the meeting goals.
- Keep your meeting on time. If a topic is running overtime, indicate that the allocated time limit has been reached and that the topic can be further discussed in a follow up meeting.
Step 6 — End your Meeting On Time
- End your meeting on time. This is critical because attendees may have other commitments after your meeting. The worst thing you can do is keep someone longer than you need them and throw off their schedule for the day.
- End your meeting by thanking everyone for their time and their participation.
- If possible, end the meeting early. The biggest gift you can give someone is giving them back time they didn’t expect to have.
- If you expect the meeting to finish significantly early, make sure to make a note in the meeting invite or announce it at the beginning of the meeting (i.e. 1 hour time slot, but the meeting will only run 35–45 mins).
Step 7 — Meeting Thank You and Follow-Up
- Send a short note thanking attendees for their time and participation (it’s important to do this as much as possible because it’ll make getting future meetings a lot easier).
- In the notes, provide a brief overview of the meeting and indicate what topics/tasks were resolved and which ones still need to be resolved going forward.
Follow these 7 steps and you’re well on your way towards becoming a meeting ninja!
What was your last meeting like? What would you do differently? Comment below!
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