5 Tips for More Productive Meetings
By identifying and preparing for the right kind of meeting, you’ll make the experience more productive for everyone.
By Jill Duffy
Everyone has opinions about meetings, such as why some meetings aren’t necessary at all or what makes them needlessly long. It’s not hard to improve meetings. With minimal preparation and forethought, meetings can be a more productive experience for everyone.
One key to holding better meetings is to first understand what kind of meeting you intend to hold, and then prepare for it accordingly. Let’s look at the four most common types of meetings to understand what makes them different.
4 Kinds of Meetings
The most common meetings fall into four types: informational, discussion and collaboration, check-in, and working meeting.
1. Informational Meeting
An informational meeting is exactly that, a meeting used to disseminate information. Semi-annual town hall meetings are typically informational. A PR briefing is also usually informational. Usually, only one party has information to share. The attendees are there to absorb it.
2. Discussion and Collaboration Meeting
Brainstorming meetings are examples of discussion or collaboration meetings. Information is meant to come from multiple people. Collaborative meetings can also be problem-solving meetings. In this kind of meeting, one or more of the parties involved might set the agenda.
3. Check-in Meeting
The check-in is a regularly scheduled meeting, usually around a particular project, which could be ongoing or have an anticipated completion date. A daily scrum is an example of a check-in meeting. Check-ins are good for making sure all the parties involved in some kind of work or project are kept up to date on problems, solutions, changes, progress, and so forth. Regular check-in meetings can be (but don’t have to be) very short. If there are few or no changes since the last meeting, then the meeting can end as soon as everyone knows.
4. Working Meeting
In a working meeting, people come together to complete work that needs to get done. It’s as simple as that. An example of a working meeting is one in which a variety of team leads come together to define a project schedule. They come together to discuss what the schedule should be while also recording all the key dates. Another example is programmers and stakeholders getting together to implement changes in code (say, to a website or other interactive product) that the two parties can only truly verify accurately in the presence of one another. Working meetings nip procrastination in the bud. They often are collaborative.
5 Tips to Make Meetings More Productive
1. Get the Meeting on the Calendar the Right Amount of Time in Advance
Some meetings need to be on the calendar weeks before they take place. For example, any meeting with a large number of attendees, such as a company all-hands or a quarterly shareholder meeting, needs to be set well in advance to help as many people as possible clear their schedule for it.
Other meetings, especially in-house meetings, really shouldn’t be scheduled too far in advance. A week or two is sufficient for most. If the purpose of a meeting is to continue or resolve a discussion or project that’s already started, you don’t want too much time to elapse between the most recent discussion and the meeting. People need to come to the meeting with the ideas still fresh in their minds.
When looking for a time and date for a meeting that works for everyone, use a meeting scheduler tool. They take the pain out of scheduling and speed up the process.
2. Use a Clear Subject Line
Whether you schedule a meeting with a calendar invite or a simple email or Slack message, use a clear subject line. It is key to everyone’s productivity. The subject line should indicate in a few words the not just the topic of the meeting, but its purpose. A clear meeting subject line helps everyone understand why they’re being invited to the meeting in the first place. It also tips off people as to how they should prepare in advance.
3. Have Both an Agenda and Objectives
An agenda is a list of things that will happen in a meeting, usually in sequential order. Discussion meetings really benefit from having an agenda. It’s the meeting schedule.
An agenda alone doesn’t tell people what needs to happen as a result of the meeting. So in addition to having an agenda, you need meeting objectives.
What decisions should be made by the end of the meeting? What outcomes will occur at the end of this meeting? If you’re invited to a meeting with a new contact, it’s perfectly reasonable to ask, “What do you hope to get out of this meeting?”
Depending on the complexity of the meeting, you might not need the agenda and objectives to be explicit. For example, the purpose of a check-in meeting is always the same: to check in, review progress, and raise concerns. You likely won’t need an explicit agenda for those kinds of meetings. Sometimes, the objectives are implicit in the subject line. An example is “Set lineup for August issue of magazine.” The objective is to complete that task in a working meeting.
4. Define the Meeting Leader
Every meeting needs a leader or co-leaders. In most cases, it’s the person who called the meeting. Be explicit in deciding.
The absolute worst meeting I ever attended had no leader. It was directionless, and no one knew how to get us on track. About halfway through, I realized several parties thought I was supposed to be leading. I felt completely humiliated and angry with the person who scheduled it without making clear who was supposed to be driving the conversation. Worst of all, the meeting was completely unproductive for everyone. In another reckless scene, I once called a meeting, scheduled it, and fully intended to run it, only to have another colleague completely take it over. That one was infuriating.
5. Lose the Technology, But Do the Demo
Before you waste your time creating a slideshow deck, ask yourself, “Do I need a presentation at all?”
If the answer is yes, remember that slides should be used to keep people engaged and reinforce your points, not make them for you. No one is impressed by star wipes and no one wants to watch a video when they’ve come to hear you speak or have a discussion with you.
If you have a product or service to show off, demonstrate how it works. Don’t show pictures or videos of it. Give your audience the real McCoy.
If you want to share information with every attendee, send it before the meeting, not after. Whether people will review it in advance is another matter, but give them the option. Then you can spend your time getting to the heart of the matter, and possibly less time, too.
Everyone Benefits From Better Meetings
Meetings come in all shapes and sizes and thus have unique needs. Still, a little preparation goes a long way to make a meeting productive for everyone giving up their time to attend. Knowing what kind of meeting you intend to hold will also help you shape and refine your expectations for it.
Originally published at https://www.pcmag.com.
