How to run meetings that really work
Wasting millions
Steps you can take to ensure your meetings are more effective
- Consider whether you really need to have a meeting. If the objective of the meeting is simply to convey information, consider other ways of passing it on, such as email, an office memorandum, or a notice on the bulletin board.
- Make sure the people who attend the meeting are those who are involved in the issues being discussed. Each attendee needs to have a relevant role to play.
- Designate a person to run the meeting. Without someone to take charge of the session and keep the discussion on track, the meeting is almost certain to go nowhere.
- Before the meeting, prepare an agenda outlining what will be discussed. During the meeting, make sure the discussions follow the agenda. If other issues arise, put them on the agenda for another meeting. Give each attendee a copy of the agenda in advance so they can think about the points to be discussed.
- Set the meeting length in advance. Letting participants know how long the meeting will last – and sticking to it – enables them to schedule their day. If people can talk for as long as they like on a subject, you can be sure they will.
- Ensure the meeting reaches decisions on actions to be taken. Before the meeting ends, you should have made specific assignments that can be evaluated at the next meeting.
- Take notes of the discussion and distribute them after the meeting. At the next meeting, it will be important to refer to the notes to check on who had to do what.
- By preparing and handling the meeting in the right way, you can avoid people leaving the meeting mumbling, “Maybe now I can get some work done.” If you ran the meeting right, they would have got some work done.
- Check out our specially selected books on meetings below.
Books on meetings selected specially for you
THIS PRACTICAL, COMPREHENSIVE GUIDE to designing and running more effective meetings will result in less time wasted, more collaborative decision-making, and measurably improved business outcomes.
There's nothing more frustrating than an unproductive meeting—except when it leads to another unproductive meeting. Yet every day millions of people conduct meetings—in person or online—without the critical understanding or formal training on how to plan and lead them effectively. This book offers a structured method to ensure that meetings will produce clear and actionable results. Meetings that are profitable and productive ultimately lead to fewer meetings. This book offers leaders a significant edge by
• Empowering readers to help their groups create, innovate, and break through the barriers of miscommunication, politics, and intolerance
• Making it easier for them to help others forge consensus and shared understanding
• Providing them with proven agenda steps, tools, and detailed procedures
Readers will learn how to resolve or manage common problems, inspire creativity, and transfer ownership to their meeting participants while managing interpersonal conflicts and other disruptions that arise. In a world of back-to-back meetings, this book explains the how-to details behind game-changing tools and techniques.
No matter the size, purpose, or type of meetings you lead—whether you are convening multiple teams at a conference, leading a staff meeting, chairing a PTA committee, or facilitating a virtual meeting of remote workers—this book can help you get the results you need with the investment of just one hour from your busy schedule.
The secrets to successful, effective meetings aren’t complicated. With the strategies in this book and 60 minutes:
• You can inspire meeting members instead of boring them.
• You can engage participants instead of speaking to “attendees.”
• You can achieve real results instead of closing meetings with “we can finish this up next time.”
Don’t Waste My Time offers strategies, guidance, and tools that deliver:
• A surefire PLANNER framework of the 7 strategies to plan and lead meetings that inspire, engage, and get results
• 7 elements to craft a powerful, effective agenda for every meeting, no matter the purpose, size, or timing
• 50+ proactive strategies to avoid meeting meltdowns
• 13 techniques to get a derailed meeting back on track
• 3-step method to ensure follow-through so that every meeting achieves the results you want
• Tips to apply Don’t Waste My Time Tools in one-on-one meetings so that even your meetings disguised as conversations can succeed
You can run effective meetings every time—if you approach them with forethought and the powerful techniques presented in Don’t Waste My Time. Purchase this book today and let Kimberly Devlin be your professional coach to help guide your next meeting to success!
We all know that meetings suck, right? You hear it all the time. It's the one thing that almost everyone in business can agree on. Except it's not actually true. Meetings don't suck—we suck at running meetings. When done right, meetings not only work, they make people and companies better. In Meetings Suck, world renowned business expert and growth guru Cameron Herold teaches you how to use focused, time effective meetings to help you and your company soar. This book shows you immediately actionable, step-by-step systems that ensure that you and everyone in your organization improves your meetings, right away. In the process, you'll turn meetings that suck into meetings that work.