A guide to making your meetings count
If 10 people attend a one-hour meeting, it’s not just a one-hour meeting. It’s 10 man-hours.
Kind of puts things in perspective, huh?
Meetings are the best place to build relationships, collaborate, connect, and communicate. But they’re also the easiest way to waste a lot of time (and money). Any time we meet, we have to keep in mind that we’re taking people away from their work. It’s essential to gauge whether our meetings are worth the investment of our time, especially now that people are returning to offices and working in person together more often. The pandemic taught us how precious in-person time is; we need to make sure we spend that time doing things that we couldn't do from home. If they’re done well, meetings can be a great example of a good use of time.
It’s taken years for our team to get to a place where we feel like every single meeting matters. I can’t even tell you how many meetings we used to have that were completely ineffective and ended up being huge wastes of time, resources, and brainpower. We made all the classic mistakes: Too many meetings, too many people in attendance who didn’t need to be there, meetings that could have been emails—you name it, we did it wrong! Now, we finally have a meeting cadence that makes sense, and we check in regularly to make sure we’re making the most of them. I don’t think it’s possible to “arrive” at the perfect number of meetings or the perfect meeting structure; it’s something that constantly evolves as your team evolves. Different seasons require different kinds of meetings. But there are some basic principles to stick to that will help you have impactful meetings, no matter what you’re going through as a team.
So much of what we know about meetings came from the book Death By Meeting by Patrick Lencioni, which I highly recommend. It was a total game-changer for us. I want to share with you what we learned from that book and what our team has learned through trial and error about how to get the most out of our meetings:
Establish what kinds of meetings your team needs and regularly reassess. In Death By Meeting, Lencioni talks about different types of meetings, from the daily standup to the weekly huddle to the ad hoc. (You can learn more about those—and so much more—in his book and in our meeting resource!) Each of these meetings serves a different purpose, whether that’s team updates; progress check-ins; or brainstorming, connecting, or executing time. Learning what kinds of meetings suit your team best in the season you’re in goes a long way to keeping your meetings focused and organized. For example, our team used to prioritize one-on-one check-ins with those we worked closest with along with a weekly team meeting. These days, our team is much smaller, so our weekly team meeting and some ad hoc meetings in between are all we need.
Decide who needs to attend each meeting. Not every person needs to be at every meeting. Even on our four-person team, there are plenty of times when it doesn’t make sense to involve everyone. Sometimes, the most effective use of a person’s time is not to attend the meeting and get a quick recap afterward. Whenever you set a meeting, make sure you are intentional about who should be there.
Make sure every meeting has an owner. Assigning a meeting “owner” means that one person is in charge of making sure the meeting happens and that it’s successful. This limits confusion and saves time because by default, all tasks and roles related to the meeting fall to this person unless they delegate them. Generally, the owner is in charge of scheduling the meeting, creating the agenda, and facilitating. As the facilitator, their job is to keep the meeting flowing by leading the group through each topic, making sure they stick to the agenda, and keeping track of time. On our team, the meeting owner changes every so often based on the owner’s workload and their ability to commit to facilitating.
Commit to your meetings. Lencioni argues that once you commit to a day and time for a meeting, you need to stick to it, even if not everyone can attend. This keeps the flow of information consistent and establishes a routine. On our team, we do this a little differently: Our weekly huddle is the one meeting that we all commit to attending. We schedule everything around it because we know that it’s our best chance to check in personally, get realigned on priorities, and have conversations that require input from all of us. Because of my speaking schedule, our weekly team meeting is at a different day and time each week, but we schedule them months in advance to give everyone time to prepare. Sometimes, even with that flexibility, a travel delay causes me not to be able to attend, and the team moves forward with the meeting without me.
Set expectations. Make sure people know what to expect from a meeting—and what is expected of them. On our team, for example, we know that we each need to come to our weekly meetings prepared to share wins and challenges from our personal and professional lives, our top three priorities for the week, and high-fives (kudos for other team members). We do not allow time in the meeting for people to think about those things. Showing up unprepared to this meeting slows the whole thing down and quickly gets us off-track, and it's also not respectful of others’ time.
Create and share an agenda in advance. Lencioni is a huge proponent of agendas. He says that every meeting, no matter how short, should have an agenda, and I agree. Creating and sharing agendas ahead of time lets people know what to expect and helps them prepare, and it also keeps the meeting focused. We have a set agenda for our weekly team meeting, and if anything in that agenda is going to change, the meeting owner sends a message on Slack at least 24 hours in advance of the meeting. For example, we end our weekly huddle with collaborative discussion around a different topic each week, but some weeks, we don’t have anything to discuss. In those cases, we use that time to have a “work party” where we cross things off of our individual to-do lists while we’re on Zoom together. We notify people of that kind of change in advance so that everyone can come prepared.
Make time for the personal and the professional. Meetings can help you get an understanding of what's on everyone's plate, which helps prevent burnout and overwhelm. On our team, that also means knowing what’s going on in people’s lives outside of work. I encourage you to include personal check-ins in your meetings, too. It doesn’t have to be anything big or invasive: Simply ask people to rate on a scale of 1-10 how they’re feeling at work and outside of it and give them space to elaborate if they want to. Knowing what's on each of our plates gives us a window into when someone needs help or when there is a problem that might need solving. Sometimes one person on our team has a lot going on in their personal life, and we use that meeting as an opportunity to take some things off of their plate and reassign it to others on the team. That way, we can still hit our goals while also extending compassion and grace to those who need it.
Make room for additional agenda items. I love this part of our weekly meetings. After we’re done with our updates, we create a team-led agenda by asking, “Does anyone have any additional agenda items?” What this does is create space for our team to share what's challenging them, and then they can get perspective, advice, or help from the team. That way, they can leave the meeting feeling lighter because they got a solution and/or know how to move forward. If there’s an issue that only a couple people need to discuss, we might schedule an ad hoc meeting for that or put those people in a breakout group to discuss so that we are being most effective with our time. Having the space to add agenda items is the kind of thing that helps people look forward to meetings and makes them want to attend, and it makes the meeting more valuable. When you don’t have this kind of space, it’s easy to see meetings as a waste of time because they are taking us away from the things we need to get done and the problems we need to solve instead of being the very thing that helps us move toward a solution.
Rate and evaluate your meetings on a regular basis. When you’re trying out new structures, take time to get feedback on how the meeting went right away. Leave some time at the end to ask attendees questions such as: How would you rate this meeting on a scale of 1-10? What was great about it? What could've made it more useful? Even if you have an established meeting routine that’s working well, make space for people to give feedback regularly. That’s how our team has helped me make our meetings more effective over the years. We also use our quarterly team reviews to ask big-picture questions about the effectiveness of our meetings. We always ask: Are our meetings meeting our needs? What can we change to make them more effective? Does the current meeting owner want to continue to own the meeting? Then, we discuss and make changes accordingly.
Now that you’ve seen my meeting tips, what are yours? How do you make your meetings count? Let me know in the comments!
Happy meeting!
Big hugs,
