What to Do and What Not to Do During Meetings.
The Truth Behind Ineffective Meetings and How to Improve Them.
Today, I was invited to two meetings at an organization that I am coaching, and I became a bit frustrated because both meetings were terrible!
No jokes — what a waste of time!
I won’t blame anyone for leaving either of those meetings and thinking, ‘This was a waste of my time.’
This client has recently joined Nova and is transitioning 40% of their meetings to asynchronous. Consequently, I was invited to participate in both an in-person meeting and an asynchronous meeting. Surprisingly, both had the same problems — and that made me realize that I could easily “show” them what “not to do during meetings”
So, I provided them with some guidelines to help the entire team improve their meetings. The same guidelines I shared with them today, I am now sharing with you, and feel free to share them with your team or anyone who needs them.
You can also even turn them into team norms.
To keep it simple, I’ve organized these guidelines into ‘do’ and ‘don’t do.’ My hope is to make them easy to understand, so anyone on your team can think, ‘Oh, I’m doing that thing again that I know I shouldn’t because it makes meetings sh***.’
I’m keeping things pretty honest here because it’s time to reclaim our time and master meetings, whether they are asynchronous or synchronous. There’s simply no excuse for this anymore.
So, let’s dive into this:
#1. Define the objective of the meeting
Don’t: Start talking about your proposal or concept first thing.
Do: Start by defining the objective of the meeting — be specific! Do you need someone to approve a proposal? Do you want to tap into people’s collective intelligence to make a better decision? Or perhaps you need to share an update and gauge its impact. In essence, what do you need from people, and why are they here?
#2. Tailoring your information is key to keep people engage.
Don’t: Over explain or use industry jargon that nobody understands.
Do: Provide relevant information tailored to your audience. Avoid discussing shipping issues with a designer unless it directly affects them and this is something related to the objective for the meeting.
Do: Be concise and align your information with the meeting’s objective.
#3. Lead your meetings!
Don’t: Explain your proposal, design, or concept and expect people to start talking or asking questions.
Do: Always end explanations with a question. This question should directly contribute to the meeting’s objective or bring you closer to it.
This is your meeting; lead it! Don’t expect people to ask the right questions or know exactly what you need from them — they don’t. Your priorities… may not necessarily bet their priorities; those are yours alone. You own it. For that reason, you are the one who needs to digest the information, ask questions, provide options, and steer the discussion to stay on topic. This way, you can achieve the meeting’s objectives otherwise the meeting can go in any direction…
Here is a great blog post — that provides additional details about this.
#4. Ask questions — but not all questions are great. Ask only “great” questions.
Don’t: Ask generic questions like “Do you have any questions or comments?” as the only question in the entire meeting.
What do you expect with that?
Do: Ask thought-provoking questions that help you gather the specific answers needed to achieve the meeting’s objective.
Here is a post with a list of thought-provoking questions.
#5. How much is too much?
Don’t: Expect people to read a 20-page document before a meeting without clarity on what you need from them.
Do: Use Loom or a video recording platform to guide them through the document, design, or proposal. Help them understand where to find pertinent information and what you need them to focus on. For instance, “Matt, could you review page 10 and share your perspective on cost reduction or potential partnerships? Maria, please look into this section and provide insights on sales and marketing strategies to better reach our clients.”
These are things we see on a daily basis and can easily be fixed, and this also applies to asynchronous meetings.
In fact, in asynchronous meetings, this is even more apparent.
As an example, I observed a team member preparing an asynchronous meeting by sharing two different proposals without asking absolutely anything. Only at the end the meeting facilitator asked, ‘Do you have any questions?’ — Why would anyone invited to this async meeting feel excited to read that, and go over all the information, if they don’t even know why they are there?
Was this team member expecting them(meeting participants) to choose one option over the other, or did they want to discuss potential risks?
We don’t know because he didn’t really lead the meeting.
The worst part is that this person is wasting everyone’s time but hasn’t taken the five minutes to put their thoughts together so that they gain the knowledge and insights they need from the team to make progress.
If making progress is not the goal, we should not have a meeting.
The problem is that we have turned into organizations that depend mostly on meetings to collaborate, make decisions, and communicate. However, people have not been trained to be good at leading meetings. This has become an essential skill at this point, but most of our teams don’t have the right skill sets. You may have people who are good at presenting or sharing a story, but are they good at asking the right questions? Are they good at extracting knowledge and insights from the people in the meetings to make better decisions and achieve progress?
Before you keep reading this, if you are looking for a free training program to improve your meeting facilitation skills or share it with your team. You can check that here.
But let’s keep going…
…let’s start by sharing some basic basic team norms:
- Start the meeting by explaining the objective, or in other words, the expected outcome.
- Ask the person leading the meeting to prepare at least three questions (minimum) — “Any comments or questions?” can’t be one of those questions; that is just a question to close the meeting, not to achieve the objective of the meeting.
Share this with the team and encourage everyone to follow these team norms, or add additional ones.
Additionally you can also use the OFQ meeting framework.
So, the tips mentioned above are also applicable to asynchronous meetings.
In fact, if you do this in synchronous meetings (traditional meetings), you will probably do the same during asynchronous meetings, as we tend to follow the same behaviour in both formats.
The problem is that during asynchronous meetings, the issue becomes even more apparent, as often people don’t even know what to say, so they don’t participate. While in a meeting, we are all now used to the “awkward silence,” and meetings often finish right after someone gave us a spiel on something we didn’t have anything to say.
So, if you are also transitioning to asynchronous meetings, you can keep reading this to learn a bit more about what not to do. It also helps you visualize what is currently happening in live meetings.
Here is an example of something that doesn’t work(above).
As you see in the example above, the person leading this async meeting is sharing two proposals (could also be a design, an initiative, a project, etc.), and every time they share one of the proposals, they give space for participants to ‘say’ something, but they are not asking any questions. — So what should they say?
At the end, the participants will go over those two options and get to the final step (4), and the only thing they see is ‘Do you have any questions, or comments?’
So what was the objective of the session? Do you know? I don’t! Do you think this person would get any insights that can help him/her make progress or make better decisions?
I don’t think so.
What do you think?
…
Here is what works!
Start by defining what the objective is and what do you expect to archive with this async meeting (or meeting if you are running this in person) and how do you think people can help.
Don’t: Don’t start a meeting without defining the objective of the meeting.
Do: Define the objective, if you have any specific expectations and “why” people are here.
Don’t: Share “all the information” and expect people to provide input.
Do: Ask questions. (The art of asking powerful questions)
Do: Ask questions that will help you achieve your objective and make progress.
Here are some of the questions you can ask:
- On a scale of one to ten, with ten indicating a great idea aligning with our current goals and constraints, how would you rate this idea?
- What should we add or improve? Do you have any additional ideas or recommendations? Please add one idea per sticky note.
- Are there any risks or considerations? Are there specific limitations or constraints to keep in mind during the review?
- How can we better…?
- What if this… what would you think?
- Is there anything that could be changed or removed to reduce costs or simplify the implementation and distribution phases?
- How confident are you that this will work?
- What challenges or obstacles do you foresee in implementing this plan?
Of course, don’t just copy these questions.
It’s not about that!
It’s about choosing the questions that will help you achieve your meetings objectives.
If you are trying to get a sense of the preferences and what is more important to the client or team based on their knowledge about the market, as an example, you may show two options with the goal to make them choose between them. Then, ask them questions about specific differences like:
- How would you rate this idea from one to 5, with 5 being the best one?
- What if option 2 included A and B; would that change your perspective? Which option would you prefer then?
- From the following things that both options include, which are a must? What I mean by that is, without it, this solution will not work? (provide all the options) Please choose a maximum of 5.
- If we wanted to reduce costs for any of these options, what would you remove or what would you highlight as not needed, if any?
- Have any of these ideas spark new ideas? If so please, share them with us. We will love to consider those too.
As you see, without defining the objective of the meeting, you really don’t know how to frame your questions, and that is why it is a must-do.
I have seen a lot of organizations that have made ‘all meetings having an agenda’ the rule, but to be honest, I find that less important than defining the objective.
Alternatively you can try to use PI Meetings. This also encourages people to (I)mprove their skills.
Overall, I hope this post really helps you get a few simple things you can do and even share with your team that would immediately have positive effects on your productivity, team engagement, and the output you get from meetings.
If you are transitioning to async meetings feel free to learn more at Nova (www.novatools.org)
Resources:
- Mastering Productive Meetings — Free Training Program!
- What Meetings Reveal About Your Productivity and Organizational Health
- How to Run a Productive Meeting — The Top 3 Secret Elements.
- Ask These Questions During Meetings — The Art of a Productive Meeting
- Loom — Video recording platform.
- Nova — Collaboration and Stakeholder management that helps you build an organizational brain and also make your meetings more productive and move them async.
Feel free to leave your comments below or ask me any questions.
If you want your own copy of any of the books mentioned here, you can find both on Amazon by typing “The Art of Asking Powerful Questions” and “Leading Better Meetings.”
