It’s Time To Start Hosting Productive Meetings
Every minute spent in unproductive meetings steals precious time away from the ability of your team to succeed. Imagine it: The weekly team meeting reminder just buzzed on your computer. In thirty minutes, you’ll head to the conference room with your cup of coffee and laptop in hand since you know you won’t actually need to pay attention to anything that goes on; every meeting is the same, and nothing ever gets accomplished.
We’ve all been there.
It’s time to learn how to maximize your meetings to eliminate wasted time.
In 2019, about $400 billion dollars was expended on meetings that weren’t productive, didn’t offer any growth, and failed to engage and motivate attendees. But not all meetings have to be this way—with simple best practices and strategies, you can flip your approach to work huddles and change the way you spend time with your colleagues.
This article shares some of our tested guidelines that have helped our remote team wisely utilize time and make the most out of our meetings.
Set Your Priorities
Every meeting should have a purpose—a goal that is known to all attendees. Depending on the estimated meeting length, this goal could be to determine one task to conquer, or it could be to discuss several priorities on the burner. It’s your preference what terminology you use; perhaps, instead of “priorities,” you set goals, outcomes, objectives, or even big picture ideas.
Example:
Your top three priorities for your monthly team meeting might look like this:
Discuss the status of our search for a website designer (15 minutes)
Create a job description for an SEO expert contractor and create a timeline for hiring (20 minutes)
Brainstorm ways to generate new leads through active outreach (20 minutes)
Provide A Safe Space To Communicate
The best way to have a productive meeting is to create a safe space where everyone can feel heard and understood. A safe space is a direct result of having trust and confidence within the group. If you’re new to being in a group, or just developing a new way of working together, consider hosting a meeting to set a foundation for how to communicate. With many new teams, outlining shared values or developing a set of communication guidelines can genuinely help with a team’s ability to communicate openly.
Here are some starting points:
Ask permission to be the leader and to respectfully guide an equitable conversation.
Remind your team members that they have permission to ask questions or request additional information.
Encourage everyone to ask permission to make comments and suggestions to one another.
Be thankful for a quality conversation, and stay open to accommodate requests for a follow-up meeting if things still need to be discussed.
Ask that matters discussed during the meeting, stay shared with only those in attendance and/or involved.
Send And Accept The Calendar Invitation
Consider using a scheduling tool. We recommend doodle polls or When2Meet for finding the ideal time for all to gather or hop on a call.
Pro tip: If you ever find yourself always trying to schedule one-on-one calls, try using Acuity or Calendly. Both allow you to set your schedule for certain types of meetings and send specific notifications relevant to the particular meeting. For example, if you are scheduling one-on-one interviews, you could create a calendar that allows participants to sign up for a time that fits their schedule, based on your parameters. A tool like this saves hours, especially when the back-and-forth has delayed response times.
Decide The Type Of Meeting
There are various types of meetings—not all meetings are the same! When deciding to host a meeting, review your priorities to determine what kind of meeting will be taking place. The significance behind what type of session is that we can craft the format, goals, and flow to work best for the plan. Here are some versions of the meetings that we hold:
Check-ins
Our team has a series of check-ins that we conduct. Every other Monday, we schedule a 30-minute check-in that allows everyone to share openly about their current status on projects and discuss priorities of the week.
Every Friday, Maura, our Content & Administrative Manager, sends us a Pulse Check through Slack. The pulse check is just a quick summary of what was taken care of and any outstanding priorities before wrapping up for the weekend. This virtual check-in over Slack helps save time that could be wasted in an otherwise avoidable, unnecessary meeting.
Brainstorming Session
If we’re about to dive into a new marketing campaign, we may schedule a 20-minute brainstorming session. At the beginning of the meeting, we share a simplified agenda of who is in attendance and outline the intended goal. For the meeting itself, attendees may use a whiteboard on which to brainstorm or add ideas, or there might be a virtual document where all can insert their thoughts. If you’re interested in a practical way to brainstorm with a large group, consider a tool like word clouds.
Briefing
The best way to start a new project is to provide an overview that outlines expectations for all parties involved. Briefings tend to be more informative or instructional. If you work for a healthcare company, there may be a briefing on new policies in regards to HIPAA or if you work for an investment group, every morning starts with a briefing on what the market looks like on any given day.
Project Review and/or Debrief
A 20-minute meeting dedicated to debriefing the day of a project can allow for drastic improvement across all performance areas. Regardless of what industry one works for, there is always room for improvement. A quick, easy way to format this is to ask the following three questions.
What? Look at the facts of what transpired.
So what? What opportunities are available and what can we do about it now?
Now what? What did we learn, and how can we move forward with new techniques and ideas to improve next time?
Planning and Strategy
Full-day sessions can be challenging for a few reasons. Firstly, attendees’ attention spans may not be able to conquer the long day of sedentary meetings. Fight this problem by including interactive sessions, such as small group breakout sessions and movement throughout the day. We have found it useful to build in breaks, which allows the majority of attendees to stay through the entirety of the content in each section.
Decision-Making
Considering a change in business structure? Interested in investing in an office space? Deciding on a new hire? Create a time to discuss the logistics and impacts that the decision will have on your business. When you look at the scope of choice, don’t forget to factor in cost, time commitment, who it impacts, and why it is essential. Be mindful that one meeting might not be sufficient for concluding; a series of decision-making meetings may need to take place.
Collaboration
Our team loves to work collaboratively, both internally, but also with other excellent businesses! Recently, we shared a collaborative blog post about the value of SEO. Together we were able to produce a post about how SEO impacts the bottom line and how to estimate the ROI. Most of this discussion took place over email, then a quick call to confirm that everything was good to go.
Discussion
Before, during, or after a project, there may be times that there is a need for clarification. A discussion is the best way to learn what one another needs and to understand each other. Take time to go to the root of the problem and work out any confusion.
Invite The Right People And Assign Roles
Before clicking “invite all” on your calendar invitation, consider what priorities must be discussed in the meeting. Carefully select any team players that can offer insight and/or will be impacted by changes from the priority list. We believe a best practice is to have these three roles in every meeting as well: a facilitator or co-facilitators, a timekeeper, and a meeting keeper to capture action items and notes.
After each meeting, ensure that the minutes are shared and assignments discussed. Notes should be placed in any relevant project management tools and/or emailed to each team member for easy reference.
Utilize A Smarter Meeting Agenda
Make your agenda work for you. As we prepare our meeting agendas, we do our best to send the document out for all to offer input on topic ideas and for anyone to add links and tasks that might be relevant or necessary to the meeting.
For our remote meetings, we use a Google doc as the primary place for the plan. In this document, we outline the meeting and allotted time.
Example:
Date: March 11, 2020, 1-1:30PM EST
Attendees: Shelly, Callie, Maura
Facilitator: Shelly
Timekeeper: Callie
Minute Keeper: Maura
Agenda:
Open Share (5 minutes) - a place where anyone can provide updates on their careers or life that might impact their work, a great time for positive shoutouts to team members as well
Company Updates (5 minutes) - do we have any new clients? Changes to the marketing plan? Use this time to share any information that all members of the team should know.
Priorities (10 minutes) - what are our properties this week? Where do we want to focus our energy and resources?
Assignment of Tasks (5 minutes)
During this section of our meeting, we may review our Asana project management tool and assign specific tasks to team members. This allows us to add any information pertinent to a task, assign the team member, and mark a deadline. If we don’t do this during the meeting, assignments are assigned directly after the meeting, while the information is fresh.
Wrap Up and Buffer (5 minutes)
Everyone’s time is valuable. Strictly ensuring that meetings will end on time is vital to boost employee satisfaction and engagement, and it allows for busy people to make it to their next meeting on time. Build in a few extra minutes as a buffer in the event your meeting discussion takes longer than anticipated.
BONUS TIP: Using a shared document on the cloud or a project management tool is also a way to cut down on waste and stay eco-friendly.
Make It Interactive
Touch on everyone’s strengths (visual, kinesthetic, auditory).
In the case of a virtual meeting, allow for phone-in participation and include a video function, whenever possible. Zoom has been a critical player in creating an “in-office” vibe. As many businesses and organizations have shifted to online engagement, teams have had to learn how to put on their creative hats to develop interactive ways to effectively communicate while apart.
When developing your meeting, try something new! Step outside of your comfort zone and include a GIF for fun, explain something via a YouTube video, try a virtual icebreaker, use the Zoom stamp function, or tune in from outer space!
Decipher The Time-Eaters, Learn To Table Conversations
Staying on track during meetings can be a challenge. Distractions can pop up via email and text notifications, side conversations may cause disruption, or the tangential discussions can lead a team down a rabbit hole on a particular agenda item. Our favorite piece of advice to share regarding this topic is to decipher what conversations use more time than the meeting allows. You can table this topic and schedule another time to chat about it. We like to put it in our parking lot and revisit it later. However, always remember to create a new agenda and invite the key people involved in this discussion.
Assignments
Once the meeting has adjourned, what are the next steps? Immediately following the meeting, head over to your project management software and assign any relevant tasks to your teammates. Be thorough with any notes that they should know to complete their task and assign a due date. Immediate assignment helps keep everyone on track so that when you regroup, everyone can mention any significant changes and accomplishments, and it helps with accountability!
By following these best practices, you can easily transform your meetings to make the most of all participants’ time and energy. If you have any questions about how you currently run your meetings or just want to chat about how meeting productivity can assist your overall brand growth, we are here to provide any insight that we can. The most important thing to remember is that productive meetings ensure that everyone is on the same page, which ultimately makes your brand run more smoothly!
Ready to take your meetings to the next level?
Contact us to set up a systems consultation. We’ll help you build smarter systems that help you save time, increase team engagement, and hold more effective meetings that boost your team’s productivity.
