My Secret Sauce for Running Meetings
My story is the textbook definition of “started from the bottom”. I started at Trinity in 2013 as a post-grad intern with no working knowledge of search engine optimization. My experiences in writing, PR, and social media lent to the development of skills necessary for an associate-level SEO, working directly with partners to drive strategy and solutions. Over time, I took on greater responsibility in overseeing the team as Senior Associate, and was involved in more and more decision-making processes as SEO Manager.
Today, I manage our SEO team, partners, and division as Director of SEO. I just recently stepped into this role in October 2019, and am loving every minute of it. Success in my position means growing and expanding our channel from all sides: Training and developing our team, retaining and supporting existing clients, relationship building with potential new partners, and inspiring our staff to learn, experiment, and innovate daily.
We run weekly and bi-weekly meetings with our partners, and they’re almost always well planned and executed. So bad meetings stick out like a sore thumb for us!
Most recently, we hosted a partner at our Philadelphia office for a hands-on session, intended to work through roadblocks we’d been unable to bypass with their dev team for months. The whole meeting went south as our agenda was thrown out the window and all current issues were put on the back burner for discussions of new campaigns and strategies that our client wanted to pursue.
It was frustrating because as exciting as the new ideas were, we knew — and continually reminded our partners — that they wouldn’t have any effect on their organic performance without first addressing the issues that had been sidelined. What’s more, our day-long work session could have been much more productive had we come prepared with recommendations and ideas to share based on the new project proposals. Instead, we used a full day only to regroup separately and discuss those details across multiple calls in the weeks following.
Meetings get a bad rap for taking up too much time, but our team has found them to be a total time-saver when the occasion calls for it. Hosting a meeting consolidates time you could otherwise spend chasing down answers to questions, and offers a space to talk through issues and resolve them. Email and Slack are great for quick Q and A’s, especially between two people, however, they can be just as big an interruption. When you have a handful of questions or updates to provide and three or more people involved, setting aside dedicated time can save everyone a lot of hassle and headache.
At Trinity, we always send agendas ahead of time. We’ve found this to be the secret sauce in getting everyone on the same page and making our meetings as productive as possible. This way, our partners are prepared with questions or updates on the items on our agenda, and many come prepared with additional talking points. Agendas are essential around here — if in creating them, we find there is little to discuss with our partners, we’ll offer to skip or reschedule for another date to avoid wasting time.
Secondly, each topic on our agenda always wraps with clarification of the next steps. Whether more discussion and research are required or we reached a consensus during the meeting, everyone should be clear on what the action items are and who is responsible for them.
Finally, we have found that meetings are a whole lot more impactful with a visual component. When on calls with clients, we use screen sharing to walk through our agenda with them and pull up their websites or other documentation. This makes it easy to share examples or talk through deliverables, and also helps to keep everyone engaged. For internal meetings, we often share and walk-through the agenda on a TV screen or have someone take notes on a large whiteboard.
Personally, the meetings I like best are the ones where all parties are highly participative, energetic and friendly. Never underestimate small talk, because ice breakers are helpful for every type of meeting — no matter your familiarity with the meeting topic or the people involved. Nailing a meeting sounds like laughter from a business colleague; the buzzing of brainstorming early on a Monday; enthusiastic approval for an important recommendation or proposal; participants volunteering ideas and sharing updates without prompt.
