People Don’t Hate Meetings; They Hate Shitty Meetings
We hear all the time “that meeting could have been an email,” but I fiercely reject that notion. Just because something could have been an email, doesn’t mean it should have been an email. Verbal, video, or face-to-face meetings can bring value to teamwork that an email will never accomplish. Additionally, email isn’t a great way to communicate or makes decisions. It’s incredibly inefficient. I also find that people tend to fire off their response without much thought. Email leaves too much ambiguity in my mind.
Good, effective meetings can leave their participants invigorated. Bad meetings do the opposite. People don’t purposefully run shitty meetings. Usually there isn’t much thought put into them. Here’s three simple things that I do to conduct meetings with intention. You are asking people to show up for you; the least you can do is show up for them.
1. Attach an agenda when you send the meeting invitation.
Yes this means when you send the invitation, not days, weeks, or months later. There should be something in the body of the invitation when you send it. And YES, even if it’s a placeholder for some big thing months down the road. If you don’t have an agenda at the time of the invitation being sent, then you need to prioritize getting that worked out. Sending “agenda TBD” makes people anxious, and it’s too difficult to prioritize this upcoming unknown meeting thing against the other tasks and mental load people are doing right now. Without a reason to become invested, people will prioritize the known over the unknown.
Additionally, if the goal of the meeting is to make a decision, then make that clear. In lieu of an agenda, I will simply include an objective or needed outcome. For example, I will write in the body of calendar invitation:
Meeting Objective: To make a go/no go decision on attending XYZ conference in April.
By making what needs to be accomplished clear, it keeps the conversation headed in that direction. In contrast, what if someone wrote this instead:
Meeting Objective: To discuss the upcoming XYZ conference in April.
This has a different implied outcome (which I will argue is no outcome at all). People might also read that objective and think, “OMG how many times do we need to discuss this dang conference, will someone just make a decision already.” Be intentional with how you write your agenda or objective, it has a huge impact.
2. Designate a meeting facilitator.
A meeting NEVER stays on track so it must have a designated person to keep it going in the right direction. Usually this is the person sending the invitation, but not always. I see this when there is an executive assistant or other admin scheduling meetings. So, if you are asking someone else to schedule the meeting, make sure you also designate the facilitator. Make it known to the other attendees as well. Most likely the facilitator will be interrupting people to get the discussion on track. By using transparent communication regarding the roles and functions of a meeting facilitator, you are setting the expectations and accountability for the team as a whole. I could go on for days about meeting facilitation, so that will have to be another blog for another day.
At the minimum, the facilitator must keep the conversation on topic. Ideally, they are also responsible for capturing any action items, decisions, breakthroughs, commitments, or anything of high impact that occurred in the meeting. They should summarize (verbally) at the end of the meeting as well as sending an email containing the same verbal synopsis. BUT THIS IS KEY: they are the meeting scribe. They should not be transcribing the whole meeting to then email out a play-by-play. People need to show up to be privilege to the conversation. Plus, empower your team to take their own notes; it will be much more meaningful that way.
3. Don’t go over the allotted time.
People will start to dread your meetings if you are constantly going over the scheduled time. If the meeting has a purpose, an agenda, and facilitator, you should never go over time. Now with that being said, meetings do get derailed. So this next things is IMPORTANT! An acceptable conclusion can be acknowledging that there was more to this than initially realized, and that a follow-up conversation is needed. Make sure to schedule the follow-up RIGHT THEN AND THERE, and make sure your attendees have ‘homework’ so that the follow-up meeting isn’t a continuation of chaos. There is a reason the meeting was derailed so I urge people in this situation to informally (like in your own head) conduct a root cause analysis to figure out what might be the problem. Address that issue before the follow-up meeting.
Here are some root causes examples:
Someone new was brought in and needs time to catch up.
Two people aren’t seeing eye-to-eye. Have a one-on-one with them so they don’t keep derailing the whole team.
They didn’t read the agenda or objective and aren’t prepared. Stop early and reschedule until they’ve either gotten on board or found a replacement.
Someone else is using this time to catch up on something they need discussed. Politely remind them of the agenda/objective and ask them to schedule their own time to catch up. (take it offline please)
There is lack of enthusiasm or commitment (why are we doing this again). There might need to be a realignment or pivot. Take some time to get feedback, and then let the team know of the new information.
The next time you schedule a meeting, I want you to ask your attendees this at the end of the meeting: what was the purpose of this meeting? You might be surprised at the answers you receive.
